Luogo e data di registrazione		Gustav Leonhardt's House, Amsterdam (Holland) - 1/2 febbraio 1981
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Recording Supervision		Dr. Thomas Gallia | Paul Dery
	Engineer		Sonart, Milano
	Prima Edizione LP		Harmonia Mundi (EMI Electrola) | 1C 065-99 922 | 1 LP - durata 50' 46" | (p) 1981
	Edizione CD		Deutsche Harmonia Mundi | LC 0761 | 74321 32328 2 | 1 CD - durata 76' 04" | (c) 1995 | ADD
	Cover Art		Garton Orme am Spinett. Gemälde von Thomas Hill (1661-1724). Mit freundlicher Genehmigung von: Holburne of Menstrie Museum (University of Bath).
	Note		-

As the French Revolution began in July of 1789 with the storming of the Bastille, armand-Louis Couperin was no longer alive. On February 1st of the same year the 62-year-old musician had been trampled to death by a shying horse in the streets of Paris. Claude Bénigne Balbastre, on the other hand, survived the revolution and died in 1799 "in sorrow and misery". He had been robbed of his posts as organist, harpsichord teacher, soloist of the "Concerts spirituels" and organ expert, and of his considerable fortune. Nor did the gesture of performing his own arrangements of the "Marseillaise" and other revolutionary songs on the organ of Notre Dame to demonstrate his revolutionary sympathies much improve his fate. In the fifthy years prior to the political upheavel the strict conventions of French music began to give way under foreign influence. The performance of Pergolesi's "Serva Padrona" in 1752 initiated the spread of the Italian opera buffa, and as early as 1751 the works of Stamitz and other representatives of the new style which had originated at the Palatinate residence in Mannheim were performed at the "Concert spiritual", the most important public concert in Paris. In 1768 a pianoforte, probably from England, was heard for the first time in the "Concert spirituel". And during the next fifty years this new instrument slowly supplanted the harpsichord as the leading keyboard instrument. These new developments left their mark upon the guild of organists and harpsichordists, two of whose distinguished members were Balbastre und armand-Louis Couperin, according to contemporary sources. This is evident in the pieces recorded here, although they were composed in the 750s. These words represent an intense effort to come to grips with the French harpsichord tradition, which reached its zenith in the works of François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau composed in the first half of the century. A comparison of the Pièces de Clavecin recorded here with those of the previous generation shows that the musical substance has not changed: artfully stylized dance movements and concise musical characterizations are contrasted and joined together in ever new ways. On the other hand, the musical language of Armand-Louis Couperin and Balbastre has become simpler and allows the more direct expression of effects. A deliberately cultivated variety of styles or "tastes" ("variété des goûts") has taken the place of the relatively unified style of the earlier works. The ideal which François Couperin expressed in the words "I am much more fond of that which moves me than of that which surprises me" was abandoned by the harpsichordists of the second half-century in favor of a more extroverted attitude. These innovations are described thus by a contemporary: "The pieces are written in a felicitous and diversified manner and are very pleasant to listen to. They extract from the instrument all the charm it has to give, with none of those unnecessary technical difficulties which afford no enjoyment." ("Mercure de France" 1759, on the occasion of the publication of Balbastre's Pièces de Clavecin.) Kurt Deggeller