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Article Excerpt
During the summer of 2004 John H. Roberts, the head of the music library at the University of California, Berkeley, was able to acquire for our new Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library a particularly interesting seventeenth-century manuscript of French harpsichord music. This article is a preliminary report, concentrating on certain details of the manuscript's makeup and contents, with a brief discussion of the composers named in the source. The Hargrove Music Library already has a series of over a dozen fine French harpsichord manuscripts from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, acquired by Vincent Duckles from the collection of Everett Helm in the late 1960s. (1) The new volume (Hargrove Music Library MS 1365) is a significant addition to this set and seems to date from a slightly earlier period than the other volumes. It was formerly in the collection of the French pianist and conductor Alfred Cortot (1877-1962), a substantial portion of whose music library is also now in Berkeley; the manuscript later passed into the collection of antiquarian music dealer Albi Rosenthal in London. (2)
Twenty-seven of the more than one hundred pieces are ascribed to composers in the manuscript, leaving about three quarters of the works given anonymously. A handful of further pieces can be identified from concordances. However, most of the contents, including the majority of the works ascribed to a particular composer, seem to be unique to this source. There are new pieces by five of the most famous musicians of the period: d'Anglebert, Chambonnieres, Dumont, de La Barre, and Thomelin. There are several new works by de La Pierre, and new versions, including one new title, for known pieces by Louis Couperin. The manuscript also contains works ascribed to five other musicians: Madame de Bieule, Bouat, Brochard, Bremon, and Depins. While it is natural to focus at first on these works by named composers, the anonymous compositions that make up the vast majority of the source's contents are also of exceptional musical value and scholarly interest.
On the cover is the title Liure d'Espinettes (Book for the Espinettes), a phrase amplified on the title page to Liure contenant Plusieurs Pieces D'Espinette (Book containing Various Pieces for the Espinette). In late-sixteenth-century and early-seventeenth-century France, espinette, or epinette, was a standard name for various kinds of keyboard instruments with plucked strings; somewhat like the word "virginals" in England, it was also used in the plural, as here on the cover. (3) The court keyboard player in the late sixteenth century was the Joueur d'espinette de la Chambre du Roy (Spinet Player to the King's Chamber), whereas by the 1670s the terminology had shifted to Claveciniste du Roy (Harpsichordist to the King). It would be unwise to imagine that the works in this manuscript were composed for a small instrument just because they are said to be for espinette(s). As we shall see, although everything remains playable on the harpsichord a few of the pieces are equally suitable for organ; some are perhaps even primarily intended for violin or other solo instruments, to be played with keyboard accompaniment.
BOREL
At the bottom of the title page there is an elegantly written name, "Borel." It appears to refer to the first--or at least an early--owner, who may or may not have also been the copyist. MS 1365 is therefore now referred to as the "Borel Manuscript."
Several references to musicians of this name are known, although they all seem a little later than the apparent date of the manuscript. On 30 July 1678, a Jean Borel identified as an academiste and musician in L'academie des operas became godfather to a girl called Anne Fontange. He lived in Paris, in the parish of Saint-Sulpice, in the rue Sainte-Marguerite "dans le carrefour de St-Benoit, a l'image St-Pierre." (4) Is this the same Jean Borel who was a countertenor in the Chapelle royale between 1687 and his death in 1728? This Borel seems to have called himself the "Sieur de Miracle" (an assumed minor title of nobility). (5) He also appears under two different names, Jean Borel and Joseph Borel, but Marcelle Benoit has suggested that they were probably the same person. (6) They are both listed as a countertenor (haute-contre), they both had duties at court in the July/August/September quarter, and they both had the standard singer's salary of 450 livres. Moreover, the dates of their salary payments interlock perfectly. (See appendix 1, which includes other known information concerning "Jean Borel.")
However, nothing confirms that one of these Borels was the owner (or copyist) of the Borel Manuscript. So far no harpsichordist of that name has been traced. There are very few ornaments, a sign that the book may have belonged not merely to a professional musician but to a professional keyboard player, who knew how to add the necessary ornaments in the appropriate style. Certainly nothing about the volume makes it look like the book of an amateur keyboard player. Nevertheless, in view of the Borel Manuscript's possible association (discussed below) with the south of France, it is possible that there might also be a connection with the physician Pierre Borel, who was born in Castres in 1620 and settled in Paris in about 1653. He became Louis XIV's doctor and a member of the Academie des sciences. (7)
DATE OF THE MANUSCRIPT
The manuscript is difficult to date precisely, although it belongs to the second half of the seventeenth century. Its format, layout, and handwriting all suggest it may be earlier than most of the comparable surviving manuscripts of French keyboard music. It contains repertoire that is mostly from the 1650s and 1660s; at least one work may refer to Queen Christina of Sweden, who visited France in September 1656 and February 1658; at the back of the book there is a reference to the Ballet de l'Amour malade, first performed in January 1657 (but this reference could be a later addition); one piece by Dumont has a concordance published in 1657 (although the text is not copied from that edition); there are pieces by Louis Couperin, who died in 1661, and by La Pierre, who is thought to have left France in about 1662; and there are no transcriptions from Lully's operas (normally a staple in French harpsichord manuscripts from the 1680s onwards). Moreover, an early date is perhaps suggested by the somewhat conservative choice of tonalities: D minor (40 pieces), C major (27 pieces), G minor (14 pieces), A minor (9 pieces), F major (9 pieces), and G major (4 pieces). There is only one piece in D major and one in E minor (and this last is probably a late addition).
On the other hand, three things could argue in favor of a slightly later date. Near the beginning of the manuscript (fol. lv [#2]), and evidently one of the earliest works entered into the book, there is a piece by Thomelin; if the date of birth traditionally assigned to him (ca. 1640) is more or less correct, he is unlikely to have composed it much before 1660, although he was already an organist in a Parisian church in 1656. And there are two works in C major by d'Anglebert that also seem part of the original main series of works copied into the book (fol. 17v [#49] and fol. 21r [#60]); since they are both absent from d'Anglebert's autograph manuscript, generally thought to date from ca. 1677-80, they may have been composed after that date. Finally, Berkeley's Parville Manuscript (Hargrove MS 778) and its great companion in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Bauyn Manuscript (Res. Vm (7) 674-675), caution us against too hasty a dating based on contents. (8) Both sources contain repertoire that dates mainly from the 1650s and 1660s but are likely to have been copied somewhat later. For the moment, I suggest a tentative date for the Borel Manuscript of 1660-80, but in general the main contents appear to date from the early end of this period.
THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS CONTENTS
The book is in upright format (a la francaise, or "portrait") and measures 20.8 cm X 28 cm. There are ten staves on each page, hand-drawn with a rastrum. This is an unusual format for a harpsichord manuscript (although the Bauyn Manuscript uses it on a much grander scale). Most French keyboard manuscripts are in horizontal format (a l'italienne, or "landscape") and have six staves to the page.
There are thirty-two leaves of music, each of which is half of a bifolium. I have not yet been able to date the paper. Seventeen of the leaves have a watermark (always the same one, and found in the center of the leaf), which may be described as "letters within a shield." The letters seem to be a capital E and a capital B. (9) Paper with this watermark does not appear to have been used in any of the more than one hundred other known manuscripts of French harpsichord music of this period. (10) The presence of the watermark on seventeen leaves--rather than sixteen, half of thirty-two--is explained by the fact that at least four leaves have been very carefully removed from the book: one bifolium (after fol. 18v), and two single leaves (after fol. 23v and fol. 30v), each of which was originally half of a bifolium (see appendix 2).
The pieces were not all copied at the same time, nor do they appear to have been copied entirely sequentially. Many of them are numbered in the margin. This numbering ("MS#" in table 1) starts out sequentially for the opening series of allemandes but becomes less sequential in the second half of the manuscript, as discussed below. The numbers seem to identify a first series of pieces, copied with considerable care; these are fair copies, with almost no corrections and few errors. The ink looks different for other pieces, mostly unnumbered and filling in the empty staves at the bottom of a page, as if they were added later.
Differences in the quill pen used for copying produce an initial impression of some pieces being written by a different hand. Differences are noticeable within a single page, or even occasionally on one line, but rarely within one piece. However, it is notoriously difficult to draw firm conclusions from such details, and hasty pronouncements are dangerous. Several years could separate the copying of the first main set of numbered pieces from the ones that were added in the blank staves underneath them. I continue to work on the assumption that the differences in handwriting can be attributed to a single copyist working at different speeds, with different pens, and at different times.
Since there are ten rather than six staves on each page and the main handwriting in the volume is rather precise and small, the thirty-two leaves contain the surprisingly high number of ninety-nine separate pieces. Ten of these are followed by an ornamented version of the same piece, referred to as a redouble (rather than the more normal term of double). None of the allemandes...
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