By Jeffrey Bossin
Cheap Imitation or The
Real Thing?
For
many decades carillonneurs have entertained their audiences with
performances
of the charming Gigue in C major No. 96 from the carillon book of
Joannes de
Gruytters. The work came to light with the discovery of the book at the
beginning of the 20th century and was popularized by the modern
editions of
Leen 't Hart and Jo Haazen, who, as director of the Nederlandse
Beiaardschool
and the Koninklijke Beiaardschool "Jef Denyn" respectively, will have
recommended and taught this piece to many of their students. Yet in all
this
time noone seems to have questioned De Gruytters' attribution of it to
(François) Couperin, known because of his 27 suites of
harpsichord pieces
printed in Paris between 1713 and 1730 and his position as
harpsichordist at
the French court as "Le Grand". It doesn't seem unreasonable to
assume that such a prolific composer of keyboard music might have
written the
piece in the De Gruytters book as well, especially since De Gruytters
did
actually arrange five of Couperin's genuine works: Réveil-Matin from the fourth suite for the automatic
of the
Antwerp cathedral and La Bourbonnoise from the first, La Babet
from the second, Les Vendangeuses from
the fifth, and Les Bergeries from
the sixth suites for his carillon book.[i]
Yet De Gruytters gigue No. 96 is not to be found anywhere among
François
Couperin's works.[ii] Why
then
did De Gruytters attribute it to him?
He must have acquired a copy with the
composer's name on it. Such manuscripts were however notorious for
their
errors: as Handel complained in the preface of his first set of
harpsichord
suites printed in London in 1720: "I have been obliged to publish Some
of
the following lessons because surreptitious and, uncorrect copies of
them had
got abroad."[iii] Little known composers eager to sell
their music were sometimes more than willing to pawn them off as the
work of
the famous in order to convince a musician that he was buying a high
quality
product or a publisher that he would make a handsome profit from the
sales. The
so-called Jena Symphony,
a German
manuscript with the name of Beethoven on it, was considered a
previously
unknown work of the master's until a copy attributed to Friedrich Witt
surfaced. That decided the matter for, though anyone could write
Beethoven on a
piece, the only reason for such a minor musician as Witt to put his
name to it
was that he actually composed it.
A couple of years ago a German claimed to
have found a number of Joseph Haydn's missing piano sonatas which until
then
had only been known in the form of the beginning measures of each piece
included in the composer's own list of his works. In spite of the fact
that the
watermarks and paper of the originals could not be examined because
only
fotocopies were available, the shape of the eighth notes corresponded
to those
in 19th-century Italian manuscripts rather than 18th-century Austrian
ones, and
the handwriting used for the music was identical to that used to write
the
catalogue number supposedly added when the manuscript was said to have
been
acquired by a library, the internationally renowned Haydn scholar and
author of
an extensive and detailled five-volume biography of the composer, H.C.
Robbins
Landon, immediatedly proclaimed the pieces to be genuine. His colleague
Paul
Badura-Skoda, pianist and specialist on the music of the Viennese
classical period,
accepted Robbins Landon's pronouncement with such enthusiasm that he
quickly
made a recording of the newly discovered works. Only when the German
refused to
hand over the original manuscripts for closer examination, claiming
these were
in the attic of an old woman whose frail state of health did not permit
any
intrusions, did the two scholars finally realize they had been duped:
the
German had simply used the beginning measures of each piece to forge
clever
imitations of Haydn sonatas. As is usually the case, rather than
questioning
information, people willingly adopt it.
De Gruytters, although as a keyboard
player and violinist at Antwerp Cathedral well acquainted with
Couperin's style
of composition and able to compare it with a wide range of music,
accepted the
attribution of the C major Gigue to Couperin from what could only have
been a
dubious source, Jo Haazen and Leen 't Hart adopted it from De
Gruytters, and
other carillonneurs in turn from them. Judging from current concert
programs,
most people have still not thought to look for the original version of
the
piece in Couperin's keyboard music even though it has been accessible
in
several editions since 1862 and an edition of his complete works
was
published in 1932 and 1933. So if not Couperin, who then actually did
write
Gigue No. 96?
The Couperin Clan
Could it have been one of the other numerous members of the Couperin family such as Louis Couperin (1626-1661), his two brothers Charles (1638-1679) and François (1630- sometime after 1708, uncle of François "Le Grand"), the latters' son Nicolas (1680-1748), Marie-Madeleine (1690-1742), daughter of François "Le Grand", or Nicolas' son Armand-Louis (1727-1789), all organists? François was also a harpsichord teacher, Charles' daughter Marguerite-Louise (1676 or 1679-1728) a harpsichordist and singer, Armand-Louis a harpsichordist as well, and Marguerite-Antoinette (1705- about 1778) even succeeded her father François "Le Grand" as harpsichordist at the court of Louis XV. Yet although Marguerite-Louise was once called "one of the most celebrated musicians of our time, who sang with admirable taste and who played the harpsichord perfectly", no works of hers or of Charles, Marguerite-Antoinette or Marie-Madeleine have yet been found or are indeed ever likely to be discovered. Marguerite-Antoinette apparently had her hands full teaching the king's two daughters, and life as organist at the convent of Maubuisson kept Marie-Madeleine's mind focused on more spiritual matters. François the elder was an excellent teacher but apparently more intent on enjoying life than on composing; a note on a copy of his nephew's pieces calls him "a great musician and a great drunk." Only one work by Nicolas has yet come to light, and it was not a keyboard piece but a four-voice motet. Louis Couperin's presently known 134 keyboard works do not include De Gruytters' little gigue. Armand-Louis, a modest and pleasantly-natured man killed in a traffic accident while hurrying to a funeral in 1789 and dying just in time to be spared the horrors of the French Revolution, also wrote several compositions, but his earliest pieces were published in 1751, five years after De Gruytters finished his book.
Dancing Italian Gigues With Cold Feet
Since the De Gruytters gigue is not
among any of the extant
compositions by the many Couperins, stylistic comparison may provide
clues to
its origins. A cursory glance reveals it to be an Italian-style gigue,
i.e. a
piece in a quick tempo usually in 6/8 or 12/8 or very occasionally in
duple
meter and with a texture of running triplets, melodies using chordal
figuration, sequences of motives, and leaps typical of violin music,
and a
simple bass providing harmonic support.[iv] The
composers of the older generation such as Bach, Handel, and Reincken
wrote contrapunctal
versions. The Italian gigue developed from the English and Irish jigs
which
appeared in English instrumental music at the beginning of the 17th
century. It
was brought to Paris around 1635 by the English court lutenist Jacques
Gautier,
who, together with his fellow lutenists Denis and Ennemont Gaultier,
created a
French-style gigue with dotted rhythms and imitative entries
subsequently
absorbed into the French keyboard suite starting around 1670. By some
means
still unclear, the gigue also entered Italian instrumental music as the
final
movement of the sonata da chiesa and canzone, most notably in the works
of
Giovanni Battista Vitali and Archangelo Corelli such as the latter's
Trio
Sonatas Op.4 (1694). It was soon adopted by a number of other Italian
composers, most notably by Giovanni Maria Bononcini, Domenico
Scarlatti,
Giuseppe Tartini, Antonio Veracini, Antonio Vivaldi, and Domenico
Zipoli and
spread throughout Europe as part of the new style of Italian and French
instrumental music which arose towards the close of the 17th century
and began
sweeping across the continent in the following decades.
The composers most
closely associated with this new music were Archangelo Corelli in Rome,
Giuseppi Torelli in Bologna, Antonio Vivaldi in Venice, and Giuseppi
Tartini in
Padua, who created and established the concerto grosso and concerto,
Alessandro
Scarlatti in Naples and Giovanni Battista Sammartini in Milan, who were
important in developing the opera ouverture and symphony, Jean-Philippe
Rameau
and François Couperin in Paris as the chief exponents of French
opera and
ballet music and the French keyboard suite respectively, and Pietro
Locatelli
in Amsterdam, Domenico Scarlatti in Madrid, and George Frideric Handel
in
London, prominent writers of violin, of keyboard, and of violin,
keyboard, and
orchestral music respectively. Vivaldi alone composed around 500
concertos,
nearly half of them for the violin, 93 sonatas and trios, and 61
symphonies and
ripieno concertos, and Tartini wrote at least 135 violin concertos and
160
violin sonatas. Manuscripts of this music were disseminated throughout
Europe;
copies of Vivaldi's works reached Dresden by 1717 and were soon
influencing
German composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, who arranged six of the
violin
concertos for solo harpsichord. The most popular pieces also appeared
in print
in London, Paris, and Amsterdam, among them Vivaldi's violin concertos
and
concerti grossi L'estro armonico Op.3
(Amsterdam 1711 and London 1715),
Corelli's Concerti Grossi Op.6 (Amsterdam 1714), and 24 of Tartini's
violin
concertos (Amsterdam between 1728 and 1733). Corelli's Op.6 was an
immediate
success at its performance in London in 1724 and was followed among
others by
Geminiani's Concerti Grossi Op.2 and Op.3 in 1732 and 1733, and
Handel's Op.6
in 1739. The new French and Italian instrumental music was soon being
played
throughout Europe by court and opera orchestras, church and chamber
ensembles,
and by aristocrats, professional musicians, and dilettantes of every
nationality.[v]
[i] Les Bergeries was so popular in the 18th century that Johann Sebastian Bach copied it into the book of piano music he compiled in 1725 for his wife Anna Magdalena, De Gruytters set it on the automatic of the Antwerp cathedral carillon, it was a prescribed test piece for those applying for the position of carillonneur in Louvain in 1745, and was included in the Louvain carillon books written between 1755 and 1760 and André Dupont's carillon book of 1785.
[ii] See Kenneth Gilbert (ed.), François Couperin, Ouevres complètes, vols.1-5, Monaco, 1980-1995.
[iii] Terence Best (ed.), Hallische Händel-Ausgabe (Critical Complete Edition), issued by the Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gesellschaft, Series IV, Instrumentalmusik, vol.1: Klavierwerke I, Halle, 1974.
[iv] For examples of Italian gigues see the following keyboard works: Domenico Zipoli, Sonate d'Intavolatura per Organo e Cimbalo, Suites Nos. 2 in G minor and 3 in C major (Rome 1716), Giuseppe Tartini, Sonata for Violin and Basso Continuo Op.1 No. 6 in D major (Amsterdam 1734), Lodovico Giustini di Pistoia, Sonate da Cimbalo di piano, e forte.... (the first music written for his newly invented piano e forte), Sonatas Nos. 2 in C minor, 4 in E minor, 6 in B-flat major, 8 in A major, and 12 in G major (Florence 1739), Giovanni Battista Pescetti, Sonatas Nos. 2 in D major and 3 in G minor (London 1739), and Giovanni Platti, Sonata Op.1 No. 3 in F major (Nürnberg ca. 1742). Domenico Scarlatti's Sonatas in E major K. 531, G major K. 477, and F major K. 78 are only a few among his many in the form of Italian gigues.
[v] For more information on the influence of French and Italian instrumental music on the carillon music of the period see my article Jeffery Bossin, Musik für Carillon 1600-1900. Die Suche nach einem verschollenen Repertoire, in Kurt Kramer and Hartwig Niemann (ed.), Glocken in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Karlsruhe 1997, slightly amended version in Günter Fleischhauer, Monika Lustig, Wolfgang Ruf und Frieder Zschoch (ed.), Glocken und Glockenspiele, Michaelsteiner Konferenzberichte 56, Michaelstein, 1998.