Guillo on paper

The Ranums' Panat Times

Musing on Laurent Guillo's recent article, "Les papiers à musique imprimés," Revue de Musicologie, 87 (2001),
and on how his findings are related to the papers used by Charpentier

Read a related Musing about the 3 treble clefs used by Charpentier

In this Musing, my principal goal is to summarize each of Guillo's findings about Charpentier's paper, and then link his observations to whatever evidence I have accumulated about the watermark of that "paper" (a sometimes confusing expression he uses to denote both the actual paper and the grid of lines with which a printer made the staves on a sheet of music paper).

But first I want to create a general context about Charpentier's career, into which I can place my and L. Guillo's observations. That is, I will briefly sketch the tableau suggested by the contents of the Mélanges during Charpentier's thirty-year career; I will mention some of the patrons/employers who m we know employed him; and I will suggest what we can surmise about how he obtained his papers and from whom — the former two considerations being grounded on verifiable evidence, while the final one involves working hypotheses based on evidence about what it was like to work within a corporate group or a noble household during the last half of the seventeenth century. To this evidence and to these hypotheses I will add a few underlined remarks prompted by reading Laurent Guillo's thought-provoking article.

A brief excursion into household and corporate mentality in the seventeenth century

In my "Sweet Servitude" (Early Music, 1987) I tried to show what it was like to live in a princely house and to depend upon one's patron for room, food, clothes — and for Charpentier that would have meant counting on the Guises to also provide much, if not all of the costly music paper he needed between 1670 to 1687. It doubtlessly was the household official — either the intendant or the subordinate whom the intendant had placed in charge of purchasing supplies — who went out and bought reams of paper to be used not only by Charpentier but by Their Highnesses' secretaries, their household treasurer, their maître d'hôtel, Monsieur du Bois, and so forth. The choice of the "brand" (i.e., watermark) of paper selected by this officer was therefore presumably out of Charpentier's hands, although it is likely that the officer consulted Charpentier about the size and quality of the paper. I suspect that when Guillo finishes his project, he will find that most of the printed music paper used by Charpentier — which, he says, accounts for the "majority" of his papers — was used during these 17 years. Indeed, I should think it likely that the Guises' officer would to buy ready-made music paper for Charpentier, purchasing a ream or two at a time. (Incidentally, none of the watermarks on the papers used between 1670 and mid-1687 shows a cross of Lorraine: in other words, the officer working for Their Highnesses of Guise clearly did not obtain the paper from a mill that either had connections to the House of Lorraine or else used a watermark that might somehow evoke that princely house.) Each purchase of paper tended to last Charpentier approximately a year; and then the officer would buy another batch, with a different watermark, and Charpentier would use it for awhile, until a third batch was purchased. And so on and on, for over seventeen years. It is, however, quite possible that the officer in charge of purchases sometimes bought unlined paper, for Guillo provides evidence that at least some of the paper used for the Guises (for example, my paper "L") was unlined.

More or less the same scenario probably characterize 1687-1698, when Charpentier was the official composer for the Jesuits. During those years his notebooks are made largely of a paper I call the similijésuite paper, which has an IHS watermark (see below) and appears to have been produced at mills owned by the Jesuits. In other words, it appears very likely that the Jesuits supplied their composer with all the paper he needed. We shall see below that Guillo has found that the staves on this paper were not printed and had to be ruled by hand, presumably by Charpentier or one of his assistants. In other words, the Jesuits do not appear to have used a paper that was generally available in commerce. Gillo does, however, say that he found a few sheets of this paper on which staves had been printed. This suggests that the Reverend Fathers occasionally had one or more reams of their paper taken to a print shop, where it was transformed into music paper.

The same household/corporate usages doubtlessly also were observed at the Sainte-Chapelle, 1698-1704. At any rate, the few works that have survived from this period are all on my paper "O." Since the Cour des Comptes administered the Chapel's finances, it is quite likely that Charpentier did not go out and buy this paper. Rather, reams of it would have been delivered to his lodging in the Palais at the request of the bursar of the Cour des Comptes. Was this the only paper Charpentier used during those six years? We don't know for sure, because most of the works for those years have been lost. We do know, from Guillo's research, that all of the surviving sheets of paper "O" are hand-ruled. This suggests that paper with this particular watermark was either being made for the Cour des Comptes, or that the bursar ordered a large stock of unlined paper from a mill, to be used by the Chapel and, perhaps, by the Cour as well.

By contrast, when outside patrons commissioned a work from Charpentier (Molière, the Jesuits prior to 1687, Port-Royal, the Académie de Peinture, the Dauphin, the Order of Saint Louis, etc.), the composer found himself in a less predictable situation. One patron might behave one way, and another would behave another way. For example, many of the patrons probably supplied the paper, going to a paper store and requesting the shopkeeper to deliver the appropriate amount of paper to Monsieur Charpentier at the Hôtel de Guise. There is no reason to think that these different patrons selected their paper owing to the watermark, rather than the price. Some of this paper may have been ruled, some of it may have been blank: Guillo's research will eventually permit scholars to separate the printed from the hand-ruled papers and perhaps learn more about their provenance. A certain number of patrons may have advanced Charpentier the money to buy this costly item, while others may have expected him to pay for the paper in advance from his own pocket, and be patient until he received his "gratification" for work completed. For example, it is not clear whether the Academy of Painting and Sculpture gave Charpentier any paper: perhaps they expected him to pay for it out of the lump sum he received after the service for the King's recovery had been held? (See my Musing on that subject, and the Fugitive Piece related to it.) In those instances where Charpentier himself bought the paper— we cannot identify those instances, if they in fact took place — it certainlyl cannot be ruled out that he selected a paper with a watermark that "spoke," to him about the identity of the patron. But that is only a very tentative hypothesis, based on the presence of paper with royal crowns in a notebook containing music for the Dauphin's musicians, and paper with a cross akin to that of the Order of the Holy Spirit and the Order of Saint-Louis (the watermark is called the "chapelet") for compositions written for those royal orders. And then there is the matter of one paper that undeniably has a filigrane parlant, that is to say, paper bearing Colbert's arms and therefore perhaps supplied by the royal minister or by someone in his entourage. Interestingly enough, according to Guillo this paper has printed staves.

That, in a nutshell, suggests some of the factors that probably came into play when paper was purchased by or for Marc- Antoine Charpentier between 1670 and 1704.

Some observations about Laurent Guillo's findings, as they apply to Charpentier's Mélanges

Hand-ruled paper:

First, let's look at the implications of Guillo's statement that Volumes 5, 12 and 13 of the Mélanges are "entirely made of hand-ruled music paper" (p. 318). What specific papers are contained in those volumes?

Volume 5 (cahiers 62, 63, 64 and 66) contains works dating from Charpentier's tenure as composer for the Jesuits. It is therefore scarcely surprising that cahiers 59 and 60 are entirely made of similijésuite paper. According to Gaudriault, ill. 663-664 and 718, when the IHS watermark on this paper accompanies the large crest commonly known as the lis de Strasbourg (which is the shield on this similijésuite paper), "the IHS is in this case probably characteristic of the paper mills depending upon the Abbaye de la Couronne, which belonged to the Society of Jesus."

Cahiers 64 and 66 on the other hand are made of a mixture of papers "M," "N," and "O." Paper "O" is the paper that appears to have been supplied to the music master of the Sainte-Chapelle by the Chambre des Comptes. Paper "M" is the "chapelet" paper with a cross that evokes the cross of the Order of Saint-Louis (see my article on the Jesuits in the Bulletin Charpentier, 2001, pp. 2-3). Paper "N" is nondescript. In other words, this volume contains two of the three papers that I propose may have "filigranes parlants." It is extremely interesting that these papers are hand-ruled rather than printed, for it suggests that the Jesuits give Charpentier blank paper, and did not generally take the paper produced by their mill to a printer to convert it into printed music paper. (But see below, PAP-25, PAP-70 and perhaps PAP-39, where Guillo suggests that he found some Jesuit paper with printed staves.) In like manner, the master of the Sainte-Chapelle apparently was expected to draw his own musical staves.

Volume 12, which contains cahiers 70, 73, and 74, has some notebooks made entirely or partially of paper "O." Internal evidence proves that the works in these notebooks date from the Sainte-Chapelle years. In short, the contents of this volume confirm my observations about Vol. 5: Charpentier was not supplied with printed music paper during his years at the Sainte-Chapelle.

Volume 13 contains three "problematic" notebooks, cahiers "I," "II," and "a." Cahier "I" — which is made of the same paper as the original prologue of Le Malade imaginaire (in cahier XV) and the reworked version imposed upon the troop by Lully (cahier XVI) — contains snippets of Le Malade. In other words, the individual who purchased this paper in 1672 did not buy ready-ruled music paper.

Cahier "II," which is made of my paper "L" (it may be the lost cahier 48), contains music written for the Guise musicians. It seems safe to hypothesize that this paper was supplied by the household officer of Mlle de Guise who saw to making such purchases on Her Highness's behalf. In other words, sometimes this unidentified officer provided Charpentier with printed music paper (for it is quite likely that much of the paper with printed staves used by the composer between 1670 and mid-1687 was provided by the Guises), and sometimes with blank paper that Charpentier had to rule himself.

Cahier "a" is entirely on similijésuite paper, so it is not surprising to learn that the staves are hand-ruled, for they likewise are hand-ruled in vol. 5

A volume entirely made of printed music paper — including one paper with a very interesting watermark

Volume 19, Guillo notes (p. 318) is "entirely made of PAP-20." That volume contains cahiers XXV, XXVI, XXVII and XXVIII. My notes show two different types of watermarks in this volume: paper "5" and paper "6." Their watermarks are so different that confusion is impossible. Paper 5 has a raisin and a countermark with B-flower-C — quite nondescript watermarks. Paper 6, on the other hand, bears as a watermark the coat of arms of Jean-Baptiste Colbert. (Gaudriault shows that the oldest known use of this paper dates from 1668, that it was being used at Versailles in 1672, and that by 1676 it had found its way into the Mélanges Colbert.) Did Colbert allow his coat of arms to appear on commercial music paper available to the public at large, or did he have his intendant take some of his personal paper to a print shop to be ruled? And if the latter proves to be the case, how did that paper find its way into Charpentier's Mélanges? Also, since the printing grid used for the staves is apparently the same on both paper "5" and the Colbert paper, this means that the same printer did both jobs. This is a mystery that should intrigue historians of paper!

The remainder of Guillo's evidence about Charpentier's paper involves the different occurrences of printed music paper in his autograph manuscripts

Before going through the various "PAP"s, I'd like to call attention to the fact that Guillo's "papers" are actually the grid that printers inked in order to print staves on blank paper. In other words, a given printing grid could be used to print staves on a variety of different "brands" of paper, each with its pair of distinctive watermarks.

Here then, are the notes I took about Guillo's different PAP's, thinking that perhaps they will be useful to Charpentier scholars There may be a bit of duplication of what I wrote above, but I want to make sure all details are available in the summaries that follow:

PAP-20 :

His reference is to Vol. 19, which he says is entirely made of this paper. Vol. 19 includes cahiers XXV-XXVIII and is made principally of my paper "5," but fol. 23 and fols. 32-40 are another paper, my paper "6," with Colbert's arms. It is hard to see how LG could fail to notice the presence of this paper, ... unless the texture and staves are virtually identical? Be that as it may, he must be right: my paper "6" must have printed staves. Which would either mean that J-B. Colbert had it printed, or that he allowed his personal mark to be used in commerce.

There is another problem (or a confusion that stems from the fact that various brands could have lines printed on them by the same music-paper printer), because on p. 344 Guillo implies that this same paper appears in Vol. 4, cah. 25, fol. 20-21. But the paper in cah. 25 is my paper "g" and it differs from my paper "5" in important ways. The countermark of paper "g" is P-cœur-V, but the countermark of paper "5" is B-flower-C. Both are raisin papers, however. I take it this means that different brands of paper were used by one printer?

What does Vol. 19 contain that might explain the presence of Colbert's paper? One piece specifically written for the Dauphin's musicians, and four other ones for the same sort of ensemble. Most of the paper is routine, purchased paper. And no one would argue that this bunch of grapes and B-flower-C somehow embody or "talk" about the Dauphin? But does not the Colbert paper suggest a court commission of some sort? Paper "g," with its grapes and P-cœur-V, surely does not evoke the Abbaye-aux-Bois, whose Lenten music he copied out onto that paper.

PAP-21 :

He refers to Rés Vmc, ms 27, where the name of the Pieches appears. In other words, it contains works written for the Dauphin. There are several watermarks, the common feature being crowns. In the notes I took while studying the watermarks, I wrote: "says Pieche inside. See verso of first sheet, with a very complicated design that shows considerable skill in the art of calligraphy." The watermarks are B-cœur-C beneath a royal sort of design that has a closed crown with a French lily above it, and a small crown with something hanging down from it. There is a long watermark with B-heart-Colombe..., and fol. 31 has "a huge and very clear crown."

PAP-25 :

Fols 52-53 of cah. 13, Vol. 2, is, according my notes, similijésuite paper. Is this paper really printed? That's very interesting, if it is, because it suggests that the Jesuits sometimes printed their staves, and sometimes didn't.

PAP-26 :

Vol. 20, cahiers XXXVI-XXXIX are my paper "I" which also appears in cahier 38. Both watermarks correspond to his description of the paper in the Lully manuscript.

PAP-39 :

This paper — my paper "F" — of course tells nothing about any patron. LG cites only the Beretta Mass, but this same paper is in cahier XXXIII. He says it appears also in Vol. 28, fol. 41, but there are only 36 folios in that volume, so there is a typo of some sort in his text. In addition, I show the paper in Vol. 28 as being Jesuit paper throughout: If he is in fact talking about Vol. 28, and not some other volume, this would mean that the Jesuits had turned some of their paper into printed music paper! But in view of the apparent error, I don't think we should jump to conclusions on that score. Cahier XXXIII dates from early 1682, which may or may not suggest a rough date for the Beretta volume.

PAP-51 :

The partbooks for the Feste de Ruel, which has a cartouche with P-cœur-D. This appears nowhere else in Charpentier's corpus. There is nothing to suggest that this watermark points to the Duke of Richelieu. Nor does the paper "K"on which MAC copied out the score of the Feste (cahiers XLVII-XLVIII) suggest the Duke. It has grapes and E-cœur-C, and was used in both series for two years. I would not surprised to learn that paper "K" has printed staves, for if it were Richelieu's paper, it presumably would bear a more noble watermark?

The fact that these partbooks are on printed paper does not of course fit into the general practice that Guillo describes: "La copie d'exécution, fait par un copiste pour servir aux chanteurs ou aux instrumentistes, n'utilise qu'exceptionellement du papier imprimé..." (p. 317). That's very interesting!

PAP-70 :

One of his citations doesn't mesh with the foliotation of Charpentier's mss. And according to my notes the sheet in cah. VIII, fol. 50-52 has a Jesuit watermark... and certainly not the "raisin avec cartouche non lisible" that LG describes. I don't understand this at all! Throughout cahier VIII I saw the two similijésuite watermarks. And I found the same black staves that I found on fols. 43-44 of cahier 5, which definitely has a complete Jesuit watermark. If it is Jesuit paper and has printed staves, that would be very interesting. I wish I knew what the paper is in the unidentifiable fols. 1-17 in "cah. 17"!

PAP-75 :

This single PAP category actually has 3 of my papers, "A," "B," and "C." This fact surely will be interesting to historians of the history of printed paper, because it suggests that one printer used three different types of paper. Actually the three papers have something in common: all of them have the countermark B-heart-C, although the dimensions of each countermark differ slightly. More revealing still for the history of paper is that Charpentier used paper "A" in 1670-72, paper "B" in Dec. 1672-March 1673, and paper "C" not only in the spring of 1763 but as late as1676 (cahs. 10-11)!

PAP-76 :

This single PAP category has 3 of my papers (just as PAP-75 has several papers), or so it appears. I have to be a bit vague because LG says that PAP-76 appears in a cahier numbered 20, and on fols 58-60. But the date LG proposes and thecahier number and the folio number don't mesh in Vol. 5, but they do mesh in Vol. 3. So I'll have to conclude he is talking about Vol. 3, cah. 20, fols. 58-60. Those particular folios have an unusual paper, I-cœur-B, and a big bunch of grapes: it is my paper "e." (It's quite possible therefore that my paper "3" and my isolated sheet of paper "e" would turn out to be the same if measured with professional equipment. Does that mean that cahier XIX is more or less contemporary with cahier 20? Not at all! Cah. XIX is from 1675 and cah. 20 from 1677-78 — which suggests that this paper was made available to MAC on two separate occasions during the 1670s.

PAP-77 :

This is my paper "b," which occurs uniquely in cahier 5.

As became clear in the previous section, there seem to be some typographical errors that make it difficult for Charpentier scholars to use Guillo's findings
I'll summarie them here, so readers won't have to pore through the earlier part of this Musing:
1) On page 344, PAP-20, LG refers to "Volume 4, cahier 25, f. 20-21 (c. 1680)" but there are no folios 20-21 in cahier 25.
2) On page 352, PAP-39, LG says that there are printed staves in "Volume 20 f. 41" (he does not provide the cahier number). Volume 28 stops at folio 37.
3) On page 360, PAP-70, he refers to "Volume 10, cahier 17, f. 1-17, (1677-1678)." I can find no such folios anywhere in Vol. 10. The closest I can come is "Vol. 3". Is that what he means? If so, he is talking about my paper "E," which is one of the more common papers that Charpentier used circa 1677-1678, and which one would expect to have printed staves rather than hand-ruled ones.

4) On page 363, PAP-76, he refers to "Volume 5, cahier 20, f. 58-60 (1677-1679)." Does he mean Volume 3?

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