Luogo e data di registrazione		Salons Hoche, Paris (Francia) - ottobre 1975
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Andreas Holschneider / Heinz Wildhagen
	Prima Edizione LP		Archiv - 2533 325 - (1 lp) - durata 55' 44" - (p) 1976 - Analogico
	Edizione "Collectio" CD		Archiv - 437 084-2 - (1 cd) - durata 55' 44" - (c) 1986 - ADD
	Note		-

LOUIS COUPERIN: SUITES FOR HARPSICHORD For the general public, “Couperin” still means only “François-le-Grand”. But the situation is changing, and more and more connoisseurs are coming to realize that theCouperin who served the Sun King at the dawn of his reign was very nearly as great and certainly as original as the more famous one who served at the sunset of the Grand Siécle. The lifetime of Louis was tragically short - he died in 1661, in his mid-thirties - and none of his music was ever published until modern times. All his mature compositions were written in the span of a single troubled decade from the revolt of the Fronde to the marriage of the monarch. During that time he was active as a treble viol player in Lully ballets, as organist of St. Gervais, and as harpsichordist not only to the King but also to the celebrated diplomat Abel Servien, at whose magnificent palace at Meudon Couperin must often have been resident. The castle was destroyed in 1804, and all that remains today are the splendid terraces - and some pink marble columns now admired by every passing Paris tourist as part of Napoleon’s Arc du Carrousel! Probably the greater part of Louis Couperin’s music has also been destroyed over the ages. He never married, and when he died, he left, along with little else than a small spinet, a large collection of autograph music, divided between his two brothers, who found the inheritance “presque plus onéreuse que proffitable”. Only two important sources for his harpsichord music have survived: the Bauyn manuscript in Paris and the Parville manuscript in Berkeley, California. Neither is autograph, and although they were based on a common source (not autograph either), there are many variants - especially in ornamentation, which is more abundant in Parville. Neither source conveys more than a vague impression of the composer’s intentions for forming his pieces into suites. I have thus chosen my own arrangement, based on the common practice of the time. I have included a large proportion of chaconnes en rondeau, for it was in this form that Couperin wrote much of his best dance music. Some listeners will know the F major chaconne as a work of Chambonnières. It is indeed attributed to him in the Bauyn manuscript. However, in all other sources it is anonymous, and it was not included in either of Chambonnières’s published books. I feel strongly, on the basis of both quality and style, that it is more likely by Couperin. La Piémontaise is not a dance known to me; Laborde mentions a 17th-century singer given this name, but she would seem to have been too young to be the one Couperin had in mind. In any case, it is not a very feminine piece! I begin each suite with a beautiful example of those unmeasured preludes which are justly his most celebrated works. The longest, in A minor, “a l’imitation de Mr. Froberger”, reveals at once two of the principle sources of this style: the Italian toccata and the French tombeau (or plainte, or allemande grave). The opening is a carefully notated version of how one might improvise the arpeggiation of the opening chord of an Italian toccata, as described already by Frescobaldi. It is, in fact, a quotation of the opening of Froberger’s Italianate toccata in the same key. Almost immediately thereafter follows an even more exact quote from Froberger’s “Plainte faite à Londres pour passer la Mélancholie, laquelle se joue lentement avec discrétion”, written probably in 1652 after Froberger had been robbed “theils zu Wasser, theils zu Land”, and shortly before his visit to Paris, where he befriended Couperin. The rest of the piece may or may not conceal references to other pieces of Froberger now lost; it reveals, in any case, the strong stylistic affinity of the two masters, who must have learned much from each other. Although Couperin’s unmeasured preludes are at once the first and the finest ever written for the harpsichord, they were preceded, and probably much influenced by, the improvisatory tuning preludes of the French lutenists. With the advent of the nouveau ton (D minor instead of quartal tuning) around 1630-50, players of Baroque lute and theorbo began to write down brief improvisatory preludes, often beginning and ending with only open strings. They used slurs to give a vague indication of duration and harmonic movement, and would omit the usual symbols for rhythm altogether. Couperin adapted this notation to the keyboard by using rhythmless semibreves (whole notes) as the unit and employing slurs not only for harmonic duration but also for melodic groupings. The result is a puzzling picture which must have caused some confusion even to 17th-century players. Lebegue (1677) spoke in his preface of the “grande difficulté” of notating these rhythmically free pieces, and d’Anglebert altered the notation of three of his when he published them (1689), changing semibreves to quavers (eighth notes) or semiquavers (sixteenth notes) when he wanted to indicate brief melodic as opposed to harmonic ideas. Finally, François Couperin abandoned his uncle’s notation entirely, explaining that “j’ai mesure ces Préludes”, to make them easier to teach and to learn, but that “il y a cependant un goût d’usage qu’il faut suivre”. Preludes, even if notated as measured, must still be played freely and music must have its prose as well as its verse. Yet even the “prose” of François no longer aspires to the freedom, abandon and intensity of his uncle’s preludes. Until quite recently, harpsichordists were stymied by the style and especially the notation of Louis Couperin’s preludes, and it was perhaps largely for this reason that the music of this great composer was neglected by them. In 1956, I wrote a thesis on unmeasured preludes, and at that time I was the only harpsichordist performing such music. It gives me great pleasure to share in what is now a general and widespread revival of interest in the works of a composer who, together with his friend Froberger, must be regarded as the finest and most original keyboard composer of his day. Alan Curtis The Harpsichord The instrument used for this recording is a two-manual harpsichord of the second half of the 17th century, graciously lent by its owner, Monsieur Yannick Guillou, Paris. It has the usual push-pull coupler, with two unisons and an octave. The compass, which is original, is four octaves and a fourth, with GG short octave and one split key (apparent compass B-c"', with low B sounding G, C sharp A, and the front half of the split E flat tuned either B or B flat). In the gilt rose, the initials “D. F.”, of a maker not yet identified, appear on each side of a winged angel playing a lyre. In the second edition (1974) of Donald Boalch’s Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord, this instrument is listed not only under “F., D.” but also, with a slightly varying description, under “E., D.”, with the remark that the E could be read as a F. The maker was probably French, to judge from the bracing, the scaling (shorter than the Flemish), the walnut wrest-plank, and the staggered wrest-pins. The exterior decoration, of excellent quality, would also appear to be French: colorful grotesqueries on a black ground; with Orpheus playing a pardessus de viole and, inside a circular garland, a group of instrumentalists, singers and conductor, dressed in costumes of the later Louis XIV period, gathered around a table under a chandelier. There are also some Flemish elements, however, in the general dimensions, the bentside curve, and the interior decoration - especially the gilt rose, the painted soundboard, and the landscape on the lid, almost certainly by a Flemish painter. The instrument has recently been restored as nearly as possible to its original condition by Johannes Carda of Varennes Jarcy. For this recording we have used the normal meantone tuning of the era (all major thirds are pure), as recommended and described by, among others, Jean Denis, Traité de l'accord de l'espinette (1643 and 1650, facsimile reprint edited by A. Curtis, Da Capo Press, New York, 1969). A small amount of re-tuning is necessary for certain suites - for instance, our D major pieces require A sharp instead of B flats - but Louis Couperin basically never calls for enharmonics. In our long G minor Passacaille he does use both E flats and D sharps, but the latter occur only three times, and always as a dissonance. Alan Curtis