|
Go to the
opening page of Patricia's "Musings"
Read more about Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Read Patricia on Word-Music Relations
Select another Musing about Charpentier
... or read more
about his autograph manuscripts
The treble clefs used by Charpentier:
what can they teach us?
Written circa 2002
An important question is raised
In 1993, C. Jane Lowe (now C. Jane Gosine) commented — in her "Charpentier and the Jesuits
at Saint Louis," Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 15 (1993), p.
299 — that her research had led her to conclude that "the subject of
the chronology of Charpentier's music emerged not as the straightforward
topic that scholars once accepted it to be, but as a complex area revealing
many unresolved problems." She agrees that strong evidence such as handwriting,
musicians' names, and watermarks "confirm the theory" that "the two series
of cahiers were compiled (and probably composed) concurrently." She nonetheless
expresses doubt about whether this theory applies equally well to each individual
cahier in the Mélanges: for of these factors, the handwriting,
she asserts, "is the clearest guide to the dating of the copies" and might
permit a "revised ordering for the cahiers within the two series."
She does not provide further information about which notebooks are candidates
for these potential chronological revisions.
9Note: in 2007 Jane Gosine provided all the details to scholars. (Click here for
C. Jane Gosine's
complete online article on Charpentier's handwriting and clefs; and
click here form my comments about her presentation of
the evidence. )
Her recent contribution to the Bulletin Charpentier — no. 18,
2001: Jane Gosine, "An examination of Charpentier's motet, ‘Transfige
dulcissime Jesu' (H. 251) and the motet fragment (H. 430)" — likewise
grants that the general chronology proposed by Wiley Hitchcock, Catherine
Cessac and Patricia Ranum is plausible. But note 4 contains an echo of her
earlier comment about Charpentier's handwriting: "There are, however, some
apparent anomalies in the ordering of the cahiers within the
Meslanges autographes. Based on an examination of significant changes
in clef formation, certain cahiers appear to have been copied (or
recopied) by the composer at a later date than that suggested by their position
in the Meslanges autographes." The same note points out that Shirley
Thompson "also refers to such anomalies in the ordering of the
cahiers."
In other words, these "anomalies" in the numerical ordering of the notebooks
can be discerned by a closer look at the musical clefs that Charpentier employed
over the decades. And these anomalies have the potential to reveal reworkings
of certain works — and perhaps even a "revised ordering for the
cahiers within the two series."
Charpentier's treble clefs
The most obvious of these "significant changes in clef formation" involves
the treble clef, which does indeed change over the decades. Charpentier sometimes
wrote it like a capital S, and sometimes like an inverted S
— and he occasionally used a modern treble clef. It is difficult not
to notice the existence of these variants of the treble clef. Still, they
generally have not attracted much attention, so Jane Lowe Gosine's insistence
about the importance of these changes merits closer attention.
First of all, during the first
decade his career, Charpentier used for his
personal archives a treble clef that was more or less an S, traced
by starting at the bottom and curving upward and backward, and then making
a curve to the right. When accompanied by a flat, the clef
sometimes
merges with the flat. I will call all clefs of this type Clef A.
Concurrently with this clef, he used a clef that I shall call Clef B.
During the final months of 1680 he appears to have abandoned Clef A and to
have used Clef B exclusively for his personal musical archives. (At any rate,
that is the picture that emerges from my consultation of the Minkoff facsimiles;
but perhaps more Clef A's will surface in the volumes yet to be published,
which contain primarily the notebooks of the Roman series for 1684-1704.)
This clef is more or less a reversed S; and it too could merge with
a flat, in one smooth curve of the pen.
I say that Charpentier used these clefs "concurrently," because circa 1670
he used both types of clef on folio 1 of cahier 1. That is to say,
he began the recto of that folio with Clef B. Near the bottom of that side,
he forgot himself briefly, traced a Clef A, then wrote a Clef B on top of
it. Having reached the verso, he shifted to Clef A and used it for the rest
of the notebook.
An afterthought of February 2007:
In her recent article on Charpentier's handwriting and what it suggests about
chronology (see my Musing on the subject), Jane Gosine convincingly suggested
that this is a copyist's hand. I wonder if this hand, found only on the
recto of fol. 1, could be the hand of Monsieur Du Bois, the founder and director
of the Guise Music.
March 2008: I checked Du Bois'
handwriting in BnF, ms. fr. 17052: the handwriting of the text set to music on
fol. 1 does not resemble his handwriting. It clearly was someone other than Du
Bois who copied out folio 1 recto of cahier 1
In other words, Charpentier clearly moved with great ease from one type of
script to another. Remember: in his youth he learned the principal handwritings
used by the royal law courts and at the Châtelet— witness the
astonishing difference between his fluid every-day signature and his formal
calligraphed one! Thus it cannot be ruled out that during the 1670s he used
Clef A for rough drafts and for his personal copies, Clef B for performance
partbooks and scores, and the modern clef for presentation copies (which
would have looked more or less like the carefully written opening page of
Judith). Be that as it may, cahier 1, folio 1, warns us not to conclude
automatically that all recopyings using Clef B automatically date
from post-1680. We know that Charpentier could, and did, employ Clef B as
early as circa 1670.
A final comment about Charpentier's treble clefs: although he generally used
either Clef A exclusively, or Clef B exclusively, the contours of that basic
clef shape can vary enormously from one system of staves to the next. On
a given page one treble clef may therefore be decorated with a large curlicue,
the next may be quite rigid and plain, like a printed S, and the clef
in the third system may begin as a circle with a tail that moves upward in
a fluid curve. For this reason I leave all attempts to date a given clef
to experts in handwriting analysis!
Some first steps toward an answer
Now that much of the corpus has been made available through the Minkoff
facsimiles, it is possible to leaf through these books, searching for folios
with treble clefs that differ from the clefs used in the rest of the cahier.
While doing just that, I consulted my notes on the watermarks of each folio,
to determine whether there is a relationship between an clef that stands
out an anomaly and the paper on which that the passage with that clef is
written.
In other words, I set out to answer the following question: Do anomalies
in clefs coincide with the presence of what might be described as an anomaly
in the brand of paper being used? If so, what can this double
anomaly teach us about the chronology of the Charpentier
Mélanges? I discovered some interesting things, and I had a
lot of fun in the process.
To use the evidence that follows, scholars should remember that the typical
cahier was formed of a half dozen or so large sheets that were folded in
half to make folios, each bearing in its center one of the two watermarks
of the full sheet. These folded ("folio'ed") pages nested within one another,
in the manner of this illustration from my Vers une chronologie, which
shows cahier 29 and its outer sheet of Jesuit (similijésuite) paper.
The
circles indicate one of the watermarks on the folded sheet, and the
x's indicate the other.
This means that if he wanted to insert a reworked version of a piece into
a notebook, Charpentier would have to replace the full sheet of paper.
In other words, not only would he recopy the revised work on one half of
the folded sheet, he would also have to recopy the measures on the
other half of the sheet, even if he had not modified that particular
piece. To do otherwise — for example, to cut the original sheet at the
fold line, then replace the revised work with a new half-sheet but retain
the unmodified half-sheet in its original place — would create half-sheets
that could easily fall from an unsewn notebook and go astray. As the evidence
I present below indicates, when Charpentier reworked or recopied all or part
of a composition, he was very careful to insert full sheets into an existing
notebook, even if this meant recopying unmodified systems on the other half
of the sheet. (Indeed, I recall being struck by the extremely small number
of half-sheets when I went through the autograph volumes to record the
watermarks.)
By recopying whole sheets in this way, Charpentier managed to create the
visual effect that his notebooks were "seamless," so to speak. That is to
say, despite the apparent recopyings to be discussed below, each piece flows
smoothly from one page to the next and often from one notebook to the next,
without half-empty staves or half-empty pages in mid-piece. This striving
for seamlessness tells us a great deal about Charpentier the man:. Not only
did he keep a neat and meticulous record of his compositions (just as his
late father had kept neat and meticulous records of the documents he drew
up for clients), he took special care to eliminate blank staves that could
potentially lead a copyist to conclude that he had reached the end of a work.
Some preliminary observations
My approach for this Musing was the following: In this first step toward
solving the treble-clef conundrum, I went through the French and Roman series
of notebooks chronologically (except for Roman notebooks XLI-LXXV, and notebook
"d", which are contained in Volumes 21-28, not yet available to me). This
approach made it possible to determine with reasonable certainty the date
when Charpentier abandoned Clef A in favor of Clef B: this shift took place
circa November 1680.
In addition to this discovery, the evidence presented below permits the following
preliminary observations about clefs, papers and recopying:
— From circa 1670 (although he could conceivably have created cahier
1 and cahier I as early as 1669) until the fall of 1680, Charpentier employed
Clef A for his personal copies of the works he composed.
— By 1681 he had changed to Clef B, and he appears to have used that
clef consistently in the Mélanges until at least the late 1690s.
— In a few instances he used a modern treble clef. This clef
is used for several works dating from his tenure at the Sainte-Chapelle,
and also for replacement opening pages of Judith (1675). It also appears
on the outer sheet of cahier 64, which seems to date from 1693; but this
notebook clearly was modified at a later date (see my "Marc-Antoine Charpentier
compositeur pour les Jésuites, 1687-1698: quelques considérations
programmatiques," Bulletin Charpentier, 2001, pp. 2-3) In short, for
the moment it is not clear whether he used this clef during the 1670s and
1680s, or whether it is an innovation of the late 1690s.
— Wherever Clef B appears in a cahier that predates 1681, that clef
almost always is found on a piece of paper that does not match the
surrounding sheets. In other words, anomalies in clefs tend to be accompanied
by anomalies in the brand of paper. (For a few exceptions to this general
statement, see the detailed evidence below.) In other words, it would seem
that, at a later date, Charpentier recopied and perhaps reworked the music
on those pages.
— Generally these changes involve only one piece of paper, that
is, two folios. In other words, if Charpentier recopied these pages because
he wanted to modify a work, the modification must have involved subtle details
(for example, rapid notes may have replaced half notes in the accompaniment,
etc.) rather than a total reworking or an expansion of those measures.
— Often the piece of paper that is an anomaly is the outside sheet
of the cahier. In other words, is, it represents the first and the final
folios of that particular notebook. Does wear and tear explain this type
of recopying? We cannot of course expect to find evidence that would confirm
this hypothesis, for the mere act of replacing the sheet destroyed the evidence.
— In most cases, Charpentier clearly took great pains to ensure that,
despite these recopied pages, his pieces would flow more or less seamlessly
from folio to folio and from cahier to cahier, as they do where no recopying
took place. That he managed this feat, time after time, suggests that more
often than not these recopyings either replaced damaged sheets or made modest
changes that did not affect the length of the work. In other words, most
recopyings apparently did not bring major additions, deletions or
modifications to the original piece or pieces.
— In a very few instances, he recopied an entire notebook. Yet
he did not deem it appropriate to move this later version from its original
chronological position. (Nor would a notary — nor his father, the master
scribe — remove from its original position in his chronologically organized
files an act or an official document to which later notations had been added.)
This suggests that Charpentier viewed the recopied version as a perfected
version of the original.
One cast-off version of a notebook, cahier "b," made of my paper
"M," has survived, despite the fact that Charpentier replaced it with a revised
version that he numbered cahier LXIII. Cahier LXIII is entirely made of paper
"O," which seems to be the paper supplied to the music master of the
Sainte-Chapelle by the Chambre des Comptes. If so, this reworking would have
been done after 1698. See my "Marc-Antoine Charpentier compositeur pour les
Jésuites, 1687-1698: quelques considérations programmatiques,"
Bulletin Charpentier, 2001, pp. 2-3.
How revealing that Charpentier inserted the new version in the place of the
original notebook, rather than disturb the chronology of his
creativity!
— In several instances the recopied page or pages are on
Jesuit paper (in cahiers 27, 29 and 30, for example).
This suggests that some of these recopyings were done during his tenure with
the Jesuits. Indeed, the present investigation of Charpentier's treble clefs
reveals that Clef B tends to be used on the Jesuit papers that can be found
sporadically in cahiers 5 to 40 and cahiers VI to XXVIII. In other words,
these Jesuit pages may well be recopyings or reworkings
of earlier compositions, carried on in the late 1680s and 1690s.
Putting this preliminary observations to use
Into what broader context can these observations be placed, the better to
apply them to Charpentier's creative output as a whole?
First of all, Jane Gosine's perceptive observations about
Charpentier's different clefs offer us a way to refine our understanding
of the chronology the composer himself wove into the
Mélanges. For example, I am rethinking
some of my hypotheses in Vers une chronologie,
concerning the presence of similijésuite paper in some of the
notebooks of the 1670s and early 1680s. That is to say, the presence of Clef
B on sheets of Jesuit paper, in notebooks containing
works written pre-1687, raises the possibility that during his tenure at
Saint-Louis, mid-1687 to 1698, Charpentier inserted some or all of this paper
into earlier notebooks. We have, however, seen that Charpentier could
and did use both Clef A and Clef B concurrently. In other words, it appears
that only a detailed study of Charpentier's handwriting and musical penmanship
(combined perhaps with precise measurements of the staves on each sheet
of Jesuit paper, according
to the norms laid out by Laurent Guillo in his study of printed music paper,
Revue de Musicologie, 2001) will permit scholars to determine the
approximate date when this Jesuit paper found its way into copies of
Charpentier's early compositions.
What general research tools do the three broad types of treble clef employed
by Charpentier between 1670 and 1704 offer?
Charpentier's treble clefs permit us to recognize possible subsequent recopyings
and possible reworkings of earlier works. They also permit us to propose
the date when some of this recopying may have been done.
Some of the pages with Clef B take the form of brief instrumental pieces
added to an existing work, or small instrumental pieces added to a collection
of miscellaneous instrumental preludes.
Other apparent recopyings involve one or two halves of a folio sheet, raising
the possibility that brief passages may have been corrected or polished
stylistically. Lacking the original sheet. which Charpentier clearly discarded,
it is of course impossible to determine whether only one of the half-sheets
contains reworkings, whether both half-sheets contain reworkings, or whether
there are no reworkings at all and the sheet was recopied for another
reason. Almost as numerous are apparent recopyings that affect the outer
sheet of a notebook and that may have been prompted by nothing more than
the need to replace damaged pages that were fast becoming illegible.
On the other hand, a small group of notebooks appear to have been entirely,
or almost entirely recopied. Some of these probable recopyings appear to
have occurred within a year or two of the creation of the work. (This may
be the case for cahiers 19, 20 and 21, which contain works composed in 1677-78
that do not appear to have been copied out until perhaps as late as 1681,
perhaps owing to Charpentier's busy schedule in the theater and as composer
for the Dauphin.) Other notebooks, by contrast, seem to have been recopied
or reworked more than a decade after their creation. (We shall see that in
each of the latter cases, if there was a reworking, it probably was done
for a revival of the principal work or works in that notebook, at the request
of the person or organization who had commissioned the work many years before.
I am referring specifically to cahier 5, funeral music composed in the early
1670s for Guise deaths, and to cahiers VI-XI, which contain a mass and a
Te Deum that appear to have been written for the Jesuits in the early
1670s.)
Although considerably posterior to the creation of the works, this small
group of entirely recopied notebooks — 10, up to now — seems unlikely
to affect the chronology of Charpentier's creative invention as it was preserved
in the Mélanges. Indeed, recopying and perhaps revising entire
notebooks did not prompt him to move the new version of the notebook from
its original chronological order. This suggests that, for Charpentier, the
recopied/reworked composition was not to a "new" creation but a perfected
version of the original work.
I use the word "perfected" here, in the way it was used in the seventeenth
century and as Cotgrave translated the word into English: something "perfected"
is "consummate, accomplished, finished, done up thoroughly"; it is "excellent,
absolute." It was in this sense that Charpentier's colleague, Etienne
Loulié, used the word "parfait" to describe the "perfect musician"
: he not only knows how to compose, "he knows how to explain what he does."
Now, Charpentier 's contemporaries describe him as "savant," a term
found in Loulié's definition of the "skilled," the "habile"
musician: "The skilled musician is he who is savant in music or who is capable
of judging not only by the sound but even more so on the basis of everything
contained in the science of music." In short, if Charpentier undertook to
revise a work, it was because his own judgment — or the judgment of
the connoisseurs who had heard the original performance or the performers
who had participated in it — had led him to conclude that one passage
lacked a certain je ne sais quoi, a vocal passage was too high or
too low, or an instrumental passage required too many cross-fingerings. And
so, skilled and knowledgeable artisan that he was, if a revival of the work
was planned, the composer might adjust a few measures here and retouch a
few there, then recopy the modified page or pages.
But he did not consider the results to constitute a "new" work. And by placing
the new notebook in the chronological slot occupied by the notebook he was
about to discard, Charpentier was not only linking an improved version of
that work to the patron who had commissioned the work years before, he was
maintaining a link across time to the event for which the original version
had been created. After all, the glory of the patron and the glory of the
event he/she/they sponsored, were the wellsprings of a composer's inspiration.
Thus a revised version of that work partook of the original inspiration and
contributed to the continued glory of the patron (see the Musing on "my"
views of musical patronage).
How likely is it that these possible recopyings should be read as evidence
that Charpentier made major modifications to a given work?
Although the possible recopyings that involve only one or two folded sheets
of paper are unlikely to have involved major revisions of an earlier work
from the 1670s, the same probably cannot be said about those notebooks that
may have been entirely recopied. Let us assume, for the sake of argument,
that these notebooks were in fact reworked while Charpentier was music master
at Saint-Louis. Let us also assume, for the sake of argument, that the
pieces being reworked had been written for the Jesuit fathers in the early
1670s: the Messe à 8 voix (H. 3), the Te Deum à
8 voix (H. 145), and the Exaudiat à 8 voix (H. 162) —
plus, perhaps, some psalms as well as a canticum. And let us also
assume, once more for the sake of argument, that having completed this reworking
of the old works in cahiers VI through XI, he copied the perfected versions
onto the similijésuite paper the Jesuits were supplying
him. What did Charpentier do then? He put these "new" cahiers VI-XI in the
place of the old ones. In other words, for him these compositions dated from
the early 1670s. And of course the new version of these compositions belonged
to the Jesuits, just as the original version belonged to the Jesuits.
That, at any rate, is my understanding of the professional ethics of the
period.
In like manner, let us agree, for the sake of argument, that cahier 5 has
been entirely recopied and contains a reworking of the funeral music composed
in the early 1670s for persons dear to the Guise princesses. And let us assume
that this reworking was done for the funeral of Mlle de Guise in 1688. In
Charpentier's mind, the work dated from the 1670s. In other words, although
Charpentier's style of the late 1680s and 1690s doubtlessly can be discerned
in some of the details he added to these recopied works, these refinements
are superimposed upon the overarching conception of what funeral music for
the House of Guise was all about, and superimposed also upon Charpentier's
creative inspiration during the early 1670s. Is that not why the composer
placed these revised notebooks among his production of 1672-73?
In sum, Charpentier's different clefs can help identify pages that may have
been recopied or even modified. Still, I would argue that these changes affect
neither the chronology of the notebooks nor the position that these notebooks
should occupy within the chronology of Charpentier's creativity. Would it
not be prudent to be guided by the position where Charpentier himself placed
these notebooks, within the long continuum of his artistic production?
From cahier XXX to XXXIX — which is as far as the available Minkoff
facsimiles take me — Clef B rules supreme in the Roman series. In like
manner, from cahier 32 through cahier 74, the French series of notebooks
show exclusively Clef B, plus a few modern treble clefs (for example, in
cahiers 64, 74 and 75).
With 1681, and the beginning of the reign of Clef B, it becomes more difficult
to locate possible recopyings, by referring to the clef design alone. Potential
recopyings may, however, be hiding out there. For example, if the evolution
of Charpentier's handwriting over the decades can be established, it will
be possible to determine whether cahiers 39 and 40,
which are
made entirely of similijésuite paper, represent the version
of 1684, or whether the notebook was reworked in the 1690s. The large ensemble
for which some of the pieces are intended appears to be that of the Jesuits;
and there are allusions to MM. Dun and Beaupuis. If these works were initially
performed for the Jesuits in 1684, why are they in the French
series of notebooks? Was Mlle de Guise the patroness for a service at
Saint-Louis? (This seems quite possible, for during the final years of her
life Her Highness was coming increasingly under the thumb of Père
La Chaize, S.J.) So many questions that neither clefs, nor paper, nor the
current state of research permit us to answer with anything approaching
certitude!
The evidence provided by clef changes and paper changes
My findings about specific notebooks follow, but only those notebooks where
Clef B appears prior to 1681 are discussed. Until the final eight facsimile
volumes become available to me, these findings will, of course, be incomplete.
For each affected cahier, I usually add an indented paragraph in smaller
type, where I present my own tentative reading of the evidence.
1670-1680: Clef A predominates throughout cahiers
1-31 and I-XXIX,
but Clef B can be found on the following folios (and papers):
FRENCH NOTEBOOKS, 1670-1680
Volume 1
cah. 1, fols. 1 recto and verso. This is the folio with the three
clefs reproduced above. All three clefs are on the same sheet of paper, and
there is no evidence that any changes were made to the contents of the other
half of this outer sheet (fol. 8, recto and verso). The entire cahier is
made of my paper "A."
In other words, from 1670 on, it was possible, though not usual, for
Charpentier to use both types of clef in the original copy of a work.
Cah. 2, fols. 9 and "pages" 16-17. These are the outer sheet of paper,
which is a different brand (my paper "a") and appears nowhere else in the
Mélanges. The rest of the cahier is paper "A." In other words,
if Charpentier reworked the outer sheet of this cahier he was very careful
to ensure that fol. 9v would flow to fol. 10r without either blank spaces
or crowding, and that fol. 15v would flow to fol. 16r without a gap or crowding.
In other words, if he modified either the final measures of H. 306
or the beginning of H. 53, these changes did not appreciably shorten or lengthen
the passages originally on fol. 9. On the other hand, he may have recomposed
the final measures of H. 310 (p. 16); and it certainly is possible that he
added all of H. 94.
Cah. 3, fol. 18 and "pages" 25-26. There is no change of paper in
this notebook, which is made entirely of my paper "A." Instead, at some point
— and using Clef B — Charpentier added a simphonie to the
recto and verso of the original cover sheet/title sheet of the Messe pour
les trepassés (H. 2) and copied out another simphonie onto
the blank outer side of the back cover.
I propose that these changes were made in 1688, for the funeral of
Mlle de Guise: in other words, I suspect that the funeral music written for
the death of the princess's "dear nephew" in 1671 was — perhaps
at her own request? — reused for her burial at the church of the Capucines
in 1688.
Cah. 4, "page" 28. This notebook is also entirely made of paper "A."
Using Clef B, onto the blank inner cover of the original Mottet pour les
trepassés (H. 311). Charpentier copied out two instrumental pieces
to be added. (By contrast, he used Clef A for the De Profundis he
glued to fol. 32v.)
I have elsewhere proposed that the De Profundis was added for
the burial of the Dowager of Orléans in 1672, a hypothesis that meshes
with the presence of Clef A. The instrumental works with Clef B would, on
the other hand, have been used for Mlle de Guise's funeral in 1688.
Cah. 5, in its totality. This notebook, which contains the Prose
des morts, is made entirely of my paper "b," which does not appear anywhere
else in the Mélanges. That Clef B is used throughout suggests
that this cahier may have been recopied — and perhaps reworked to some
extent — in the late 1680 or early 1690s.
That Charpentier gave this possibly recopied notebook its old number,
"cahier 5," suggests that he considered the contents to deviate little from
the work he had composed for the Guises in the early 1670s. I suspect that
a careful analysis of his handwriting between 1688 (when Mlle de Guise died)
and 1696 (when Mme de Guise died) would permit scholars to link this revised
version of the prose to either the burial or the bout de l'an
of one of the princesses.
Volume 2
Cah. 9, fols. 1 recto and verso, and "pages" 2-3. These are made of
my paper "c," which appears nowhere else in the Mélanges. On
them are H. 315, "Pour Sainte Anne," which perhaps strayed here at
the time of binding, from its original place in the "gros cahier"
mentioned in the Mémoire of 1727. Charpentier used Clef B for
this piece.
In other words, this piece, this folded piece of paper, probably does
not fit chronologically between the final works in cahier 8 (which were composed
in late 1673), and after a gap created by the apparent loss of most of cahier
9, Judith, composed for September 1675.
Cah. 9, fols. 4-5. The first two folios of Judith are copied
onto a folded sheet of paper whose only legible watermark is an unusually
large raisin. These pages have the modern-style treble clef one encounters
in some of the cahiers of the 1690s (e.g., cahier 64 and cahiers 74 and 75).
Cahier 9 is scarcely a notebook at all: it consists of separate folded sheets
of paper that are not nested but juxtaposed, and that clearly do not date
from the late 1670s.
Most of the original cahier 9 appears to have been lost— the
recopying of the opening pages of Judith apparently being an attempt
to salvage the final pages of cahier 9, rather than evidence of a reworking
and new performance of this early oratorio.
Cah. 13, fols. 52-53. These folios are the central sheet of the notebook.
The paper is Jesuit, and Charpentier used Clef B here.
The rest of the notebook is my paper "D," which he employed in 1676-1677.
Did the Guise musicians re-use the existing Petite pastorale
(fols. 52v-53r) as a mini-opera that required an overture? (I have proposed
that the pastorale was written as the prologue for a "opera" by the
Duke of Orléan's household impresarios.) This would explain why
Charpentier would go to the trouble of inserting a piece of Jesuit paper
in the middle of the notebook, recopying the final page of H. 394 onto it
(fol. 52), then copying out the new overture (fols. 52v-53r), and finally
recopying the title page of the pastoral (fol. 53v).
Volume 3
Cah, 19, throughout. This entire notebook is made of my paper "d,"
as are some of the outer sheets of cahier 20. This is the paper Charpentier
used in 1677 and 1678. (It also appears in cahier XXX, of 1681, where Charpentier
likewise used Clef B).
I have proposed that this notebook was created in November 1677. In
other words, if we suppose that the cahier 19 we have today is a recopying
or reworking of an older notebook, this recopying/reworking almost certainly
occurred after 1677 and before the summer of 1681.
Or did
Charpentier simply delay copying out cahiers 19-21? That
possibility, should not be ruled out for in addition to his obligations
for the Guises, he was composing for the theater and by the spring of 1679
was composing for the Dauphin as well.
Cah. 20, throughout. Some of the outer sheets of this
notebook are my paper "d," and in the middle are two sheets of
similijésuite paper. Clef B is used throughout.
I have proposed that this notebook dates from 1677-78. In view of
the presence of paper "d" in this notebook, if the contents were totally
recopied and/or reworked in any way, it surely took place prior to the summer
of 1681 and doubtlessly was done at the same time as the modifications made
to cahier 19 (and probably to cahiers 21 and 22 as well).
Cah. 21, throughout, except for the central pages, fols. 75-80. On
fols. 75-80 Clef A was used: these central pages are made of my paper "E,"
which dates from 1677-79, at the latest. (This same paper also was used for
cahiers 15-18 and XXIII.) The three outside sheets — the ones with Clef
B — are made of my paper "G," which Charpentier used from 1680 to 1682.
I have proposed that the works in this notebook date from 1678. What
do the papers tell us about a possible recopying or reworking of these pieces?
The central sheets on paper "E" suggest that at some point between 1680 and
1682, Charpentier recopied the outer three sheets of this notebook and tucked
into them three folded sheets bearing music he had copied out a few years
earlier, probably in 1678. Was he rewriting/revising those outer sheets?
Was he repairing damage? Or was he just then getting caught
up with a backlog of pieces to copy into his archives?
Cah. 22, throughout.
February 2007: I thank Jane Gosine for pointing
out that I overlooked several folios in the middle of this notebook that had not
been recopied: I therefore have revised this paragraph and show the misstatement
as either struck-out words or in green print:
This notebook is made of several papers, among
them "G" and E." Clef A is found the folios made of paper
"E," and Clef B on the sheets of paper "G." Charpentier used paper "E" for works written between 1677
and 1680.
The papers suggest that this notebook was copied out in 1680 at the
very latest. Since the pieces in cahiers 19-22 flow quite seamlessly from
folio to folio and from notebook to notebook, the presence of paper "E" in
the final notebook permits us to deduce the approximate date when Charpentier
finished recopying cahiers 19-22. This apparent "recopying" of cahier 22
appears to have taken place in late 1679 or early 1680 — that is, only
a few months after he had composed the works in cahier 22. In other words,
this notebook does not appear to have been recopied after all! Early
1680 was, of course, the time when he was shifting away from routine use
of Clef A and was beginning to use Clef B for his personal musical archives.
After November of that year, Clef A disappears from the Mélanges
(unless it resurfaces in one of the forthcoming Minkoff facsimiles)
Volume 4
Cah. 25, fols. 2-3. These two folded sheets with Clef B are a brownish paper
with a raisin and an illegible countermark. (Indeed, the watermarks in this
entire notebook were difficult to decipher: as a result, my notes do not
permit me link recto and verso of a given sheet of paper, in the manner of
the above drawing from my book.)
Cah. 26, fols. 22-23. These folios with Clef B are the folded center
sheet of the notebook. The watermarks were illegible, but seem to differ
from those of the surrounding paper "g."
In other words, Charpentier seems to have tucked this piece of paper
into the middle of an existing notebook that contains works written for
performance at the Abbaye-aux-Bois in early 1680. If he subsequently modified
the instrumental ritournelles, the changes were modest indeed, for the new
central sheet blends seamlessly with the pages that surround it.
Cah. 27, fol. 41 and "pages" 52-53. These are a sheet of
Jesuit paper that forms the outer sheet of the notebook.
(Neither side of fol. 41 shows a treble clef, but the quill used there is
clearly the same as the one that traced pp. 52-53.) The rest of the notebook
— where Clef A was used — is made of my paper "F," which also appears
in cahiers 28 and XXXIII. (The latter notebook contains works written in
late 1681 or early 1682.)
With the exception of the outer sheet, the cahier clearly dates from
early 1680, for it contains more of the tenebrae music written for
the Abbaye-aux-Bois. The similijésuite paper cannot be dated
with certainty, for it is too omnipresent over the decades. Was this outer
sheet replaced — perhaps as late as the 1690s — because it had
been damaged?
Cah. 28, fols. 54 and 66. These folios are the two halves of the outer
sheet of paper of the notebook and that apparently does not appear elsewhere
in the Mélanges. The rest of the notebook is made of the same
paper "F" as cahier 27.
As with cahier 27, it is the outer sheet of the notebook that has
been recopied — perhaps in order to replace a damaged sheet, rather
than with the goal of modifying these particular measures of the music for
the Abbaye-aux-Bois.
Cah. 29, fol. 67 and "pages" 86-87. These pages with Clef B are the
two halves of a piece of similijésuite paper that serves as
the outer sheet of the notebook. (There is no treble clef on pp. 86-87.)
The rest of the notebook (where Clef A is used) is made of my paper "G,"
which appears in both series of notebooks between 1678 and 1682.
See my remarks about cahiers 27 and 28.
Cah. 30, fol. 88 and "pages" 103-104. Here too the outer sheet of
paper, a piece of Jesuit paper, bears Clef B. (Neither
side of fol. 88 shows a treble clef, but pp. 103-104 do.) The rest of the
notebook is made of my paper "G," and Clef A is used passim.
See my comments about cahiers 27, 28 and 29.
Cah. 31 and 32, fols. 109v-138. On the first folios of cahier 31,
Charpentier used Clef A; but when he reached the verso side of fol. 109,
he changed to Clef B and used it for the remaining pages of this
volume. In other words, this is the point at which
he changed his everyday manner of writing a treble clef. The
change can be dated, for it starts with the first page of H. 326, written
to celebrate the Dauphin's recovery from malaria in late
1680. Both notebooks are made entirely of my paper "G," so this change
of clef does not coincide with a change of paper.
ROMAN NOTEBOOKS, 1670-1680
Volume 15
Cah. VI-XI, throughout. All six notebooks are made entirely of
Jesuit paper, and Clef B is used throughout.
Most of the works in these notebooks either correspond to Jesuit
celebrations held in early 1672 or require an ensemble of the type described
as being hired by the Reverend Fathers. It therefore appears possible that,
during his tenure at Saint-Louis, Charpentier reworked earlier Jesuit
commissions.
Volume 16
Cah. XVII, fol. 70v. On the verso of this existing sheet of paper,
Charpentier added a brief instrumental piece and used a Clef B to do so.
Volume 17
Cah. XVIII, fol. 12v, all the way to Cah. XIX, fol. 29. On the verso
of the final folio of cahier XVIII, part way through his copy of
Circé (first performed in March 1675), Charpentier began to
use Clef B. He continued to do so all the way to the end of cahier XIX. Save
for this final sheet, Clef A is used throughout cahier XVIII, which is made
entirely of my paper "F" and does not appear to have been recopied. Cahier
XIX is made of my paper "3," which appears nowhere else in the
Mélanges
Charpentier clearly did not recopy the outer sheet of cahier
XVIII, so there must be another explanation for the unexpected appearance
of Clef B on fol. 12v. However, since cahier XX is missing, no conclusions
can be drawn concerning this shift from one clef to another.
Cah. XXIII and XXIV, throughout. These two notebooks are made a mixture
of papers, and in the instrumental music that Charpentier copied into these
two notebooks, Clef A often rubs shoulders with Clef B.
These two notebooks (which seem to be mis-numbered, for cahier XXIV
contains preludes that clearly predate the preludes in cahier XXIII). Charpentier
appears to have added new instrumental pieces to these notebooks well into
the 1680s.
Volume 18
Cah. XXIX, fols. 1-3 and 13-18. Although Clef B appears on the outer
sheets of this notebook, and Clef A on the inner folios, these clef changes
do not coincide with shifts from one of paper to another (my papers
"7" and "G").
This notebook contains Les Fous divertissants of
November 1680. In other words, if Charpentier
shifts from one clef to another, it probably is because he
is forcing himself to abandon Clef A in favor of Clef B, a shift that, as
we see above for cahiers 31 and 31, occurred in
late 1680.
I will be pleased to aid scholars
by supplying a folio by folio description
of the papers in any cahier;
just send me an
e-mail!
|
