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A Roundtable on the Charpentier Chronology 

The final session at the conference on Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Mélanges, sponsored by the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2004, was scheduled to end with a Table ronde chronologie moderated by Catherine Cessac. In addition to Cessac, the panel included Laurent Guillo, historian of printed music paper; Jane Gosine, who has done such interesting work on what Charpentier's different musical hands -- and notably his clefs -- might tell us about the dating of his music; and me, Patricia Ranum, recorder of how watermarks are distributed in the Mélanges.

Alas, time ran out: the session was halted after a few minutes. But in those few minutes the thought-provoking examples that Cessac had distributed, demonstrated the problems confronting scholars who want to refine the chronology of the Mélanges. One cannot rely on a single chronological element. Several different approaches must be used.

I want to share with my readers the materials I had prepared for the roundtable, because they suggest the approaches we should consider when attempting to date Charpentier's compositions.

I am sure I overlooked some of the clues in the examples Cessac distributed that day. Indeed, the issues are so complex that it is unlikely that a single individual can recognize all the clues in the 23 photocopied pages from the Mélanges that she handed out, and all the implications of those clues. I would be very happy to insert into these pages any comments or corrections from Cessac or the other participants in the conference, concerning the inferences I have drawn on the basis of those photocopied pages.

Cessac laid out four very insightful Enigmas for the roundtable.

For each Enigma I will first quote the dry facts she provided about each photocopied page from the Mélanges. These facts are the underpinnings of the several approaches we should use to date a given work.

Then, I address each type of fact in turn, beginning with "Paper." Under that subheading I comment on the paper used by Charpentier for those specific notebooks (shown in parenthesis by Cessac as "Papier" followed by the letter or number that I assigned it in my Vers une chronologie and on my more detailed pages on this site that present the watermarks in Charpentier's manuscripts). I suggest how that specific brand of paper may help us date a given notebook or folio sheet.

Under the subheading "Staves," I repeat, in sentence form, Cessac's allusions to Laurent Guillo's findings about the printed or hand-drawn staves on that page or pages, as enumerated in his article in the Revue de musicologie (2001). (Cessac shows the distinctive printed staves described by Guillo as "PAP" followed by a number.)

Under the subheading "Clefs," I reproduce the clefs from each of Cessac's examples. Since these clefs evolved over the more than three decades that Charpentier worked on the Mélanges, they offer a key to dating.

A fourth type of fact that is essential to solving each Enigma is the sequence of Charpentier's notebooks within the Mélanges, and the position a given work occupies within that chronological flow. These facts are not treated under a separate heading. Rather, I weave them in where it seems most relevant, usually under "Paper" or "Clefs."

Finally, under the subtitle "Inferences," I summarize what I find revealing about each musical page provided by Cessac. And in hopes of brushing a somewhat broader picture, at the end of each Enigma I suggest some lessons to be learned from these pages from Charpentier.

For further information on these subjects, see my comments about Guillo's research on staves (Guillo on paper), my comments on how Charpentier changed his treble clef in 1680 (3 Treble Clefs) , and my listing and sketches of the watermarks in the Mélanges (Watermarks).

Enigma 1: Toward dating the Dies irae, H. 12

Enigma 2: The Messe à 8 voix, H. 3

Enigma 3: Jane Gosine's dating of volumes XI and VI of the Mélanges

Enigma 4: Toward dating the Quam dilecta, H. 167

Bravo, Catherine Cessac! You very cleverly assembled these thought-provoking examples in order to demonstrate the complexity of the problems that confront anyone who sets out to date a piece in the Mélanges.