"Order" in his mss.

The Ranums' Panat Times

What "order" did Charpentier observe for his compositions?
Are his manuscripts really "out of order"?

In her article on Marc-Antoine Charpentier's three principal handwritings and their chronology, C. Jane Gosine repeatedly describes certain pieces and a certain number of notebooks (cahiers) as being "out of order." (Click here for C. Jane Gosine's complete online article on Charpentier's handwriting and clefs.)

In one of my Musings I take issue with her use of this expression , because it implies that the position of these pages and notebooks within Charpentier's Mélanges diverge from the composer's intentions and have gotten "out of order," chronologically.

I believe Gosine meant that certain pages and notebooks were recopied by him later in Charpentier's career, and that the handwriting is therefore anachronistic, in the sense that it more recent than the chronological slot into which he put the recopied pages or the recopied notebook. If that is indeed what she means, I agree with her wholeheartedly.

Still, scholars who have not struggled with the nitty-gritty of Charpentier's handwritings, the brands of paper he used, and the chronology of his works, may take Gosine literally and assume that the order of the works in the Mélanges does not represent Charpentier's intentions. I therefore present here a promenade through time, during which we will view the "order" in which the composer's manuscripts were kept over the decades, that is: 1) Charpentier's own order, pre-1704, which undeniably represents his master plan for his artistic corpus; 2) the order of his surviving works as set forth in the anonymous Mémoire drawn up in 1726; and 3) several divergences from the latter order that were wrought by the librarians and bookbinders of the Royal Library during the 1750s. For comments that are more or less side-bars and that risk taking my presentation astray, I have used a smaller type in indented paragraphs.

The "order" that Charpentier himself gave to his manuscripts, 1670-1704

H. Wiley Hitchcock, the pioneer in Charpentier studies, presents the composer's intentions as follows, on pages 24ff of his Catalogue raisonné (1982):

At some point in his career, Charpentier decided to classify these cahiers by numbering each of them.... Having made the decision he was thorough about it: he numbered all the cahiers that he had already filled with music, and he stuck to the same numbering system from then on. ... The classification system that is found in the extant "Mélanges autographes" is one by numerals precisely, by two series of numerals, one arabic, the other roman. To each manuscript cahier Charpentier assigned such a numeral, which he wrote in the upper left-hand corner of the first page of the cahier. ...One key to our dating of Charpentier's autograph manuscripts is the fact that the scores in cahiers numbered successively were written successively. ... He did not just arbitrarily assign numbers to those cahiers that were already filled with music but rather numbered them in proper chronological order. ... [And from internal evidence] we see that, rather than having been composed successively (first the arabic-numeral series, then the roman-numeral series), the two series of cahiers proceeded in tandem, more or less concurrently.

To summarize Hitchcock's observations: year after year Charpentier copied his latest works into one or another of two growing piles of notebooks, and year after year he numbered these notebooks consecutively (from 1 to 75, and probably beyond; and from I to LXXV, and probably beyond). As Hitchcock points out, the order that Charpentier gave to his notebooks is profoundly chronological.

Hitchcock discusses six "problematic" notebooks. His observations reveal that at some point Charpentier envisaged a third series of notebooks, but he apparently did not carry this series very far. This third series also was given roman numerals: "I" and "II". (Hitchcock put quotes around the numbers to distinguish them from the roman-numbered series that spans more than three decades).

Cahier "I" contains the original prologue for Le malade imaginaire, and cahier "II" the first two acts of La descente d'Orphée aux enfers (H.488). In other words, Charpentier saw these two incomplete vernacular works as belonging neither to the roman-numbered series nor to the arabic-numbered series. Indeed, La descente clearly sits astride the two series, for it was performed by the Great Guise Music in collaboration with the Dauphin's Music; and the prologue to Le malade was commissioned by Molière but was promptly sabotaged by Lully and eliminated from performances.

Hitchcock also discusses four unnumbered cahiers: he calls them "[a]," [b]," "[c]" and "[d]." The Mémoire discussed below suggests that these particular notebooks were kept separate from the two numbered series of cahiers. In 1726 they were all in a hodgepodge described as Charpentier's "other notebooks."

In short, Charpentier carefully classified his works according to a logic that scholars have deduced with relative certainty. That is, he gave his manuscripts a very precise order, an order that was essentially chronological and that was based upon the date of composition rather than the date of copying. We also know that Charpentier kept a répertoire.⁽¹⁾ In other words, he relied on a record book that listed the contents cahier by cahier, and that, at the end of the book, provided an alphabetical list of the pieces, perhaps by title, perhaps by subject. In addition, Charpentier had preserved some of his pieces in as many as nine volumes, some bound in calf, and one of them described as "le livre 2 des demoiselles Pieches."⁽²⁾

That does not mean that Charpentier refrained from modifying a piece at a later date.

For example, during the 1680s he added instrumental music to blank staves in the funeral music he had written for the Guises in 1671-72. This suggests that the compositions were re-used, probably for the funeral of Mlle de Guise in 1688. In another instance, post-1687, he inserted a sheet of Jesuit paper into the middle of cahier 13, in order to add an "overture" to the Petite Pastorale (H.479) that he had written back in 1676.

Yet he did not remove these revised works from their original chronological position and file them with his most recent compositions. For him, the date when the work was created clearly was more important than the date of a repeat performance, a recopying, a revision.

During the 1690s Charpentier set about replacing the worn-out outer sheets of quite a few cahiers. (We can date quite a few of these repairs, because he often used Jesuit paper.) As a result, the handwriting on these pages is more mature than the rest of the notebook.

But does a more mature handwriting necessarily mean a major revision? Did Charpentier inevitably weave into these recopyings a variety of modernisms more characteristic of his style of the late-1680s and 1690s? For example, he recopied the outer sheets of cahiers 27, 28, and 29, which contain the Tenebrae Lessons (H.96-110) that Charpentier wrote for the Abbaye-aux-Bois in 1680 and the aborted Réponses (H.111-119) he was preparing for these same nuns. (We can date these recopyings as post-1687, because he used Jesuit paper.) True, as he reviewed the contents of the cahiers, he indicated some dynamics and marked some figures in the bass; but since only 10 of the 52 pages in these three notebooks were recopied, how likely is it that into those 10 pages he wove modernizations that would sound anachronistic compared to the the 42 other pages he left very much as he had composed them back in 1680?

Charpentier also recopied entire notebooks after 1688.

Among these recopied compositions was cahier 5 (which contained mourning music written for the Guises back in 1671-72), and cahiers VI-XI (written on Jesuit paper and in quite possibly re-castings for the Jesuits of commissions he had received from them almost two decades earlier).

Gosine is very perceptive in her remarks about cahiers that have been entirely recopied: the pieces in them probably were re-composed or "substantially revised." They therefore can be expected to reflect Charpentier's more mature style.

Still, if we put ourselves in Marc-Antoine Charpentier's shoes and view his compositional activities through his eyes rather than our own, we must keep one compelling fact in mind: Charpentier did not remove these re-worked pieces from their original chronological position; he did not put them among his works for the late 1680s and 1690s. This suggests that, for him, the date of the conception and initial performance a work counted for more than the date of any subsequent revisions.

In short, is Gosine not butting her head against Charpentier's when she repeatedly describes these totally recopied cahiers and many of these recopied pages as being "copied out of order"? As I pointed out in my Musing about her article, the expression "out of order" is an unfortunate choice of terminology, for it can be taken to mean that someone other than Charpentier tampered with the chronological order of his musical archives and somehow put them into disarray. That simply is not true: the numbering of the cahiers in the Mélanges represents the order that Charpentier wanted for his notebooks.

The "order" of Charpentier's manuscripts in 1726, as revealed by the Mémoire

The anonymous inventory of the manuscripts in the possession of Charpentier's nephew, Jacques Edouard, in 1726 reveals that quite a few notebooks had been lost by that date. They therefore either disappeared during Charpentier's lifetime (or perhaps were surrendered to his employers, the Jesuits, who did not look kindly on having music they commissioned made available to the public?); or else they were sold by Edouard between 1709 and 1726 just as he appears to have sold Charpentier's Italianate operas and perhaps some of his books of airs.⁽³⁾

Above all, we see that Jacques Edouard had been very respectful of the classification order established by his late uncle. Indeed, the inventory-taker moved through the arabic-numbered series from cahier 1 to cahier 75, and then from cahier I to LXXV, hopping over the gaps we all know and regret. This is very strong evidence that the notebooks were still in numerical order in 1726.

As he moved through the two series of notebooks, the inventory-taker did encounter more than one snag. For example, two cahiers bore the roman numeral "II" (fol. 6v). And when he reached the end of the roman-numbered series, he came upon a second notebook numbered "LXII" (fol. 12v). This second cahier "LXII" contained a version of his Judicium Salomonis which the inventory-taker had just enumerated for cahier LXXV (fol. 12v). This raises the possibility that today's cahier LXII once contained an earlier version of Salomon, and that rather than discard it, Charpentier moved this earlier version to a place just behind cahier LXXV, so that the two versions of his Salomon would be juxtaposed.

In short, when the inventory-taker arrived at Jacques Edouard's little bookshop, he was confronted by two quite sizeable piles of folio notebooks, virtually all of them in numerical order. Some of these notebooks probably were covered with blank protective sheets (chemises) bearing annotations by Charpentier himself for example: "grand motet pour le reposoir de Versailles en présence du roi défunt" (fol. 10, re cahier XLIX).

Charpentier would, of course, have written simply "du roi"; the "défunt" clearly was the inventory-taker's way of showing that it was a question of Louis XIV, not Louis XV. The score itself mentions neither Versailles nor the king, so it is quite unlikely that this information came from either Edouard or the inventory-taker.

Two such chemises have survived, because instrumental music added to their blank staves during the 1680s turned these cover sheets into integral parts of cahiers 3 and 4. On the other hand, some of the esthetic evaluations in the Mémoire may well have come from the inventory-taker: "Miserere des Jésuites, grande simphone et très belle" (fol. 4, re cahier 43), or "cette pièce est extraordinaire" (fol. 4v, re cahier 50). Indeed, as his "reflections at the end of the Mémoire suggest, the inventory-taker clearly had been selected for his knowledge of the contemporary musical scene.

Having completed his listing of the roman-numbered series, the inventory-taker turned to a disparate pile of papers (fol. 13) that he called the "other musical notebooks of the same author" (fol. 13). (For these "other notebooks," see my transcription of the Mémoire of 1726).

This pile was something of a hodgepodge. The first item was a cahier numbered "100" (or "C"?) that contained mainly preludes. Two pieces from it have survived in cahier "[c]," but the rest have disappeared. Next came a slim folder numbered 9: it contained two motets plus the recopied folio sheet that Charpentier had prepared for Judith circa 1700 but had never gotten around to inserting into the arabic-numbered series. (For this page from Judith and for the other two pieces, see my discussion of cahier 9.)

Next came the outer sheet of cahier I, which had been removed from the roman-numbered series and in addition had become separated from the interior pages of the cahier which, as we shall see, were a bit farther down in the pile.

This folded sheet was followed by a rather heterogeneous cahier marked "68."

It contained a motet for St Francis, plus a version of the funeral mass that the inventory-taker had just listed for cahier LXIII. In other words, this little bundle numbered "68" began with today's cahier "[b]." Since cahier 68 is missing, this raises some questions: Was cahier "[b]" once cahier 68? If so, did Charpentier remove it from the arabic-numbered series after he had copied out an updated version of these pieces into cahier LXIII? The possibility certainly cannot be ruled out, for cahier "[b]" is made of paper M, just as cahiers 64 and 66 are. Put another way, the music in cahier "[b]" seems contemporaneous with cahiers 64 and 66. That said, the funeral music in cahier LXIII is generally described as being posterior to the version in cahier 68; yet it seems quite likely that cahier LXIII predates cahier 68.

In short, over the years Charpentier tended to add approximately the same number of notebooks to both series. As a result, he reached "40" and "XL" in roughly the same year, "50" and "L" in roughly the same year, and so forth. This annual rhythm could conceivably have changed once he entered the service of the Jesuits; but even if it did, the missing cahier 68 most likely was filled a year or so later than cahier LXIII, not earlier.

At the very end of this packet labeled "68" came all the central pages of cahier I, of the roman-numbered series.

It is clear that most of this hodgepodge existed when Charpentier was still alive: it consisted of works removed from the numbered series and not put back; pages Charpentier had recopied and planned to insert into the appropriate notebook but had not gotten around to filing; and a variant of the funeral mass he had copied into cahier LXIII.

The fifth notebook in this group of "other notebooks" was the "fat notebook," the gros cahier that I have discussed elsewhere in these pages and also in my Musing on cahier 9. Most of the works in this gros cahier appear to have been of a personal nature. (In addition, as I propose in those two Musings, Jacques Edouard seems to have tucked some copies of his uncle's works into this cahier.)

The inventory concluded with an enumeration of Charpentier's in-quarto manuscripts, and his Italian music. Francesco Beretta's 16-voice mass had been filed away with the composer's in-quarto manuscripts. As a result it was erroneously attributed to Charpentier: "Mr. Charpentier fit cette messe à Rome pour les mariniers."

Does the error reflect Jacques Edouard's ignorance? Or did the inventory-taker attribute the work to Charpentier because of the handwriting, and simply repeat information the composer had inserted into his copy? For example, did a simple notation by Charpentier along the lines of "Fait a Rome pour les mariniers, il y a une fugue très magnifique. Cette musique est très sçavante," become "Messe italienne à 16 voix et instrumens, où il y a une fugue très magnifique. Mr. Charpentier fit cette messe à Rome pour les mariniers, cette musique est très sçavante." The question probably will never be answered, but it is clear that the inventory-taker failed to notice that on the title page Charpentier had named Beretta as composer!

The inventory-taker appears not to have enumerated all the manuscripts belonging to Charpentier. Or had they been sold or lost? For example, there is no mention of the eight or nine bound volumes of vocal music one of them for the Pièches. Although there is no allusion to the little book now known as Rés. Vmc. Ms.17 that contains works specifically for the Pièches. the contents of Rés. Vmc 28 seem to have been among the quarto manuscripts wrapped in a "package" numbered "2" (fol. 14). There is no allusion to Charpentier's Italianate "operas," French divertissements, and books of airs that were or soon would be? in Louis-Denis Seguin's collection.⁽⁴⁾ Lastly, if Charpentier's répertoire still existed in 1726, the inventory-taker did not mention it.

What, then, does the Mémoire show us about the state of "order" or disorder in Charpentier's manuscripts, two decades after his death? We learn that notebooks were missing, and that the surviving cahiers were still filed according to the numerical order established by the composer. We see that Charpentier was human: he would procrastinate, putting items to be re-filed in a separate pile where he would find them with relative ease but putting off the chore of flipping through his accumulated cahiers.

If, as seems likely, Charpentier was educated by the Jesuits, his conscience must have bothered him at times. That is, manuscript instructions for the Jesuit Novitiate (I currently am editing them) instruct novices "not to displace anything in the chamber or in one’s oratory without putting it back in its place and its order as soon as one can." Similar instructions doubtlessly were drummed into the heads of generations of schoolboys at Louis-le-Grand.

We also learn that he sorted his manuscripts by size, keeping quarto-sized notebooks separate from the folio-sized ones of which the arabic- and roman-numbered series were composed. He appears to have kept all his Italian music together, irrespective of whether the books or notebooks were handwritten or printed, and irrespective of whether they were in-quarto or in-folio. (We have already noted, however, that Beretta's mass strayed from its Italian neighbors at some point and ended up with Charpentier's own compositions.) In sum, a few things had gotten out of order by 1726, but in the main Charpentier's chronology was being respected. More important still, there is no comment about chronological discrepancies in handwriting, no allusion to some notebooks being "out of order," no suggestion that a re-sorting according to handwriting would be advisable.

The "order" of Charpentier's manuscripts, as bound by the Royal Library in the 1750s

Once again Wiley Hitchcock gives us a masterful summary (pp. 23ff) of the order or disorder wrought by the royal librarians and bookbinders. Since Hitchcock repeatedly alludes to the "order" of the notebooks by which he clearly means the numeralical-chronological order within the two sets of notebooks I have italicized this word throughout the following excerpt from his Catalogue raisonné:

After being bound, the pages of each volume were numbered, in an erratic combination of foliation and pagination which at times replaces or accommodates to earlier numbering. Although the order of the bound volumes is not entirely haphazard, in itself it does not provide a basis for a chronology of the musical works they contain. ... Surveying the order of the volumes of the "Mélanges" and of the cahiers within them, it is apparent that some attempt was made, in gathering the manuscript fascicles into volumes, to preserve the order of the cahiers (although there are a few lapses): the arabic-numeral cahiers, more or less in sequential order, are contained in volumes I-XII; the roman-numeral cahiers, also more or less in sequential order, are contained in volumes XIV-XXVIII.

The Royal Library did indeed get some things "out of order" during the cataloging and binding process. And although they discarded some pages listed in the Mémoire, presumably because the pages were damaged or the handwriting was not Charpentier,⁽⁵⁾ no notebooks disappeared during the two decades the works remained un-catalogued. On the positive side, the library staff put the recopied opening pages of Judith where they belonged, just before cahier 10, and they reintegrated the dispersed pages of cahier I to their original place at the head of the roman-numbered series.

At the same time, they did something that has blurred our understanding of the way Charpentier organized his manuscripts. That is to say, they incorporated cahiers "[a]," "[b]," "[c]," and "[d]" into the roman- and arabic-numbered series, as if they were an integral part of Charpentier's income-producing activities. This does not seem to have been the case.

Years ago I proposed that some of these cahiers might be the cahiers missing from the arabic- or roman-numbered series. I no longer make that argument. I now believe they belong to a separate category that included works for which Charpentier was not remunerated. For example, there was one very personal work (his "Epitaph"), some near-duplicates that he apparently retained for sentimental (?) reasons, and pieces that he had offered to his sister's convent.

In 1726 all these works were to be found in the "other notebooks" that were clearly distinct from the roman- and the arabic-numbered series. That is to say, the pieces in cahier "[a]" were once in the gros cahier; the pieces in cahier "[b]" were stashed away in the folder numbered "68" and were more or less a duplicate of the funeral mass, etc., in cahier LXIII; the pieces in cahier "[c]" were in the folder numbered "100" (or "C"?); and the pieces in cahier "[d]" appear to have been works that Charpentier offered to Port-Royal as personal gifts, probably in November or December 1687 when he was momentarily a free agent, so to speak.

There is one more consideration about the order or disorder in Charpentier's manuscripts. As one flips through the Mélanges, it is obvious that pages or cahiers in Charpentier's more mature hand are intermingled with his earliest notebooks. This fact scarcely can have escaped the notice of the royal librarians. If they had judged these notebooks and pages to be "out of order," they could have reorganized the entire corpus on the basis of the youthfulness or the maturity of the musical hand. They did not do so. They were not perfect, but they tired to respect the late composer's classification system a system they clearly deemed important for the history of French music under Louis XIV.

Conclusion

To conclude: for Charpentier's heirs, for the royal librarians of the 1750s, and for H. Wiley Hitchcock, "order" meant the order that Charpentier himself had given to his manuscripts. In determining this "order," Although he was aware that the handwriting sometimes was anachronistic, Hitchcock focused on the order of the notebooks, not on the pages or entire cahiers that Charpentier recopied years after the creation of a work. Nor was the inventory-taker of 1726 concerned with re-copyings or revisions: he made some mistakes, but did his best to reproduce the order of the manuscripts as he found them.

And Marc-Antoine Charpentier? He was preoccupied with preserving his creations and in some cases, embellishing them. Scribe's son that he was, and capable as he was of writing the two principal scripts of the realm, he probably would have regarded changes in his handwriting as an inevitable consequence of the passage of time. Throughout his career the chronological and numerical order of his notebooks constituted the backbone of his filing system. To deviate ever so little from this system, this "order," meant that his entire répertoire would have to be reworked, recopied and to what advantage, since he knew exactly which pages or notebooks had undergone modifications, subtle modernizations, or extensive re-workings.

Though it surely is not her intention, C. Jane Gosine's insistence that this longstanding "order" is somehow "out of order" has great potential to mislead. Although her observations about the evolution of Charpentier's handwriting are praiseworthy, her assertions that pages and notebooks are "out of order" should be read with perspicacity.

Notes

1. Vol. 9, cahier 33, fol. 17v (H. 180).

2. Hitchcock, Catalogue raisonné, p. 24. Charpentier apparently was referring to another volume than BnF Rés. Vmc. Ms. 27, which was written for the Dauphin's musicians but does not contain a Recordare, or Rés. Vmc. Ms. 28, which likewise appears to contain works for these musicians. The volume appears to have gone astray or been sold prior to 1726.

3. See my "Quelques ajouts au corpus Charpentier," in Marc-Antoine Charpentier, un musicien retrouvé, ed. C. Cessac (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2005), pp. 155-61. Louis-Denis Seguin owned not only two operas attributed to Charpentier, but also volumes that either call to mind the ones to which Charpentier himself alluded, or those mentioned on fol. 15 of the Mémoire of 1726: "Recueil d'Airs Italiens en deux tomes, in-quarto, manuscrit"; "Airs Italiens et François, in-quarto, manuscrit"; Airs de Charpentier, in-quarto, manuscrit"; "Airs de Charpentier, en veau, in-octavo, manuscrit long." Charpentier describes one of his volumes as having been bound in calf (veau). It is quite possible that Edouard sold some of these bound books prior to the inventory, and others after the inventory had been drawn up but before the Mélanges were sold to the Royal Library.

4. See above, note 3.

5. I am referring here to the duplicate copies of the motets that Edouard and Mathas published in 1709: listed in the Mémoire, they have all disappeared. Hence my proposal that they were copies used by the engravers.

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