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FRANCOIS COUPERIN

10th November 1668 --- 11th September 1733

Couperin was a french composer, and was the most famous member of a family of musicians which may be traced from the generation born
in 1626, to the death of Mlle Celeste Couperin, organist at St. Gervais, 1850. Francois Couperin (dubbed "Le Grand") is the chief of the many
French clavecinists whose ranks include a greater composer, Rameau.

The clavecin works and chamber-music  of Couperin have earned the reward of an art which,  undertaking to satisfy natural desires,  and sets
itself the narrowest  possible limits and within these  limits finishes its work to the utmost perfection.   The natural desires of which Couperin
satisfies are those for melody and beautiful playing,  the limits he sets himself  are those of a repeating four-bar and eight-bar tunes,  and the
perfection of the music is translated  to sight by the exquisite engraving of the first edition of  his four book of Pieces de Clavecin of which the
proof-reading of the first book occupied him for a whiole year.

Bach's admiration for Couperin is shown in his frequent use of the  cross-rhythmed French Courante which occurs as often in his  suites as the
easier Italian kinds. His rondo-form is Couperin's and some of Couperin's rondos still exist in Bach's hand-writing, sometimes to the confusion
of editors.

Couperin's chamber-music is written for combinations of soft instruments,  (e.g  gamba instead of violoncellos) with harpsicord and it borrows
freely from the Pieces de Clavecin or vice-verse. The fantastic titles of most of his pieces represent a prevailing fashion view among the French
court composers and could probably be  interpreted by infinite research as a mass compliment and persiflage aimed at and around personages
at the royal court.

Couperin's treatise L'art de toucher le clavecin is disappointing. The Pieces de Clavecin  in spite of their frequent references Voyez ma methode
page 76,  will shed more light on  the method used than the method sheds  on them.   The career of Couperin  was an uneventful affair of court
appointments,  he was 25 when he became organist du roi in 1693,  and in 1717 he was  Ordinaire de la musique de la  chambre du roi until his
death in 1733.

Brahms co-operated  euthusiastically with Chrysander  in a careful edition of all four books of the Pieces de Clavecin,  with all the ornaments as
Couperin, who left no detail to descretion to chance, wrote them. Its indispensable to musicians who wish to understand the Harpsichord music
of Bach's age.

Copyright 1953 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated on 2024
By Steven Ritchie

And now for the Music

NEW (4265)"Soer Monique Rondeau". Sequenced by Steven Ritchie.

(3838)"Allemande in D Minor". Sequenced by Malcolm Dale.

(3837)"Les Moissonneurs, "The Reapers". Sequenced by Tony Keane.

(3836)"Le Rossignol en amour, "The Nightingale in love". Sequenced by Makoyan.

Thanks to Lawrence Hughes, donating & sequencing music below, email(lhughes (@) infoweapons com)

(2561)"Mysterious Barricades". Donated & Sequenced by Lawrence Hughes

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