Chaconne L'Inconnue (13/14) "Livre de Suittes pour le clavecin" (attr. Louis Marchand)

Mario MARTINOLI, harpsichord

Instrument: Keith Hill, Manchester, Michigan, USA 2004, copy of Pascal Taskin 1769 (Raymond Russell Collection, Edinburgh)

Recording: 27-28 November 2005, Pieve di San Pietro a Presciano (Arezzo, Italy)

Publication date: 2007 for Olive Music (http://www.o-livemusic.com)

Purchase CD/tracks at
http://www.amazon.fr/Louis-Marchand-Livre-pi%C3%A8ces-clavecin/dp/B002413ZB4




This work belongs to a mid-18th century manuscript book discovered in 2003 in a private French music collection. The manuscript has been inherited by the present owners in 1976 from the dissolved Forestieri-Steiner fund and constitutes an additional hand-written source of 18th century French harpsichord music. The book includes copies of well known music collections of early 18th century, namely by François Couperin, Jean-Phlippe Rameau, Jean-Baptiste Forqueray, Louis-Claude Daquin, Louis Marchand and other minor composers active in Paris around 1740, such as de Bury and Royer.

An early assessment of the Forestieri-Steiner manuscript suggested that the whole book should have been assembled for personal use by a single musician, probably a close friend, a colleague or a pupil of Louis Marchand. This assessment is supported by the presence of unpublished works to be undoubtedly attributed to Louis Marchand and his school. The manuscript includes a series of nineteen pieces not known from other sources or registered in public or private accessible archives and collections. These nineteen compositions are split in two different collections contained in the manuscript, which are at the center of the present recording: the "Livre de Suittes pour le clavecin composè par Monsieur de Charman(t) cordelier, et arrangè par Renard, à Paris, 1754" and the "Recueil des Airs différentes pour le clavessin composèes par plusieurs auteurs, collectées par P. Renard, avec les parties en concert, et la basse, à Paris, [illegible date]"

Louis Marchand is today known as one of the most famous and skilled organists of the beginning of the 18th century. His fame was spread well outside the French borders, and accompanied him during the four years of travel throughout Germany he was forced to undertake in 1713 after a dramatic confrontation with King Louis XIV during a public musical event in Paris [Marpurg, 1754]. His published harpsichord compositions consist of two short books published by Ballard respectively in 1699 and 1703 and the air La Venitienne, a single piece part of a collection of Pièces choisis pour le clavecin also published by Ballard in 1707. The rest of his remaining output is made up of a limited number of organ pieces, all composed before 1710. No other keyboard music by Marchand survives, including the largest part of the five organ books. Claims of several contemporary sources [Titon du Tillet, 1732] [La Borde, 1780], however, report that he did not stop being active as a composer over the last thirty years of his life.

Despite his widespread fame as a celebrated organist, the harpsichord did not play a secondary role in Marchands musical interests. Contemporary chronicles report that he was an excellent teacher, an outstanding performer and a brilliant improviser at the harpsichord. In addition, the variety of keyboard instruments he kept at home during the last years of his life is surprisingly long. The inventory made by his wife after his death includes, among other instruments, three harpsichords and seven spinets. This number must be regarded to as very large, when considering for example the legacy of François Couperin, consisting of just one harpsichord, three spinets and a cabinet dorgue [Lescat, 2003]. In this context, it shall not therefore be considered surprising that other works by Marchand are finally being rediscovered today.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• louis marchand
• chaconne
• l'inconnue
• bach
• couperin
• rameau
• cembalo
• harpsichord
• clavecin
• mario martinoli
• olive music
• classical music
• baroque