Music portraits of women in harpsichord pieces by François Couperin
Journal Title: Notes Muzyczny - Year 2014, Vol 1, Issue 1
Abstract
The French style still remains a special place in the development of harpsichord music. The composer who undoubtedly stands out from among many great composers of that period is François Couperin, an illustrative miniature master, called The Great (French Le Grand) by his contemporaries. It was him who set directions of development of the most important forms and music genres in France, contributing to a significant increase of their popularity. Illustrative miniatures started to appear in the French harpsichord music of the turn of the 18th century as a very popular form of music expression. They were small forms with programme character, richly ornamented, using a large arsenal of non-musical references and the theory of affects together with rhetorical and musical figures. The basic aim of this article is informing the readers about selected aspects of women topics in harpsichord pieces by François Couperin as he created the greatest number of music portraits of women. French baroque and rococo composers were not very eager to leave performance hints. We learn about the art of interpretation of that time mainly by studying theoretical treatises as well as on the basis of the preserved notes of the creators themselves and their biographers. Without any doubt, an important source of information can also be the titles of pieces. Understanding their meaning can be an important interpretation hint. Despite the appearing vagueness and doubts, searching for the connections between titles and texts, form and music contents of the miniatures seems fully legitimate. In the article we find translations and explanations of titles of all Couperin’s miniatures connected with women, as well as selected examples of scores. As part of this article refers to music genres with illustrative (programme) character, the author decided it was also legitimate to include selected reproductions of images of these famous women, portrayed by outstanding French painters, the paintings which inspired Couperin to write miniatures devoted to them. The titles seem to refer to three categories of the portrayed women. They are: portraits of women connected with the court, portraits of persons connected with music and the third group (the ones which do not belong to the two previous categories). In case of harpsichord miniatures by Couperin looking into the meaning of their titles can be very interesting. Thanks to that we also learn more about the composer himself, his activity, social status, and people around whom he could be found: all this allows to go deeper into the essence of his great music. Understanding the composer’s intentions in turn allows to interpret these unique, charming and sophisticated pieces in a better, more beautiful and wiser way.<br/><br/>
Authors and Affiliations
Ewa Rzetecka-Niewiadomska
Keywords
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