Luogo e data di registrazione		Monnonitenkirche, Haarlem (Olanda) - 15-16 settembre 1975
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Gerd Berg / Johann-Nikolaus Matthes
	Prima Edizione LP		EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30 127 - (1 lp) - durata 48' 29" - (p) 1976 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - 8 26495 2 - (1 cd) - durata 48' 29" - (c) 2000 - ADD
	Note		-

LE CLAVECIN SOUS LOUIS XV French harpsichord music of th late Rococo. French harpsichord music is commonly assumed to have enjoyed its finest flowering during the grand siècle of Louis XIV. Yet the best compositions for clavecin by both François Couperin and Rameau appeared only after the death of the Sun King in 1715. Moreover, itwas during the reign (1723-1774) of his great-grandson, Louis XV, that the clavecin finally reached the height of its popularity, a zenith marked both by the production of vast numbers of superb five-octave, double-manual harpsichords and by the composition of much brilliant, tender and supremely idiomatic music to be played on them. But this flowering faded fast in the course of the 1750s, and Rameau himself lived to witness a glorious but melancholy “crépuscule du clavecin”. The 1750s was a period of great change in French art. Much of what is commonly associated with the later style Louis XVI, such as Soufflot’s Pantheon, for example, was actually conceived during this decade. Not only did the Guerre des Bouffons bring fresh triumphs of Italian over French style, but there was another, perhaps more devastating musical invasion from the East. Stamitz came to Paris, and the style associated with the Mannheim Court became the vogue. In harpsichord music it was especially Schobert who, according to his propagandizing countryman Baron Grimm, “completely destroyed the reputation of (Armand-Louis) Couperin, of Duphly, of Balbastre”. Rameau, however, had a different viewpoint. He remarked to Balbastre, that “Music is going to wrack and ruin; people are changing style at every instant". Clearly he looked upon his friend and fellow Dijonnais as an upholder of the French tradition forthe future - as well he might, when he heard such a piece as La d’Héricourt. When Balbastre first heard Taskin play an English piano at the Tuileries, he exhorted that “this newcomer shall never dethrone the majestic harpsichord”. But alas, not long afterwards Balbastre too succumbed, ate his words, and modernized his style, adapting it to the pianoforte. Mercifully, Rameau was by this time dead. And fortunately for harpsichordists today, Balbastre, Armand-Louis Couperin, and Duphly had meantime published their Pièces de clavecin - music of a strongly French character even when not traditional, and among the very last works ever to be truly idiomatically conceived for the instrument. The present recording gives a sampling of the best music by two of the three great clavecinistes of the era (the third, Duphly, will be represented on a future release). While Duphly seems to have made his living entirely as a harpsichord teacher and to have died in obscure poverty, Balbastre and Armand-Louis Couperin remained famous as organists (the former also as a pianist) even after the harpsichord declined in public favor. The latter two seem also to have been friends rather than rivals, and Balbastre introduced Dr. Charles Burney to Couperin on June 18, 1770. The great English music historian "...was glad to see two eminent men of the same profession so candid and friendly together". The two pursued similar careers as organists and harpsichord teachers, yet their music is as different as their characters must have been. Balbastre, 15th of the 17 children of a Dijon organist, was a rather flampoyant society idol, with high-born pupils as diverse as Marie-Antoinette and Thomas Jefferson’s daughter. Couperin, only son of Nicolas and grandson of François the elder (the brother of Louis and uncle of the famous François) was a native Parisian and apparently a quiet, family man. Balbastre honored Madame De Caze with the dedication of his first book as well as the title of the first piece it contains. Anne-Nicolas-Robert De Caze de Juvincourt, know as "le beau danseur" (1718 - 1762) inherited enormous wealth, but ended in bankruptcy. Also called "le fou tulipier", he once paid 30.000 livres for a single bulb. He recovered some of his losses through his second marriage in 1747 to Susanne-Félix Lescarmotier, heiress as well as harpsichordist, whose reputation for promiscuity was later equalled by that of her sons. Duphly named a piece for her in his Second Livre (1748), as he did also for the abbé d’Héricourt. Probably both were studying with Duphly at that time, but switched to Balbastre after his arrival in Paris Oct. 16 1750. Little is known about Jacques-Dominique de Barberie, marquis de Courteil (or Courteilles) (1697 to 1768), a forgotten statesman, financier, acquaintance of Casanova, and sometime ambassador to Switzerland. On the other hand, Charles-Antoine de Guerin, a page of Louis XV and self-styled Marquis de Lugeac, while a mere upstart in his day, was immortalized through  is connexion with Algarotti in a scandalous poem by Voltaire, sent to Frederick the Great in 1740:     Grand roi, ie vous l’avais predit     Que Berlin deviendrait Athène     Pour les plaisirs et pour l’esprit;     La prophétie etait certaine.     Mais quand, chez le gros Valori,     Je vois le tendre Algarotti     Presser d’une vive embrassade     Le beau Lugeac, son ieune ami,     Je crois voir Socrate affermi     Sur la croupe d’Alcibiade... The dedications of Couperin’s pièces reveal quite a different character and ambiance than Balbastre’s. Instead of complimenting the wealthiest patrons of society, Couperin pays homage to a humbler folk: his fellow musicians. Jean Dubreuil (ca. 1710-1775) published a Manuel harmonique in 1767 and a collection of songs in 1769. André Cheron (1695-1766), Campra's godson and a pupil of Bernier, was in turn the teacher of Leclair and is said to have written the basses for that composer’s earliest published violin sonatas. He vvas harpsichordist at the Opera from 1734 and principal conductor from 1750. The striking contrast between the incredibly dissonant, profoundly mournful L’Affligée and the irrepressibly bumptuous good-nature of L’Enjouée suggests a pair of portraits, again of friends rather than patrons. François-Paul Roualle de Boisgelou (1697-1764) was a musical theorist, but the piece bearing his name is perhaps rather a tribute to his son, Paul-Louis, a child prodigy on the violin, and a composer. L’Arlequine evokes the commedia dell’arte associations of the composer Jean Adam, whose ballets and symphonies, arranged for harpsichord, survive in several 18th-century collections. It was this Adam who revised and re-wrote Rameau's Zoroastre for Dresden in an Italian translation by Casanova, described in the famous Mémoires. In Couperin’s second publication, more than a decade later, we meet with a typical phenomenon of the period of transition from harpsichord to piano: the accompanied keyboard sonata. The reasons why this peculiar form of chamber music flourished at this time are almost as complicated as the genre itself. But surely it had something to do whith vvanting to make solo keyboard music more “expressive” and capable of subtle dynamic nuance. Although the keyboard often dominates and the “accompanying” instruments must indeed recede into the background, the opposite is often also the case, and a performance without the “ad libitum” part or parts is usually unsatisfactory. In Couperin’s collection any vestige of the suite is gone, and the retained term pièces de clavecin is but a hollovv homage to the past. These works are sonatas in the modern international tradition, often ending with a playful minuet, as was the fashion in the 1760s. But the Andante of Sonate III is permeated still with a peculiarly French melancholy and a subtle and sensitive feeling for the colors and expressive qualities not only of the violin but also of the obsolescent clavecin. Alan Curtis
EMI Electrola "Reflexe"