Suite, Suivez

The Ranums' Panat Times

Suivés and suitte:

some contexts in which Marc-Antoine Charpentier employed these terms

October 2007

This Musing was prompted by Gaëtan Naulleau's comments about my "misreading" of what Charpentier meant by "suite," just above the opening measures of Charpentier's Canticum for the Virgin (H. 400) Naulleau sees only one, quite global and rigid meaning for Charpentier's use of this word:

"La mention «suite» présente entre le petit opéra et le motet se trouve également au milieu des trois pages précédentes, dont au sein des Arts florissans! Il ne s'agit aucunement de «faire suivre» l'exécution des deux oeuvres: pour la commodité de la lecture et de la copie, Charpentier a seulement séparé d'une façon élégante deux systèmes de huit portées chacune, procédé très fréquent dans les Mélanges."

In reality, Charpentier uses suite in quite a different way. As a result, his use of the word suite merits being looked at a bit more closely.

As a starting point, let us look at the important distinction between two words that derived from the infinitive suivre, "to follow":

There is suivez (which Charpentier generally spells "suivés"). Suivez is the imperative form of the verb suivre, "to follow." It orders the reader to proceed immediately to what follows.
There is suite (or "suitte"). Suite is a noun, not a command. Suite is defined as "Continuation d'une oeuvre écrite, ... série de choses rangées les unes à côté des autres" (Petit Larousse), that is, "a continuation of a written work, ... a series of things lined up one after the other."

Charpentier was aware of these different meanings and observed them consistently in the Mélanges. When he wanted performers to move immediately to the next section of a piece (especially if that new section began at the top of the next page), he would write "suivés." And if a brief pause was in order before "following on," he would include that detail.

For some examples of suivés, see Vol. I, fols. 6-6v; Vol. 2, fol. 25v; Vol. III, fol. 49; and Vol. IV, fol. 77.

By contrast, contrary to what G. Naulleau asserts, suite is the not synonym for "faire suivre," (literally, "cause it to follow"), and Charpentier did not use it as a synonym for suivez. (Faire suivre is G. Naulleau's expression, a more impersonal version of Charpentier's "suivés"). In other words, for Charpentier, suite was not a guide to performance; it was an indication of how the sections of a larger work should, so to speak, be stacked next to one another on the archival "shelf" that we call the Mélanges.

As G. Naulleau points out, Charpentier's most common use of suite was to fill in either a blank space in mid-page space or a staff left blank. He did this in order to make it clear that these blank areas should not be mistaken for spaces that separate one composition from another. On this meaning of suite, G. Naulleau and I are in complete agreement.

Typical examples of this usage are Vol. II, fols. 4v and 5v (recopied circa 1700); Vol. III, fols. 32-32v, 36-37; and Vol. V, fols. 61v-63.

Less often, but consistently, Charpentier indicated "suite" when a different system of staves for example, a system with only 1 or 2 voices, plus continuo follows a system with 5, 6 or more voices. In this way Charpentier indicated that these disparate systems are consecutive parts of the same work, and were written for the same musical event.

Suite is used this way in Vol. II, fol. 74. At the bottom of the page, and only two measures into the 5-stave system, comes a bass solo accompanied by three instrumental lines. Thus the work abruptly shifts from a 5-stave system to a 4-stave system. In the space above these four staves, Charpentier consequently wrote "suitte," to remove any uncertainty that this solo belonged with what immediately preceded it.

In Vol. IV, "page" 53, Charpentier used "suite" in the same way. Three nuns from the Abbaye-aux-Bois are singing Aleph, accompanied by a continuo line. Thus their Aleph is copied onto a 4-stave system. At the bottom of the page, the 4-stave system yields to a solo line plus continuo. In the space above this new 2-stave system, Charpentier wrote "Suite." Once again he wanted to show that this solo follows upon the Aleph that immediately preceded it, that it is part of the same musical event. (Incidentally, throughout this lengthy work, he repeatedly uses the performance instruction "Suivez," to indicate that the nuns should move ahead to the next section or page, sometimes after a pause.)

In Vol. III, fol. 18v, the final measures of a 4-stave system being sung by "the three boys" plus their continuo, is abruptly followed by a 2-stave system for Aman and his continuo. Centered neatly above "Aman" is the word "Suitte." Charpentier is indicating that this is not a new piece entitled "Aman," it is a continuation of the larger work.

When there was little or no ambiguity about the new system, Charpentier did not insert suite to indicate that these disparate systems belonged to a continuous whole. For example, a bit later in Vol. III, "page" 71, a 6-stave system yields to a 3-stave system for soloist and two instruments. Ever economical, Charpentier filled the remaining blank staves, superimposing two 3-stave systems; and he separated these systems by writing suite in a blank stave, to avoid confusion; but he did not write suite above these 3-stave systems, apparently because the flow of the solo line and its accompaniment needed no explaining.

When I proposed that Charpentier wrote suite to show that he had composed both Les Arts florissants and the Canticum for the Virgin for a single event, I based my hypothesis on the different uses of suite and suivez that I have just summarized. Actually, the page with the final measures of Les Arts florissants and the opening measures of the Canticum (cahier 47 fol. 86v) contains all three uses of suite/suivez. After the flourish at the end of Les Arts florissants, the 8-stave system yields to a 3-stave system containing the opening measures of the Canticum. "Suite" can be seen just above what looks very much like (and perhaps is?) a totally separate piece, complete with title. Just below the first 3-stave system of the Canticum is a blank staff in which Charpentier wrote "suite," to show that the prelude continues in the system below. At the bottom of the page comes practical instruction about performance "Suivés à l'autre page," that is, "go on to the next page."

How are we to interpret the uppermost indication, "Suite"? Does it, or does it not, suggest that the Canticum was composed to "follow" upon Les Arts florissants?

Do the flourishes or "squiggles" at the end of Les Arts florissants provide an solution to this conundrum? Charpentier ended many of his compositions with just that sort of flourish. Do the flourishes after the final measure of the Arts florissants therefore constitute an unbridgeable gap that separates the opera from the Canticum?

The Mélanges show that the only reply to this last question is: "Sometimes, but sometimes not."

That is to say, Charpentier proves not to have used these flourishes consistently. Sometimes they mark the end of a section of a longer work! Indeed, as the following examples show, no firm conclusion can be based on the flourishes alone. Sometimes they mean "end of section or end of component," but sometimes they mean "end of composition."

Vol. I, fol. 1v, where a flourish is followed by "suivez"; Vol. I, fols. 19-33, where the different sections of the long work often end with a flourish (these were copies made by a very young man); Vol. I, fol. 64v, where all three segments in a composition for a reposoir end with flourishes (perhaps because each is separated by recitations by the clergy?); Vol. II, fol. 53, where the final measure of an added overture is followed by a flourish, although the pastorale to which it belongs ends with a single bar (fol. 57); Vol. II, fol. 78, where a short flourish precedes instructions to "suivez à l'aize" the next section of the work; Vol. III, fol. 3, where a chorus ends with a flourish, and said choral passage is immediately followed by a song for the exules; Vol. 3, fol. 43, where large flourishes separate the first and the second parts of an oratorio; Vol. IV, fol. 22, where each of the different letters sung for tenebrae of Holy Friday is followed with a flourish, despite the fact that they were composed for the same event, and despite the fact that other sections of the same corpus end with a double bar; Vol. IV, fol. 71v, where a choral passage ends with a flourish followed by the instruction, "suivez à l'aize" (compare this particular passage with fol. 90v, where the final measure of a choral passage is followed by inconspicuous unornamented double bars and "suivez à l'aize"); Vol. IV, fol. 121, where a choral passage ends with a flourish and an indication to "suivez à l'aize"; and so forth.

I realize, of course, that the indication "suite," above the title of the Canticum, may have nothing whatsoever to do with the Canticum. That Charpentier may well have put it there when he was finishing Les Arts florissants as he had done earlier in the opera to indicate that the final two measures of the opera were in the 8-stave system in the lower half of the page. And if so, he doubtlessly saw no compelling reason to scrape the word away when he copied the Canticum onto that empty bottom corner of the page. Still (as I argued in that old Musing) for whom, if not the Academy of the Enfant Jésus, could Charpentier have written during the summer of 1685 first a very didactic opera and then the Canticum with its allusions to "boys" being brought up by "us"? This detail of the text dispels all doubt that the Canticum was written for a boys' school, almost certainly the Academy. As for Les Arts florissants, I remain persuaded that Academy is a possible venue for this little opera that strives to inform rather than amuse.

It is for this reason that I believe we should remain open to the possibility that Charpentier wrote that troublesome word "suite" just as he began copying out the Canticum, and that he did so to indicate that the two pieces were performed at a single event. True, the instrumentation for the Canticum is not the same as for Les Arts florissants: the Great Guise Music did not include violinists. But would we not be naive to imagine that no outsider else could touch an instrument in the presence of the Great Guise Music? We know that, for the greater pleasure of the Dauphin, the Great Guise Music and the Dauphin's Music joined forces for a court entertainment. By analogy, we can suppose that Charpentier and his mistresses would graciously accept the offer of a parent or a wealthy benefactor of the Academy, to weave a pair of violinist protegés into festivities at the Academy of the Enfant Jésus. We probably will never learn more about those two anonymous violinists, but it is reasonably certain that they played at the school for boys, and that three men perhaps Guise musicians Charpentier, De Baussen and Beaupuis sang with them.

As for the Sonate, extending this discussion to that composition would be pointless. Neither Les Arts florissants nor the Canticum contain an indication to suivez to the sonata. In the absence of such indications, or of other documents, there seems no way to determine whether the Sonate was tucked away with the partbooks of Les Arts florissants because it was related to the same event as the little opera; nor why, if we suppose that it was written for the Duke of Richelieu, it was not filed with the partbooks of the aborted La Feste de Ruel. Partbooks! Here is another conundrum I wish could be answered: Why, alone among all the works in the French series (which contained works for the Guises), did the partbooks survive for Les Arts florissants? Was that event cancelled? And what happened to all the other partbooks that apparently were stored on special shelves in Charpentier's apartment at the Hotel de Guise?

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