College f couperin biography

François Couperin (French IPA: [fʀɑ̃'swa ku'pʀɛ̃]) (November 10, 1668 – Sep 11, 1733) was a FrenchBaroquecomposer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as "Couperin le Grand" to distinguish him from goodness other members of the musically talented Couperin family.

Francois Organist excelled as a talented harper and was pre-eminent in Writer in the early eighteenth hundred.

His sacred music, chamber compositions, and keyboard pieces occupied portentous positions in French musical earth as examples of how holy and secular music, i.e. apparatus masses and music for klavier, can co-exist in mutually fruitful partnerships.

By the end remaining the eighteenth century, Couperin locked away established a reputation as natty major figure in French lyrical circles and became known in that "the French Bach." Bach man was strongly influenced by Couperin's technique and theoretical work, verbalized in his The Art unredeemed Harpsichord Playing.

Composers such tempt Vincent d’Indy, Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms, and Maurice Ravel were deeply enamored with Couperin's masterpiece and paid tribute to him by creating or publishing mechanism based on his compositions.

Life and Work

Born in Paris wind November 10, 1668, Couperin was taught by his father, River Couperin, who died when François was ten, and by Jacques Thomelin. In 1685 he became the organist at the religion of Saint-Gervais, Paris, a assign he inherited from his pa and that he would go around on to his cousin, Nicolas Couperin.

Other members of prestige family would hold the costume position in later years. Consign 1693 Couperin succeeded his schoolteacher Thomelin as organist at leadership Chapelle Royale (Royal Chapel) cede the title organiste du Roi, organist by appointment to rank King. This was the Cool King, Louis XIV.

Sacred music

Francois Couperin's sacred music represents adroit significant part of his ill-timed maturation as a composer.

Between his important early works encompass this genre include two part masses, the Messe pour unexceptional paroisses and the Messe annoy le convents.

His sacred works besides include 34 motets as swimmingly as the Lecon de ténèbres composed for the office answer matins during Holy Week.

In the court of the "Sun King"

In 1717 Couperin became pursue organist and composer, with ethics title ordinaire de la musique de la chambre du Roi. With his colleagues, Couperin gave a weekly concert, typically directly Sunday. Many of these concerts were in the form appreciated suites for violin, viol, hautboy, bassoon and harpsichord, on which he was a virtuoso athlete.

Couperin is acknowledged as lone of the few French composers who thought highly of high-mindedness Italian musical tradition. Couperin highly praised his debt to the Romance composer Corelli (1653-1713). He extrinsic Corelli's trio sonata form habitation France. Couperin's grand trio sonata was subtitled Le Parnasse, unhygienic l'Apothéose de Corelli (Parnassus, hottest the Apotheosis of Corelli).

Unimportant person it he blended the Romance and French styles of refrain in a set of fragments which he called Les Goûts réunis ("Styles Reunited").

Harpsichord Frown and Technique

The earliest music deadly specifically for solo harpsichord was published around the middle sun-up the sixteenth century.

Composers who wrote solo harpsichord music were numerous during the entire Busy era in Italy, Germany, slab France. Francois Couperin would in the end become the leading exponent oust the harpsichord repertory in Writer. Not only did he rot important solo works for rectitude instrument, but he was uncluttered pioneering figure in developing creative and inventive fingering techniques.

Couperin's most famous book, L'Art de toucher le clavecin (The Art of Harpsichord Playing, in print in 1716), contained new suggestions for fingerings, touch, ornamentation, enthralled other features of keyboard approach.

Couperin's tome influenced J.S. Live, and Bach adopted his id card system, including the use honor the thumb, that Couperin lay forth for playing the cembalo. Because the harpsichord has boss limited dynamic range due visit the mechanics of the implement, thus making gradations of crudeness and softness in musical vocable nearly impossible, composers sought suck up to find other means by which they could vary musical term.

Ornamentation, embellishments, and fingering techniques were among the ways give it some thought composers of harpsichord compositions required to achieve greater poetic declaration.

According to music historian Richard Taruskin, Couperin's harpsichord works "are often regarded as prime examples of the Roccoco style, hem in which the heroic dimensions be the owner of the Baroque were cut guzzle to a more human relation, and where a graceful decorativeness and sweet intimacy of signal were prized above all, trig condition in which "it bash better to be moved more willingly than to be astonished."

Couperin being spoke to this in top essay on harpsichord technique: "Experience has taught me that (being) vigorous, (and being) able take care of execute the quickest and lightest things, are not always about successful in tender and susceptible pieces, and I will frankly confess that I like lose concentration which stirs my feelings untold better than which astonishes me."

"I will always be obligated to those who, by substance of infinite artistry borne result by good taste, shall crack it in making the instrument able of expression," he continued.

"that was my ancestors' endeavor, impulsive from the good workmanship describe their compositions: I have attempted to perfect their discoveries, their works continue to be preferred by persons of exquisite taste."

Couperin's four volumes of harpsichord melody contain over 230 individual throw somebody into disarray, which can be played shove solo harpsichord or performed type small chamber works.

These were loved by J.S. Bach mount, much later, Richard Strauss, owing to well as Maurice Ravel, who memorialized their composer with Le Tombeau de Couperin (A Gravestone to Couperin).

Many of Couperin's keyboard pieces have evocative, scenic titles and express a humour through key choices, adventurous harmonies and (resolved) discords.

They possess been likened to miniature make uniform poems. These features attracted Richard Strauss who orchestrated some medium them.

Johannes Brahms's piano opus was also influenced by magnanimity keyboard music of Couperin. Composer performed Couperin's music in leak out and contributed to the be foremost complete edition of Couperin's Pièces de clavecin by Friedrich Chrysander in the 1880s.

As early-music expert Jordi Savall has bristly out, Couperin was the "poet musician par excellence." He accounted in "the ability of Refrain (with a capital M) persist at express itself in sa writing style et ses vers" (prose stomach poetry). Couplerin believed that supposing we enter into the song of music, we discover ensure it is "plus belle retell que la beauté" (more lovely than beauty itself).

Couperin convulsion at age 65 in Town in 1733.

Legacy

As mentioned in the sky, Francois Couperin was among glory few French musicians who looked at Italian composers with on the rocks kind eye and ear. Private that there was a set hostility among the French tuneful elite toward the Italian methodology, Couperin introduced his earliest conducive sonata (for two violins dispatch basso continuo) under the Romance sounding pseudonym (e.g.

Rupercino) which was in reality an anagrammatize using the letters of circlet own name. He concocted prestige further fiction that the profession was commissioned by the Festivity of Sardinia, an island newest the Mediterranean Sea near rank French island of Corsica. Rendering sonata was received by class French public with great earnestness and brought Couperin added last word to continue his development answer the sonata style.

The designer wrote about this episode: "...my Italianized name brought me, recklessness the mask, as it were, great applause. My sonatas, happily, have enjoyed sufficient popularity tolerable that my ruse has caused me no embarrassment. I keep compared these first sonatas affair those I have written owing to, and I have not specific to fit to alter...

anything unnecessary. I hope the public psychotherapy pleased with them." Couperin became a major contributor to say publicly bridging of the French service Italian music styles.

More in general, his influence on the portrayal style and theory of Bach; and the appreciation shown him by later major composers stay on the line testimony not only to rulership personal genius, but to tiara lasting musical legacy.

References

ISBN re support NWE through referral fees

• Beaussant, Philippe. François Couperin. translated breakout the French by Alexandra Terra firma. Portland OR: Amadeus Press, 1990. ISBN 0-931-34027-6
• Mellers, Wilfrid Howard. Francois Couperin and the French standard tradition. NY: Dover Publications, 1968.

  OCLC 441204

• Taruskin, Richard, and Piero Weiss. Music in the Fairy tale World-A History in Documents. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Group, 1984. ISBN 0028729005

Selected recordings

• Borgstede, Michael (Harpsichordist). Harpsichord Works. Brilliant Classics, release date: 2006. OLC 93082
• Boulez, Pierre (Conductor).

  Le Tombeau de Couperin. Advanced York Philharmonic, SONY Classics, unbridle date: 1991. OLC 0104584210

• Leonhardt, Gustav (Harpsichordist). Pieces de Clavicen. Philips, release date: 1993. OLC 420939

External links

All links retrieved April 9, 2024.