Luogo e data di registrazione		Chapelle de l'hôpital Notre-Dame de Bon Secours, Paris (Francia) - febbraio 2002
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Alpha
	Recording Engineer / Editing		Hugues Deschaux
	Prima Edizione LP		nessuna
	Prima Edizione CD		Alpha - ut pictura musica | 026 | 1 CD - durata 66' 28" | (c) 2002 | DDD
	Cover Art		Lubin Baugin, Nature morte aux gaufrettes ou Le Dessert de gaugrettes, Musée du Louvre
	Note		Digipack

Lubin Baugin (Pithiviers, c.1610-1612 - Paris, 1663) Still life with wafers or The Dessert of wafers, c.1630-1635 (Oil on wood panel, 41 x 22 cm) Paris, Musée du Louvre Trained in the Fontainebleau aesthetic, this painter was attracted to the sweetness typical of the Parrna school, Whose influence on his religious output is patent. The model above all models when it came to Holy Families and Virgins with Child, Raphael, lurks behind his Madonnas, whose sophisticated manner, taking liberties with nature, plays on a light palette with accents both pastel and resonant, calling Guido Reni to mind. But his Italian tour was for later in his career, in the 1630s. In 1629, in order to escape the ascendancy of the tyrannical Paris guild, this future academician (a status he acquired in 1651) first rose to the rank of master-painter at Saint-Gennain-ties-Prés, where the abbey contained a veritable reservoir of European painting. Thus he came into contact with Flemish culture. His still lives, a northern speciality, date from this early period. With their links to Caravaggism, the inevitable point of reference, they reveal a positive artistic personality that was already defying categorisation. On a table covered with a slate blue, moiré damask cloth, we can see, set out on three different planes; a pewter plate containing wafer biscuits, protruding over the edge of the table; a straw-yellow wicker wine flask surmounted by a stopper in the form of a ducks head; a ridged glass, in cristallo ‘à la façon de Venise’, whose deep conical bowl is supported by a baluster with a mesh of intertwined serpents, and decorated by embossed picots, tears of glass which emphasise its edges. Coming partly from a window, an abstract, ambiguous light, throwing discordant shadows, is reflected on thesurface of the glass, and on that of the red liquid, which it irradiates, and which thus takes on in places a bronzed tint. In the background, a stone wall built of heavy quadrangular blocks is interrupted by an opening against which the goblet stands out. A eucharistic reading of this painting, would be delusory. Its intentions lie in the direction of a formal investigation for whic the iconography becomes a mere pretext. This approach, clearly modern, aims to identify the interrelationships, structural and geometric, volumetric and spatial, and chromatic too, between objects set out like signs on a score. Economy of means, sobriety, terseness of discourse: understatement reigns, with typically French asceticism. Modesty and reserve of the art of the Paris region, which suggests more than it states, banishes excess, and keeps to essentials. Through rigour and control. Yet all of this is nothing but illusion: the equivocal use of lighting; the rich, indeed exuberant Italian decoration of the glass; the complexity of this goblet‘s relationship with the light; the precarious position of the plate; the contradictory shadows; even the cheeky expression of the duck with its glassy eyes - all these are sources of tension. Poetry of silence, transparency, limpidity, grace, skill in harmonisation. Yes, all this is present. But so are angularities, dissonances, dissimulation... ‘quirks’. Under the semblance of order and permanency, the fragility of this equilibrium becomes apparent. Art of the moment, the work appears as a metaphor for the culture of the Baroque, an age in unceasing movement, bubbling with creativity, refusing fixed paradigms. This protean half-century resists authoritarian, immutable sedimentation, the cloak of uniformity that acadernicism and its chilly logic will soon impose on all the arts. Denis Grenier Department of History Laval University, Quebec Translation: Charles Johnston What is the Grand Siècle? With the touch of blithe arrogance that sometimes characterises them, the French people tend to reduce History to that of France. Seeing themselves as pioneers in all things, they like to view the world from the single vantage point of their own doorstep. Take what is emphatically known as the Grand Siécle, for example, which largely summarises the contradictions that the country regularly comes up against. Fascination for the splendours of Versailles, and at the same time criticism of social inequalities. Admiration for Louis XIV‘s implacable method in bringing the aristocracy to heel, and abhorrence of the absolutist despot who strung wars together as if they were no more than dances in a ballet de cour. But the French are fundamentally proud of what remains of their heritage. It attracts millions of visitors to France each year. Tourism is an excuse for everything... So the Grand Siécle refers to the reign of Louis XIV, seen as Frances period of political and cultural pre-eminence. It was the century of the Sun King and of Versailles, its magnificent and cultivated court frequented by great men such as the landscape gardener Le Nôtre, the painter Le Brun, dramatists Racine and Molière, the composer Lully (renowned for his operas), and the finest poets, architects, military strategists, philosophers and scientists. In short, it was a time of great minds, in which everything was grandiose. This definition is not entirely false. Nor is it completely true... Crowned at Rheims cathedral on 7 June 1654, at the age of sixteen, Louis XIV did not wield full power until 1661, after the death of the first minister of France, Cardinal Mazarin. From then on, he ruled as an absolute monarch, learning to use the arts, literature and the sciences to serve his political purpose. ‘A great sovereign, like a great artist, is measured by his ability to give shape to the vague aspirations that his contemporaries feel, sense and imagine, but are unable to achieve.’ Louis gathered together the creative forces that he found in his entourage, made sure that brilliant rivals such as Nicolas Fouquet were out of the way, and by developing the Academies, was instrumental in taking to its zenith every form of expression that was capable of enhancing his own glory. In so doing, he channelled artistic creativity to his sole benefit, at the risk of stifling it completely, as with opera, where only Lully was allowed to present works on a theatre stage. Versailles was extremely rich and active, but it must be remembered that Baroque had already been in existence for several decades in the rest of Europe. And it was in that world of imagination and artistic and intellectual effervescence that musicians such as Girolamo Frescobaldi and Louis Couperin flourished. It may not make much sense to speak of Europe at the beginning of the seventeenth century, at least in the modern acceptance of the term. There had been no formulation of an awareness of belonging to the same community, no questioning of the frontiers that separate its different nations. But there were numerous exchanges, and styles and techniques circulated constantly, in the fields of painting, music and the theatre. Moreover, France and Italy shared a love for beautiful things. A watch beaning an exquisite painted-enamel miniature, cabinets of finely carved ebony, leather-bound books decorated with motifs in gold leaf, tapestries, costume... everything in the arts made this a ‘time of exuberance’. But exuberance meant neither superficiality nor excess. On the contrary, ornamentation, whether in architecture, painting, furnishings, the decorative arts or music, steered clear of grandiloquence. The same may be said of Frescobaldi's music. Born in 1583 in Ferrara, a prestigious city ruled by the House of Este until its incorporation into the Papal States in 1598, Frescobaldi studied music with the court organist, Luzzaschi. At the crossroads of Italian, Flemish and French styles, Frescobaldi immersed himself in the different techniques of counterpoint. And most importantly, he experienced the musical polemics of the time, including the debates on the best way of setting literary texts to music which preceded the first performance of Monteverdi's first opera, L'Orfeo, in Mantua in 1607. In Rome, where he arrived in the early years of the seventeenth century, Frescobaldi was taken up by the wealthy and influential Cardinal Bentivoglio, and when his patron became a papal nuncio he accompanied him to Flanders. During that time his Primo libro di madrigali a cinque voci was published in Antwerp by Pierre Phalèse. On his return to Rome in 1608, he brought out a book of Fantasie for harpsichord or organ, in which he adapted the tradition of vocal polyphony to the keyboard. From then on, it was instrumental music - or to be more precise, music for the harpsichord or the organ - that gained the composer's favour. Frescobaldi was probably what we would now call a virtuoso. At the age of twenty-five, he took up the position of organist of St Peter's, Rome, which he retained until his death in 1643. All over Europe his reputation steadily increased. His works were published, which was a privilege, then republished several times, which was an even more obvious sign of an influence that was to last for several decades. From 1615 onwards, he published several sets of works in which he confirmed and developed the originality of his style. In the Recercari et Canzoni, which still bear signs of the ‘old style’, the instrumental destination is as yet unspecified, while the Toccate e partite, illustrations of the composer‘s ‘new manner’, are explicitly attributed to the harpsichord. The style is different again in the Capricci of 1624, in which he presents various imaginative treatments (capriccio means ‘whim’, ‘fancy’) of a well-known theme, such as the Flemish bass (bassa fiaminga), which he may have noted down during his travels in 1607. In 1628, Frescobaldi was summoned to Florence to work for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando II. There he returned to vocal music with the publication of two books of Arie musicali for 1-3 voices (1650). The ‘second Apollo of our time’, as he was described, enjoyed great prestige, whence a salary that was higher than that of any other musician. At the request of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, a nephew of Pope Urban VIII, Frescobaldi returned to Rome in 1634. The Barberini family were probably the most munificent patrons of the arts that Rome had yet known, influencing artistic creation throughout the seventeenth century. In their service, Frescobaldi no doubt met other major figures, including Bernini, who was admired throughout Europe, the composers Kapsberger, Landi and Michi, and the great Jesuit theorist, philosopher and musician Athanasius Kircher. During that period, he revised several earlier works, including the two books of Toccate, to which he made additions in 1657. He also published the Fiori Musicali (1655), a collection of organ pieces for use in the Mass, dedicated to his patron's brother, Cardinal Antonio Barberini. During his lifetime the composer was admired as a paragon; in his famous Response faite à un Curieux sur le sentiment de la musique d'Italie (1639), the violist André Maugars describes an office for Lent that he attended in Rome. ‘The great Frescobaldi conjured up all kinds of inventions on the harpsichord. It is not without reason that the famous organist of St Peters has acquired such a reputation in Europe. For although his printed works give a good idea of his competence, nevertheless in order to judge his very great skill one must hear him playing impromptu, with toccatas full of admirable ingenuity and inventiveness. Which is why he deserves to be recommended for his originality to all our organists, to make them want to come and hear him in Rome.’ Unlike Frescobaldi‘s works, those of Louis Couperin were not published during his lifetime, nor indeed before the twentieth century. They have come down to us in the form of manuscript copies. The main source, the Bauyn manuscript (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris), is a veritable goldmine of seventeenth-century harpsichord music. Apart from the pieces by Louis Couperin, it also includes those written by Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, as well as a varied collection of works by French, English, Italian and German composers, including Frescobaldi and especially Froberger. It provides us with a ‘concentrate’ of the masterpieces that were written for the harpsichord during the first half of the century. Little is known about the life of Louis Couperin, nor do we know exactly when he composed his works. Born at Chaumes-en-Brie around 1626, he was one of the eight children of Charles Couperin, who was an organist, tailor and wine-grower. The Couperin children of his generation must have gained their early musical training within the family, in much the same way as the Bachs in Thuringen. Louis played the viol, the organ and the harpsichord (such versatility was common at that time). In his Parnasse françois of 1732, Evrard Titon du Tillet reports a story, probably dating from around 1650: ‘The three brothers [Louis, François and Charles Couperin], with some friends, also musicians, decided on Chambonnières‘ name day to go to his château [also in Brie] to serenade him.’ The master of the house, then at the height of his fame, was agreeably surprised by the fine pieces that were presented, and on learning that the compositions were by Louis, immediately presented his compliments. Chambonnières ‘displayed great kindness to him and told him that a man like himself was not made to stay in the provinces, and that he absolutely must come with him to Paris. This Couperin accepted with pleasure. Chambonnières presented him in Paris and at court, where he was appreciated.’ Despite the fact that Titon du Tillet was born more than twenty-five years after the events he relates, it is likely that there is some truth in his story. Otherwise, we know that Couperin was appointed organist of the church of St Gervais in Paris in 1653 and that the king created a post of treble viol player for him. He died in Paris in 1661, at the age of thirty-five. Frescobaldi‘s successive revisions of his works lead us to believe that the ordering of the pieces and their content were exactly as the composer wished them to be. The same cannot be said of the various manuscript sources of the works of Louis Couperin. The Bauyn manuscript presents his harpsichord works in two parts. The first part consists of fourteen preludes, arranged by key. It shows one of the musician's most original features, for these preludes, like those of the lutenists and theorbists of the time, present only the pitch of the notes on the stave with no indication of duration or measure. It is up to the player to create the rhythm of the piece, to improvise while respecting the musical framework provided by the composer. The second part contains various dance movements, classified according to key. It is therefore possible, although Couperin himself makes no mention of the fact, to group pieces together to form coherent Suites, in the manner of lute suites or of the entrées (groups of dances, unified by subject) in the ballets de cour. Couperin used the fashionable dance movements of the time (allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue, chaconne or passacaille), sometimes adding choreographic forms inherited from the previous generation (volte, gaillarde, branle de basque or canarie). Thus he remained faithful to the firmly established French tradition, whereby ‘in the order of things there are two degrees (Philosophy and Dance) that are capable of raising man to his perfection’. He also left an extraordinary Pavane which, being the only piece in F sharp minor, cannot be included in a suite and therefore stands alone. Mersenne described this dance as being of such gravity that it could ‘even be danced with cloak and sword’. Setting aside the chronological comparison, what do Girolamo Frescobaldi and Louis Couperin have in common? To begin with, although their means of expression were different, they were both masters of counterpoint. Although Frescobaldi cultivated the art of imitation, stemming from the polyphonic compositions of the sixteenth century and generating fugal forms, he shared with the younger musician the creation of a style that was perfectly adapted to the keyboard, in the most digital sense of the term. The two artists thus join the Netherlands composer Sweelinck and the Englishman Bull, two great representatives of the same school. The influence of writing for plucked string instruments is another common feature. In Frescobaldi‘s case, it resulted partly from his probable association with Alessandro Piccinini, a lutenist who worked for the Este court at Ferrara, and his more certain relations with Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, ‘il Tedesco della Tiorba’, who was also in the service of Francesco Barberini. The same arpeggiated style is found in Louis Couperin's Préludes, and in many of his dance movements. And our harpsichordist was a friend of the amateur lutenist Charles Fleury, also known as Blancrocher, for whom he composed a Tombeau following his accidental death in 1652. Finally, the German harpsichordist Johann Jakob Froberger also provides an invisible link between the two composers. From 1637 to 1641 he studied with Frescobaldi in Rome, where he was also regularly in touch with Athanasius Kircher during the elaboration of his Musurgia Universalis, one of the most influential of all music treatises, comparable to Mersenne‘s Harmonie Universelle. Froberger almost certainly met Louis Couperin during his stay in Paris in 1652, a fact supported by three indications; the composition of a Tombeau fait à Paris sur la mart de Monsieur Blancheroche, accompanied by a commentary in which Froberger states that he was an ‘excellent friend’ of Blancrocher; Louis Couperin's composition of a Prélude à l'imitation de Mr Froberger (title found in the Parville manuscript in the library at Berkeley); finally, the presence in the Bauyn manuscript, a corpus displaying great homogeneity of style, of many pieces by Froberger, alongside those of Chambonnières and Louis Couperin. More deeply, Frescobaldi and Couperin also shared the same perception of the musical discourse in the early years of the seventeenth century. Their treatment of instrumental music was similar to that of vocal music of the time, aiming to achieve the best possible expression of the affections of the soul, the object of music being ‘to please, and to arouse in us various passions’. In those days when the theories of celestial mechanism were being popularised, with their implications of a new positioning of man in an infinite universe, thinkers and creators applied themselves to solve the mystery of the relationship between the impulses of the soul and their physical manifestations. In a talk given in 1668, the painter Charles Le Brun presented his view of that mechanical relationship: ‘Passion is an impulse of the soul, which depends on the sensitivity, and which arises either in compliance with what the soul believes to be good for it or as a means of escaping from what the soul believes to be bad for it; and usually everything that causes passion in the soul causes the body to react in some way.’ Thus, he summarised ideas that had been developed earlier by Mersenne in his Harmonie Universelle of 1636. Baroque art of the first half of the seventeenth century was full of movement and efferyescence. Even in the apparent simplicity of an austere Still life with wafers, we perceive a world in which everything is possible, everything is imaginable. Blaise Pascal who, more than any other, knew how to bring out the tragic contradictions of this world, noted in his Pensées: ‘Our nature lies in movement; absolute repose is death.’ In the virtuosic passages of a toccata or the bewitching rhythm of a chaconne, the Baroque musician is saying just that. Jean-Paul Combet Translation: Mary Pardoe