The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
Guise Musicians Collin and De Baussen
Toussaint Collin
Toussaint Collin apparently had two lodgings during the 1680, one at the Hôtel de Guise, the other at the Luxembourg Palace. In other words, he performed for Mme de Guise when she was not at court or in residence in her duchy; and the rest of the time he performed for Mlle de Guise. He also had two personalities, so to speak: sometimes he was a "musician," at others a "bourgeois de Paris." Owing to his extremely common last name, following Collin's trail through the Minutier Central and attempting to identify his close relatives, is like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The search did, however, uncover another Collin who had long been associated with the House of Guise. Given the extent to which the Guises chose their domestics from among families that had long been faithful to them, it is quite likely that Toussaint Collin was related to Collins who had earlier served the Guises.
Indeed, in 1664 François Collin was the prévôt at Ancerville, a Guise town in the Barrois region of northeastern France — a post he had inherited from Regnault Collin. François Collin was very close to a certain Samson Guyot, also of Ancerville, who was the godfather of a son born in 1654. During these same years, Duke Louis-Joseph de Lorraine's father was suing Charles Collin, the procureur fiscal of his barony of Joyeuse. Some of these Collins had come to Paris to work for the Guises. For example, Claude Collin had been the chef d'office of Mlle de Guise's brother Henri; and, after Mlle de Guise's death in 1688, his son, Charles Collin de Morambor, avocat in the Parlement of Paris, struggled to obtain reimbursement of the huge sums his father had loaned the Guises. Over the years the Collins had married other Guise servants, among them Branjon, the late duke's surgeon.
Was Toussaint Collin a cousin of Anne Jacquet? Her relative,
Marguerite Jacquet, widow Duchesne, had remarried Claude Collin,
controlleur général of the woods of Champagne. Marguerite Jacquet-Duchesne-Collin
was Philippe de Champaigne's mother-in-law, and we have seen that
Philippe de Champaigne was born into a family that had served the
Guises.
After 1689, Toussaint Collin disappears from sight.
For acts involving Toussaint Collin, see Chantilly, A 15, "Toussaint Collin, musicien, demeurant hôtel de Guise, un des musiciens ordinaires," April 19, 1689; MC, LXXXV, 329, transport to Philippe Goibault des Bois, Sept. 7, 1685, "Toussaint Collin, bourgeois de Paris, y demeurant au Palais d'Orléans." For the various Collins at Ancerville, see B.N., ms., P.O., 815, "Colin," fols. 131-170; P.O., 820, "Collin," fols. 29 ff; La Chesnay des Bois, "Collin." For Collins in the Guise service: Chantilly, A, 13, account no. 38, and Register 33, which shows that the Guises owed the Collin family 25,304 livres; and carton 16 shows that Claude Collin was Henry's chef d'office in 1657-58. When Claude Collin, the husband of Marguerite Jacquet, died circa 1637, Philippe de Champaigne was named guardian of Louise Collin, the couple's daughter, Bernard Dorival, Philippe de Champaigne (Paris, 1976), I, pp. 198, 201 and 205, where Louise Collin and Jean Jacquet (the Guise musician's great-uncle) are mentioned in the same act.
Henri De Baussen
Henri De Baussen doubtlessly was born just a short distance from the Hôtel de Guise, for his parents lived in the parish of Saint-Jean-en-Grève. When twins were born to Germain "Baussan" and Marie de la Vallée on February 1, 1649, the father stated that he was a "bourgeois de Paris." The couple's social origins can be deduced from the occupations of the godparents: the godfather was Simon Baussan, the domestic servant of sieur Clément, councillor in the Cour des Aides, and the godmother was the widow of Marie's relative, Louis de la Vallée, the secretary of "M. de Coudray, councilor" [B.N., ms. fr. 32588, p. 449]. If Henri was born in the same parish, his baptism entry apparently did not interest the person who later compiled a volume of selected baptisms. The Baussens left the parish during the 1650s, but they had returned by the early 1680s and apparently were living adjacent to the Hôtel de Ville, on the rue de la Tissanderie, which was replaced by the rue de Rivoli in the nineteeth century. (Henri De Baussen gave this address, but his mother neglected to give hers.) This suggests that the musician lived at the Hôtel de Guise but gave the notary his parents' address. The date of Henri's baptism can be deduced: when Henri married in June 1681, he stated that he was "majeur de 25 ans et plus," an assertion that implies a birth date of late 1655 or early 1656. In other words, he was the close contemporary of the other male musicians who received 3,000 livres in Mlle de Guise's will and who entered her service late in 1673 or in 1674.
If young Henri De Baussen was singled out by the Guises was it because they wanted to give a needy child from their parish a chance to better his lot through service to a great noble? Germain Baussen did indeed have certain social pretensions: by 1668 he had added a "de" to his name when he and his surviving twin son, Guillaume, witnessed the wedding of Nicolas René Boucher, a relative of the Bragelongnes [B.N., ms. fr. 32588, p. 668]. He nonetheless remained a "bourgeois de Paris" and bore that title on the latest document — while calling himself "écuyer" when circumstances (his son's wedding, for example) permitted or demanded.
Did the family connections or clientships that caused the Guises to notice Henri De Baussen involve a family that spelled its name "Baussan" — as Germain De Baussen had in the 1640s? The link is at best tenuous, but it does pass through the Hôtel de Guise, where "de Baussen" and "de Baussan" were familiar names.
In 1640, Philibert "Baussan" (like Germain "Baussan," he did not yet use a "de"), a young councillor at the Châtelet whose brothers held purchased offices in the Parlement, married Françoise Genoud, the daughter of a royal secretary. That the groom's father was lord of Ballainvilliers, near Longjumeau, cannot be taken as evidence that the Baussan's came from the southern half of Ile-de-France. Indeed, the Baussans had been firmly rooted in Paris for at least a century and had held a variety of lesser venal offices. At the time of his wedding in 1640, Philibert Baussan was about to take wing and soar to great heights in the military administration of his relative, Michel Le Tellier. (Le Tellier's mother was a Chauvelin and so was Baussan's.) As he and his brothers accumulated wealth, Baussan became a lender for interest. It was in this context that, in 1658, the various Baussans loaned Mlle de Guise a total of 93,500 livres and continued to claim the arrears due them over the next thirty-odd years [MC, CX, 136, which includes four separate rentes signed during the previous twelve months]. As for the Carliers, q.v., who also participated in this loan program, no evidence of even a distant cousinship between the Guise musician and his homonym has been found. Indeed, these money- and power-hungry men on the rise carefully hid their modest origins, doing all they could to conceal the name of the towns their ancestors had forsaken for Paris and fortune.
Henri De Baussen's career reveals the extent to which a musician "in ordinary" to a great noble could conduct other business on the side. On June 17, 1681 (almost seven years before Mlle de Guise's death), Baussen married Marie Baillon, the daughter of a maître faiseur d'instruments of the rue Simon-le-Franc. The bride brought a dowry of 1,000 livres, plus 300 livres worth of furniture, linens, and clothing. Since married couples rarely stayed on in the bachelor quarters provided by a domestic's master, the young Baussens moved in with the Baillons, who lived only a few streets from the Hôtel de Guise.
Among the signatures on the wedding contract was that of Nicolas Le Bègue, the famed organist [MC, CXXI, 131, marriage, June 17, 1681]. For four years or so, Le Bègue had been in close contact with Pierre Baillon, not only because the latter made musical instruments but because he also engraved music. Indeed, he had engraved the first of Le Bègue's books of keyboard music in 1676 and the second shortly afterward. Baillon promptly began teaching this craft to his son-in-law, who doubtlessly had acquired a certain degree of proficiency by copying out parts for the Guise musicians. (The master or mistress of a great household took pains to keep her domestics busy, and one of the most common chores assigned to those with good penmanship was copying documents. It is therefore safe to assume that the different Guise musicians spent a considerable amount of each day transforming Charpentier's partitions into partbooks.) Thus it was that, circa 1685, Baussen produced Le Bègue's Troisième Livre, where the clumsiness of the work suggests that this may have been the neophyte's first engraving project. Any rôle played in Baillon's or Baussen's training by Marc-Antoine Charpentier's brother Armand-Jean, master calligrapher and engraver, can only be guessed..
Despite these extra-curricular activities, Baussen remained a
full-fledged member of the Guise ensemble, singing in all the chamber
operas and religious works that Charpentier wrote for his protectresses
during the mid-1680s. Baussen later claimed to have been "musicien et
compositeur de feue Mlle de Guise," although the printer Ballard
asserted that, to the contrary, Baussen "n'a jamais été qu'un simple
chantre à gages." It has also been said that he had "composé quelques
airs de haute-contre." [The statement about his being "composer of Mlle
de Guise" comes from AN, V6722, June 28, 1690, no. 11.] When Marie de
Lorraine died, Baussen was willed 3,000 livres for his decade and a half
of service. In April 1689, when he received the first installment of 750
livres, he gave the rue Simon-le-Franc as his address. In other words,
even after the Guise ensemble was disbanded, he, Carlier and Beaupuis
probably remained in touch, for they lived only a few streets apart.
Baussen was also in touch with Loulié, through their common friend,
Henri Foucault, the music stationer who had recently opened a shop
called "La Règle d'Or."
Baussen's collaboration with Foucault soon
implicated the engraver in a suite with Lully's heirs. Without first
seeking the requisite letters and privileges, he and Foucault set about
engraving some "airs de differens autheurs," including a certain number
of songs that had been published by Christophe Ballard, and began
selling them at the "Règle d'Or." This entitled Ballard, France's "sole"
authorized printer of music, to demand a 6,000 livres fine. Baussen and
Foucault doubtlessly knew that they would be sued but were making the
production of this little book a test case to see if engravers could
circumvent the Ballard monopoly. There is little doubt that someone high
up in the government administration came to their rescue here, for
Foucault unexpectedly presented a "prétendu privilège surpris par ledit
Baussen, le 28 avril 1690 après coup." And, "depuis l'assignation donnée
à Foucault par lequel il est permis audit de Baussen de graver, tirer,
débiter ou faire débiter par qui bon luy semblera tous ses ouvrages en
musique tant vocale qu'instrumentale, faites ou à faire, mesme ceux
d'autres compositeurs." This truly blanket privilège, obtained
by "surprise" — that is, as a result of secret and quite underhand
dealings, was to run for eight years. Though Baussen was ordered to
cease and desist at once and to pay Ballard the requisite 6,000 livres,
Ballard saw the handwriting on the wall: he would have to reach a modus
vivendi with Baussen, Foucault and their investors. Indeed, all Baussen
and Foucault had to do was make sure that nothing they engraved had been
printed by Ballard. It was, for example, owing to the letters patent
that the pair had obtained "by surprise" that they produced J.B.
Moreau's La Musique d'Athalie that very year. The book
in question is probably the first entirely engraved opera published in
France and probably the first one for which the engraver himself held
the privilege.
By 1696 Baussen had moved to the rue de Reuilly, in
the faubourg Saint-Antoine. It was to this suburban setting that the
widower brought his second wife, Marie-Louise Prévost, the illiterate
daughter of a Parisian perfumer and the relative of such humbler
craftsmen as barrelmakers, blacksmiths and bakers [MC, IX, 530,
marriage, Nov. 19, 1696]. No inventory was made after Baussen's death,
depriving us of insights into his family and professional life.
For the intendant called "Baussan," see MC, LXVI, 104, marriage, April 15, 1640; Louis André, Michel Le Tellier, genealogies I, II and III; and Stephen Baxter, Servants of the Sword. I wish to thank Elisabeth Fau, "La Gravure de musique à Paris des origines à la Révolution (1660, 1789)," thesis for the Ecole des Chartes, 1977-78, AN, AB XXVIII 248, for having authorized the consultation of her thesis, with its discussion of Baussen's career and its citation of several notarial documents.