The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
My Reading of the Evidence: 1670
Choose the evidence for another year, 1670-1680
Note: this Musing was written in the mid-1990s
As Mardi Gras of 1670 approached, Marc-Antoine Charpentier began work on three lessons for tenebrae services, one for each of the three matins services of Holy Week. According to the composer, these works were for "vendredi saint" (H 91), "mercredi saint" (H 92) and "jeudi saint" (H 93), but the texts he set to music were actually part of the matins services of Holy Saturday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, respectively. The discrepancy is explained by the fact that, although matins services were technically recited after midnight, this inconvenient timing caused the French held to hold tenebrae services on the previous afternoon. As a result matins for Thursday were conducted on Wednesday afternoon, and so forth, for the rest of Holy Week. These three tenebrae lessons would seem to be the first works the composer wrote for the House of Guise, and he clearly intended them for a female convent. But which one?
An item in the Gazette de France suggests that these lamentations may have been written for the abbey of Montmartre. On Wednesday, April 2, 1670, "Monsieur assista, en l'Eglise des Prestres de l'Oratoire, aux Ténèbres, chanté par la Musique [du roi]: Madame estant allée pour le mesme sujet, en l'abbaye de Montmartre." 1 Each year during Holy Week, Philippe d'Orléans and his wife attended tenebrae services in one of the churches situated in the heart of Paris: Saint-Eustache, the Capucins, the Feuillants, the Carmelites of the rue du Bouloir. Appearing at a different church each day was a "pieux usage" carried out "en mémoire de ce que le Sauveur souffrit en différens lieux."2 But on April 2, 1670, frail Henriette d'Angleterre went to extraordinary lengths to show her piety: she ordered her chair-bearers to carry her up to the butte of Montmartre. (Not until Holy Week of 1676 would the abbess of Montmartre once again count Monsieur or Madame among the faithful who attended the tenebrae services that the benedictines of the abbey sang each year.) If Madame made this pilgrimage to Montmartre, was it because she had been invited to attend the service by the Guises, who were showing off their new protégé and were eager to hear him praised by their relative and friend?
The circumstances surrounding this invitation and the quality of the music sung that afternoon at Montmartre can be deduced from the narrative of a visit by the royal family to the same abbey in October 1660. That day the nuns sang works by Jean Veillot, a sous-maître of the royal chapel. In other words, Their Majesties were not only honoring one of their "people" by attending this service in the company of some fifteen high nobles, they were garnering glory for themselves. The Queen Mother however made a point of not only praising her servant openly but of commenting favorably about the entire service, including:
les voix harmonieuzes des Dévotes Religieuzes, lesquelles, d'un chant excélent, ont, ce dit-on, le beau talent: Leur muzique fut belle et bonne, mais ne faut pas qu'on s'en étonne, puisque ce Chantre renommé des Majestez tant estimé, que le sieur Veillot on apelle, étoit compositeur d'icelle; et pour montrer que ce Concert étoit d'un Maître très-expert, la Reine ne s'est pû défendre d'aller deux ou trois fois l'entendre, loüant ledit Veillot toûjours par de fort obligeans discours. Le Roy, la Reine son Epouse, avec des Seigneurs plus de douze, furent de mesme, expressément, jouïr de ce contentement; et l'Abbesse, des mieux apprize, Soeur de M. le Duc de Guize, à la Reine parla si bien qu'elle aima fort son entretien, cette illustre Supérieure ayant grand Esprit.3
The Duchess of Orléans clearly was making a similar gesture in April 1670, but she was honoring her husband's first-cousin, Mme de Guise and, through her, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, her protégé. Since Madame was the king's sister-in-law, it is not surprising to find the Gazette focusing upon her and making no mention of the Guises, much less of their new composer. Even though they do not allude to music, these lines seem to be the first published allusion to the performance of a work by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The press would not link Charpentier to Marie de Lorraine until March 1688, and even then the link would be a mere aside in the Mercure galant, a monthly publication edited by two of the composer's longtime collaborators.
The lessons for Wednesday and Thursday (H. 92-93) were written for a haut dessus and a dessus — perhaps Guise chambermaids, for young lay-women are known to have performed the lamentations of tenebrae in Parisian convent churches; or perhaps Benedictine nuns, for the abbey boasted several skilled musicians during the early 1670s. For the "Good Friday" lesson (H.91), Charpentier used a recorder and a low voice that at first glance seems to be his, that is, a haute-contre, that is, a very high tenor. Are we to conclude that Charpentier participated in this service beside an instrumentalist-chamber valet and some of the singing chambermaids of the Hôtel de Guise? Or should this possibility be ruled out on the grounds that these three lessons must be for a trio of nuns, since the composer used the same clef (C on the third line) for the lowest voice of a trio of nuns in the works he wrote for the Abbaye-aux-Bois?4 Of the two options, a performance by lay musicians would seem to be the more plausible. Indeed, two works for tenebrae that Charpentier composed in 1673 were destined for Mlle "Magdelon" et Mlle "Margot" (perhaps Magdelaine Boisseau, who at the time were serving the two Guise princesses; and either Marguerite Dubois, Marguerite de la Humière or Marguerite de Mornay, the latter "une des filles d'honneur de Mlle de Guise," who had left the household by April 16723A). That Charpentier wrote tenebrae music for these lay-women suggests that the singers of 1670 were not nuns. The composer's arrival at the Hôtel de Guise would therefore appear to have brought a revolution of sorts at Montmartre: the singing and viol-playing nuns that Jean Veillot had coached until his death, circa 1662, would seem to have been replaced by a lay ensemble that worked closely with two Guise protégés, Du Bois and Charpentier.
In short, these lessons were destined for an ensemble similar to the one that had sung at the male convent of the Feuillants in April 1656, in the presence of the king, the queen mother and the court: "Violes, clavessins et luts [...] firent des Concers de Muziques.[...] Mais, sur-tout, troix voix féminines bien moins humaines, que divines, par leurs beaux et célestes sons animérent fort les Leçons durant, presque, une heure et demie, de feu Monsieur saint Hierémie." 5 Since the music was performed in the church of a monastery, the three women can only have been lay-women. Indeed, another source states that the singers were "girls" and that they were competing for money: "Le Roy fut mercredy dernier au soir accompagné d'un cortege de carosse ouïr les tenebres aux peres feuillants au Fauxbourg St. Honoré, où l'on fit chanter les trois leçons de lamentations par trois jeunes filles avec un prix de 50 pistolles pour celle qui chantoit le mieux." 6 In short, hoping to attract wealthy Parisians, or even the royal court to their tenebrae services, religious houses are known to have engaged adolescent girls and lay instrumentalists. This adds further strength to the hypothesis that Charpentier's three lessons were sung by Guise chambermaids.
So, it would seem, does the presence of a "flûte" (which also was used in the lessons Charpentier wrote for Holy Week of 1673). Was this instrumentalist a male recorder-player — that is, an unidentified predecessor of Etienne Loulié, who in 1670 was a grand enfant de choeur at the Sainte-Chapelle but who would soon enter the service of the Guises? If so, these three pieces by Charpentier would seem to have been intended for performance by three young women who were to be accompanied by exactly the musical instruments (viols, harpsichord or organ and recorder) that are known to have been played by domestics in the service of high nobles. Indeed, men were not automatically excluded from performing in a abbey for women. It is even possible that Mme de Guise could authorize male musicians to enter the cloistered areas of Montmartre, for as a member of the royal family, she could authorize the presence of men in any convent that had been founded by the monarchy. Mlle de Montpensier did not hesitate to invoke this privilege whenever she visited one of these abbeys: "Tous les hommes qui étoient à ma suite entrèrent dans l'abbaye durant les deux jours que j'y fus, à cause du privilège qu'ont toutes les princesses du sang de faire entrer qui bon leur semble dans les abbayes de fondation royale," 7 she asserts. Montmartre was, of course, a royal abbey. If Veillot worked closely with the nuns during the 1650s and early 1660s, it doubtlessly was because the royal family had authorized his presence in the abbey precincts.
The sources show that, for the high liturgical holidays, the abbess of Montmartre did indeed engage skilled male musicians who doubtlessly performed on the public side of the grill that separated the Choir of the Dames from the parish half of the church. For her consecration in 1657, Renée de Lorraine hired the "musique du Roy, conduite par Monsieur Veillot." These hired performers "continued" a certain number of the liturgical chants that the nuns had intoned and, at the end of the service, they sang a "cantique de joye." During the same ceremony, one of the nuns, "soûtenue d'une viole touchée à la perfection," sang a hymn and a motet. In other words, for important liturgical events music at the abbey was posited upon a sharp contrast between predominantly male voices accompanied by a sizeable number of musical instruments and the ethereal sound of a woman's voice accompanied by a viol. Despite the strict rule that these Benedictines observed in their own lives, music at the abbey of Montmartre was known for its magnificence. The abbey even had "grands orgues," 9 and the nuns were known for their fine singing. Generation after generation, the nuns learned their plainsong from books that had been "notated" shortly after 1607 by a nun who begun her career at Fontevrault, who "sang like an angel" and who "mit le chant en la perfection où elle est maintenant [in 1667]."10 In addition, in 1674 the abbess was especially proud of two or three nuns with considerable musical skills.11 In short, the benedictines of Montmartre were among the rivals of the nuns of Longchamps whom the Mercure galant praised in 1678:
Les belles voix qui entrent dans les Concerts se font admirer et par leur diversité et par leur justesse. La Symphonie qui les accompagne est merveilleuse. Elle est executée avec une délicatesse qui répond à la recherche des beaux accords, et l'on diroit que ce sont autant de maîtresses mains qui touchent les Violes ou les Clavessins qui la composent. [...] Le mélange des Voix et des Instrumens, qui forment cette charmante Musique, est si doctement ménagé, que les meilleurs Connaisseurs demeurent d'accord qu'on ne peut rien entendre de plus beau dans aucun Monastère de Filles.12
And indeed, the account of Renée de Lorraine's consecration in 1657 stresses that the nun performed her motet "avec tant d'art et de Justesse que toute la Compagnie en demeura ravie."
The office and the associated chants printed specifically for the abbey of Montmartre in 164713 shows that the nuns chanted the psalms during the tenebrae services, but that they chanted neither the Jerusalem nor the other texts that Charpentier set to music in 1670. In other words, these musical laments could be added to the service without omitting a single line of the choir nuns' plainsong. The fact that the nuns normally did not sing these texts would seem to strengthen the hypothesis that lay musicians performed H. 91, H. 92 and H. 93.
The
ceremonial of the nuns14 sketches the living tableau that
Henriette d'Angleterre witnessed on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 2,
1670, during the matins service held in the romanesque church of
Saint-Pierre, which still stands, dwarfed by the bulk and obscured by
the shadow of the nearby basilica of Sacré-Coeur. In the seventeenth
century a grill separated the nuns' choir ("A," on Dumolin's plan15)
from the nave ("B," "C" et "D") where the population assembled to
meditate and to listen to the nuns' plainsong. If Mlle de Guise's
singers and instrumentalists did in fact participate in this service,
they probably were concealed in one of the aisles to the right and to
the left of the choir of the Dames.
That day the sacristine put the traditional seventeen candles into a special triangular candleholder — fourteen candles of ordinary wax, one for each of the psalms that the Dames would chant, and the fifteenth of the purest white beeswax. When the convent bell had rung four times to announce the approach of the nuns, the sacristine lighted these candles. After the nuns had quietly filed into their respective places in the "old Choir of the Dames," the priest advanced toward the high altar (located at "E") and began the service. After each psalm, the sacristine extinguished a candle. When they had reached the cantique Benedictus (also called the Cantique de Zacharie), the only remaining lights in the church were the altar lamp and the white wax candle. As the nuns intoned Christus factus est, the sacristine removed the final candle and hid it behind the altar. The sister who served as chanter then began the Misereri mei Deus, "d'une voix basse et misérable," and the rest of the nuns continued the chant until the sacristine had returned with the candle and placed it on the altar. At that point the grill was opened and the worshippers saw the nuns "en actions de grâce [...] ayans leurs voiles abbaissez et tenans leurs cierges allumez." A dull thud ended the service, as the celebrant struck his book with his hand to inform the nuns that it was time to leave the church.
The other two tenebrae services resembled the one held on Wednesday, except that a high mass preceded the matins of Thursday and no bells were rung on Friday. During the Good Friday service, the faithful could admire a cross covered with a black veil that stood near the black velvet reposoir that the benedictines had erected earlier that day near the grill that separated their choir from the nave. When the moment arrived to pray before this crucifix, Renée de Lorraine rose from her throne and fetched the cross, which she placed in the reposoir. Rremoving her shoes, she knelt before the cross. Each nun did the same in turn, according to her position in the convent hierarchy. Then, veils lowered and carrying lighted candles, the benedictines knelt before the grill and took communion.
The contents of cahier 1 suggest that Charpentier's protectors had no fixed devotional program and assigned no herculean tasks to their protégé during the first months of his stay at the Hôtel de Guise. The composer seems to have been writing for a more or less impromptu group of house musicians, and the Guises clearly were were feeling their way, unsure about what they wanted their composer in residence to do. At any rate, Marc-Antoine Charpentier added nothing to this first notebook for four whole months. This surprising inactivity may, however, be partly explained by two successive periods of mourning.
No sooner had Charpentier moved into the Hôtel de Guise than the death of Mme de Guise's maternal uncle, Duke François de Lorraine, in late January 1670 plunged the three Guises into mourning for the head of their family. Five months later they began another period of mourning, this time for Philippe d'Orléans' wife, who was Mme de Guise's first cousin. In other words, between late January 1670 and the autumn of that year, the new protégé of the Guises found himself with time on his hands. That is to say, the contents of his notebooks during the seventeen years he lived on the rue du Chaume, and the chronology of the pieces they contain, suggest that the Guises refrained from sponsoring musical events during periods of mourning. At most they allowed the lamentations of Holy Week — hence the tenebrae services of April 1670. (We shall see that, once again in mourning between April 1672 and March 1673, the princesses asked Charpentier for some new lamentations.)
Charpentier's inactivity during much of 1670 may also be related to Mme de Guise's pregnancy. The first symptoms sent the mother-to-be to bed in January; and although she subsequently resumed some of her activities, she did not take part in the funeral of her English cousin, Madame, in June. After a long labor during which she called for the belt and the head of St. Marguerite, who was not only her mother's patron but also the "Sainte qui d'un Dragon fit créver la sale Bedaine,"16 she gave birth to a son on August 28. "Le 28 sur les huit heures du matin, Madame de Guyze accoucha, heureusement, d'un Fils, apres 26 heures de Travail," announced the Gazette," et la Nouvelle en ayant esté aussi tost, portée à leurs Majestez, Elles en envoyèrent témoigner leur joye à cette Princesse, qui en a esté, aussi, complimentée de toute la Cour."17
Did the first performance of Charpentier's Jesu corona virginum (H. 53) for two women and a recorder (a text that was part of the daily lauds service and that was also part of the common of the virgins) take place in the abbey church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the context of a rejoicing similar to the one that followed the birth of the Dauphin's first son in 1682?
Les Religieux de l'Abbaye de S. Germain des Prez qui avoient envoyé la Ceinture & la Relique de Sainte Marguerite à Madame la Dauphine, qui la renvoya dans un des ses carosses, apres son heureux accouchement, témoignérent leur joye [...] par un Te Deum solennel, allant processionnellement à la Chapelle de cette Sainte, où la Relique fut exposée. Ils chantérent ensuite l'Exaudiat, & les autres Priéres pour le roy, au son des cloches & au bruit de quantité de boëtes. Le mesme jour, il distribuérent beaucoup d'aumônes: & le soir, il mirent plusieurs gros flambeaux autour de leurs clochers, & ils firent des feux dans la cour Abbatiale & dans la cour du Couvent: où l'on consuma beaucoup d'artifices de toutes sortes, lebruit des boëtes continuant toûjours, pendant que l'on distribuoit du vin à tous ceux qui en demandoient.18
In other words, we can be reasonably certain that the relics were conveyed to the Hôtel de Guise in the Duke's coach and, after the birth, were returned in pomp to the abbey on the Left Bank, but it is for the moment impossible to assert that a special lauds service was sung at the abbey, followed by fireworks and free wine for all passers-by.
As stipulated by the Guise-Orléans marriage contract, Louis XIV granted the child the duchy of Alençon, currently held by the newborn's maternal grandmother. This meant that Louis-Joseph de Lorraine, the infant's father, would be the last person to be called the "duke of Guise," for his son and his progeny would bear the title of a property belonging to the monarchy.
During these summer months, Charpentier prepared three pieces for women's voices, all intended for feast days in August. The first of them (H. 307) was for August 28, the Feast of Saint Augustine.19 Why Augustine? To please M. Du Bois, who at the time was working on his translations of the saint's writing? Is there a connection between this work and another of these three pieces (H. 306), which was intended for August 20, the feast day of Saint Bernard? Bernard was the founder of the Cistercian order and was therefore the patron saint of the Cistercian nuns of Port-Royal. Augustine's name conjures up images of Jansenism and of the tribulations at Port-Royal. During these first months of the so-called "peace of the Church," did Charpentier compose two works for Port-Royal of Paris? The hypothesis is appealing, but is it plausible? The piece in honor of Saint Bernard specifies the use of two recorders, instruments that seem inappropriate for the austere religious services held in the chapel of Port-Royal of Paris.
The recipient of the third work, Quae est ista (H. 426), can easily be deduced. These lines from the Song of Songs were sung in honor of the Virgin, during either the octave of the Assumption (August 15-22) or the octave of her Nativity (September 8-15).20 The text is, so to speak, polyvalent; that is, it includes bits of text for both events and could therefore be performed in either August or September. The feasts of the Assumption and the Nativity of the Virgin were, of course, particularly dear to Marie de Lorraine, born on the day of the Assumption and proudly bearing the name of the Mother of God.
In Charpentier's "French" series of notebooks these three short works are followed by seven months of inactivity that seem unrelated to events in the lives of the Guises. The composer was, however, far from indolent during these seven months. The first notebooks of his "Roman" series reveal that he wrote seven psalms, a Magnificat and a mass, all of which he copied into the five notebooks that he later numbered 1-V. (To these works should be added, perhaps, another psalm, H. 158, which begins cahier VI.) If my hypotheses about the raison d'être of the two series of notebooks is accurate, this means that Charpentier received commissions from a person or persons in the Guise circle. To be exact, he clearly was approached by two different patrons, one who had at his disposal a mixed choir with haut dessus but no dessus, and another with a choir where the highest voices were dessus and that had only a few haut dessus at his disposition. This second choir is an oddity in Charpentier's notebooks and, early in 1671, this group (which is indicated by maroon type in the table for 1670) disappears from the autograph manuscripts.
Identifying these patrons is complicated by the fact that Charpentier did not first transcribe all the works for the first patron into his notebooks and then all those commissioned by the other. Instead, the works for these two distinctly different choirs are intermingled, which suggests that he either was working simultaneously for two patrons over a period of several months, or that he wrote all the pieces for both groups within a very short time and copied them out indiscriminately, without separating the two groups of commissions. Something about the patrons and the circumstances for which the works in these five cahiers were written can be deduced by first separating the works into the two groups that follow (and by including the psalm in cahier VI, which is shown in brackets):
| large
ensemble with haut dessus H 151 Confitebor H 153 Dixit Dominus H 154 Beatus Vir H 155 Momento Domine [H 158 Lauda Jerusalem] |
large ensemble with dessus
H 149 Laudate Pueri H 150 Nisi Dominus H 72 Magnificat H 152 Laudate Dominum omnes gentes H 1 Messe H 281 Domine salvum fac regem |
The picture begins to come into focus when the liturgical services in which these texts are recited are cited in lieu of the title of the work:
| large
ensemble with haut dessus H 151 Sun. vespers, Christmas H 153 Sun. vespers, Dec. 8, Christmas, Jan. 1 H 154 Thurs. vespers, Christmas [H 158 Daily vespers, Dec. 8, Jan. 1] |
large ensemble with dessus
H 149 Sun. vespers, Dec. 8, Jan. 1 H 150 Wed. vespers, Dec. 8, Jan. 1 H 72 Daily vespers H 152 Mon. vespers, Christmas H 1 (mass) H 281 (Domine salvum) |
Most of these texts were also recited on Saturday during the petit office de la Vierge. Let us, however, discard the hypothesis that each group of works was written either for a single (and interminable) vespers service, or for weekly service that honored the Virgin each Saturday. Let us instead reason according to the hypothesis that each of the two patrons commissioned a group of works for a series of related services, both of which took place in December 1670
The second chart makes it is clear that, with the exception of the mass and its Domine salvum, both of the patrons were focusing on vespers — apparently vespers connected with Advent and the Christmas season. As the second table shows, despite these common preoccupations, each patron had a different type of service in mind. Take, for example, the works written for the unusual ensemble that is shown in maroon type.
This patron was clearly preparing an event that was going to extend over several days, perhaps for an entire week. In other words, these works would seem to have been commissioned for an "octave," that is, an important week-long celebration that included at least one mass en musique followed by a Domine Salvum in honor of the king, and that also included several sung vesper services, to be held on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and perhaps on another day that cannot be determined — for the Magnificat (H. 72) was recited every day of the week during vespers. In other words, any search for the patron of the works composed for the ensemble that regularly called upon a choir with dessus should focus on an "octave," most likely a canonization or the blessing of an altar or of church; for, during such an octave, elaborate vespers were sung each day and at least one high pontifical mass was celebrated. The fact that Charpentier did not compose psalms for eight vesper services that does not materially affect this hypothesis. The musician or the music master who usually composed for the unidentified church surely would have insisted on doing at least half the work, in order to maintain his self esteem. Indeed, the search for the patron who commissioned these pieces should focus on a church that, for one reason or another, could not possibly refuse Charpentier's contributions to the splendor of the octave.
A plausible candidate can be proposed, but only as a guide for further research. The Gazette states that, on Saturday, December 27, 1670, the Franciscan nuns of Sainte Claire of the Ave Maria of Alençon opened an octave celebrating the canonization of Saint Peter of Alcantara. The Archbishop of Narbonne began the week-long event with a pontifical mass. Vespers services were held on each of the following days, starting with Sunday. The final day, Saturday, January 3, 1671, brought a salut "chanté par une excellente Musique" — doubtlessly composed of singers recruited in the duchy.
We will recall that a new duke of Alençon had been born only six months earlier. Until his birth, Marguerite de Lorraine, Mme de Guise's mother, had been the duchess of Alençon; and now, increasingly frail, she was moving ever closer spiritually to the Franciscans and to the "Clarices," as the nuns were popularly called. In fact, the Dowager of Orléans was at the time preparing to take the vows of the Third Order of Saint Francis (Mme de Guise would follow in her mother's footsteps: she would "honor" the Clarices and would give them the "très-glorieux titre de ses plus chères filles."21 During her sojourns at Alençon, Mme de Guise often visited this convent and, during her long widowhood, would pray and eat with the nuns almost every day.) Did a notable of Alençon, eager to honor the new duke, commission this music from the protégé of Isabelle d'Orléans? Or was the unknown patron none other than the maternal grandmother of the infant duke of Alençon? That is to say, Marguerite de Lorraine herself? This possibility is suggested by the fact that the Gazette deigned to mention a canonization in this provincial city. Rarely were such events described in this publication — unless they redounded favorably on a member of the royal family. In other words, if the canonization at Alençon was deemed newsworthy, it may well have been that one of the king's close relatives had contributed to the splendor of the event but preferred to remain anonymous to all but "people in the know."
Who might the other patron be? He clearly was preparing a series of musical vespers to be sung on Sundays and on the principal feast days of the Christmas season — that is, for the Feast of the Conception of the Virgin (December 8), for Christmas Day (which fell on a Thursday that year) and for the Feast of the Circumcision (January 1, 1671, also a Thursday.) Several facts can be deduced about this patron. First of all, he had several haut dessus at his disposition, which may imply the use of female voices and which immediately calls to mind Perrin's opera singers, who had begun singing for the Jesuits of Saint-Louis (but who probably were being engaged by other Parisian churches as well). This patron was clearly associated with a church that held musical vespers. Once again, the Jesuits come immediately to mind for, having been forbidden to hold Sunday masses lest they attract the faithful away from their parish churches, the church of Saint-Louis had taken to holding sumptuous sung vespers. And, since the Jesuits did not sing or chant, the vocalists were hired singers, not the choir of clerics and choirboys to be found in large parish churches or cathedrals.
Each year during Advent, the Jesuits increased the number of vesper services and called upon famous orators such as Bourdaloue. For example, one year later, in 1671, they announced that, in addition to the usual Sunday vespers services, Saint-Louis would offer — beginning at four o'clock on December 16, the "saluts qu'on a coûtume de faire pour honorer la celebrité des sacrées couches de la Ste Vierge, avec exposition et bénédiction du très Saint Sacrement."22 These Advent vespers traditionally continued into the new year, for each January 1 the King and the knights of the Order of the Holy Spirit processed through Paris and the king then attended vespers at Saint-Louis. "Le premier jour de l'an, Leurs Majestés vont toujours aux Jésuites," asserts Mlle de Montpensier.23 Thus, on the morning of Thursday, January 1, 1671, the Feast of the Circumcision, the King and Monsieur, wearing their collars of the Order and preceded by all the knights, attended a service at the Feuillants. In the afternoon, Their Majesties and Monsieur "allérent en l'Eglise de S. Louïs de la rüe S. Antoine, accompagnées de Monsieur [Philippe d'Orléans], de Mademoiselle d'Orléans, & de grand nombre de Seigneurs, & Dames et y entendirent la docte et éloquente Prédiction que le Coadjuteur de l'Archevesque de Reims [Le Tellier] fit avec admiration de toute la Cour: puis Vespres chantées par la Musique de la Chapelle."24
We know that Marc-Antoine Charpentier worked for the Jesuits in the 1680s and 1690s, but is it possible that, as early as the final months of 1670, he received an "extraordinary" commission from the Jesuits of the rue Saint-Antoine? Several types of clues point in this direction. For example, Father Verthamon — who had been directing the Society's college at Orléans ever since his return from Rome — was transferred to Paris at the end of 1670 and remained in the capital until his death in 1686. (Verthamon was the descendent of a devoted Guise supporter during the League and the uncle not only of the Talon-Voisins, friends of the Charpentiers, but also of another Jesuit, Father Voisin, who was implementing for Mlle de Guise an old legacy to the Jesuits of Rouen.) Vespers for Advent, Christmas and Circumcision seem to have been "extraordinary" events at Saint-Louis. Did Fathers Verthamon and Voisin speak to their superior on behalf of their family friend — and emphasize, of course, that any commission must be "extraordinary" and not offend the composer in ordinary to the church? The "similijesuit" paper that Charpentier used for the notebook into which he copied H. 158, a psalm associated with the Feast of the Circumcision, adds further evidence that this was indeed what took place. In other words, the presence of this watermark in cahier VI would seem to suggest that Charpentier composed at least one work for the Jesuits in December 1670 or January 1671 — most likely the Lauda Jerusalem (H. 158) that seems to have been written for the musical vespers service held at that church on January 1, 1671, but perhaps the entire corpus of psalms in cahiers 1 to V.
Another possible and really quite plausible patron should not be overlooked by researchers: the Theatines of Sainte-Anne-la-Royale, who each year celebrated the couches de la Vierge and set up a Neapolitan-style manger scene Indeed, the Grande Mademoiselle recalled that on Tuesday, December 16, 1670, while she was happily planning her marriage with Lauzun, Mme de Guise set off for the Theatins with the Queen: "La reine sortit de son oratoire avec une mine qui nous sépara," she observed petulantly, always ready to take offense, "et elle alla aux Théatins à la neuvaine. Je la suivis; elle ne me dit rien. Ma sœur étoit avec elle." In other words, we find Mme de Guise attending Advent vespers at the church where she will obtain a private chapel in 1675, and these vespers are known to have included music sponsored by the women of quality who attended these services.
Notes:
1. Gazette, April 1670, p. 336.
2. Office de la quinzaine de Pasques selon l'usage de Rome et de Paris (Paris, 1727), p. 246.
3. Loret, Muze, III, p. 267.
4. See H. 240, O sacrum pour 3 religieuses; H. 173, Miserere (where the allusion to a haute-contre was added circa 1690); and H. 288, 109, 110, 111, 114, 116, 117, 118 and 322, composed for the nuns at the Abbaye-aux-Bois.
5. Loret, Muze, II, p. 182.
6. Archivio di Stato, Florence, Med. del Prin., 4891, newsletter dated April 11, 1656.
7. Montpensier, Mémoires, I, p. 29.
8. B.N., ms. fr. 22431, fols. 109 ff.
9. Dufourcq (Pardon me for not looking up exactly which work on organs ! ), p. 156.
10. Blémur, L'année bénédictine, III, p. 17.
11. Med. del Prin., 4767, file 4: February 13, 1674: Mme de Toscane was coming with an Italian girl who "possesses music," which means that the abbess will not have to assign to the Grand Duchess one of her nuns, "who in the number of two or three possess music marvelously well."
12. Mercure galant, October 1678, p. 32.
13. Les Ténèbres de la Semaine Sainte pour le religieuses de Montmartre (Paris: Sevestre, 1647), a publication given as a gift to the abbey by Anne-Marie de Lorraine.
14. Cérémonial des religieuses de l'ordre de S. Benoist (Paris: Chevalier, 1626), published for the Benedictines of Monstervilliers in Normandy, pp. 124 ff.
15. See Maurice Dumolin, "Notes sur l'abbaye de Montmartre," Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France 58(1931), pp. 203-213.
16. Robinet, Lettres en vers, August 30, 1670.
17. Gazette, August 1670, p. 844.
18. (Vatican... from J. de la Gorce... find citation..... which I hope to come upon one day in my drawers and drawers of files!)
19. It surely is a coincidence that the Duke of Alençon was born that day.
20. "Quae est ista qui ascendit de deserto deliciis affluens" is part of the office for September 15 (that is, for the final day of the octave of the Nativity of the Virgin), and "tota pulchra est amica mea [...] veni, veni de Libano, veni sponsa mea, veni coronaberis" is part of the matins for August 18, Brevarium romanum (Paris: G. Josse, 1682), pp. 729 and 672.
21. Chambray et Duval, "Documents historiques relatifs au couvent de Sainte Claire d'Alençon," Bulletin de la Société historique de l'Orne 2(1883), p. 132.
22. La Liste véritable et générale de tous les Prédicateurs, B.N., Rés. 4o Lk7 6743, for Advent of 1671. Saint-Louis apparently did not make the publisher's deadline in 1670, but this omission surely does not mean that the Jesuits did not hold their "customary" services on Sunday and Thursday.
23. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 250.
24. Gazette, January 1671, p. 23.
25. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 219.
26. Darrican, Les Théatins à Paris, pp. 40-41.