The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
My Reading of the Evidence for 1671
Choose the evidence for another year, 1670-1680
Note: this Musing was written in the mid-1990s
Charpentier soon added to cahier VI a Hymne du Saint Esprit (H. 54) for three male voices. That is to say, he set to music the full text of Veni Creator Spiritus, a hymn that was frequently sung for Pentecost. During the seventeenth century, however, the expression "du Saint Esprit" often appears in conjunction with the word "mass," and more specifically, the "Messe du Saint Esprit," a service during which the officiants and the faithful sought divine inspiration at the beginning of a tenure, at the consecration of a cleric or at a nun's taking of the veil. One of the more famous masses "of the Holy Spirit" was was the so-called "messe rouge" celebrated each November for the opening of Parlement. A search in the gazettes and the memoirs of the day for an allusion to a "messe du Saint Esprit" that was celebrated during the first quarter of 1671 and in which a friend of the Guises participated, has uncovered a service that meets these requirements.
On February 7, 1671, the Feast of the Purification, François Harlay de Chanvallon, the new archbishop of Paris, was admitted to the Confraternity of Notre-Dame, which met in the church of Sainte-Madeleine, near Notre-Dame. A pontifical mass was sung in his honor that day; and the next day, February 8, the members of the confraternity assembled for a "Messe du Saint Esprit [...] avec une excellente Musique à Te Deum."1 During this mass, Harlay was enthroned as the confraternity's "abbot." Charpentier's cahier VI does not, of course, contain a Te Deum, but does the absence of such a work rule out his participation in the service, alongside another composer? That is to say, one of the music masters of the capital who usually worked for the confraternity could have supplied the Te Deum, while Charpentier supplied the Veni Creator Spiritus that gave the mass its name.
At first glance, the idea that Charpentier might have written for this service seems far-fetched. Why would the new archbishop and the members of the confraternity single out the Guises' virtually unknown composer? The genealogical archives of the time reveal that the idea is less far-fetched than it seems at first glance. François Harlay de Chanvallon was extremely proud of the fact that he was related to the House of Lorraine.2 Indeed, like most of the actors in our exploration of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's world, Harlay belonged to a family that had served the League. His grandfather had been the "grand maître de l'artillerie pour la Ligue" and intendent of the affairs of young Mme de Guise's maternal grandfather, the Duke of Lorraine.3 François Harlay himself had been "nourished in the house" of the Cardinal of Joyeuse, Mlle de Guise's maternal great-uncle.4 He had been more than "nourished" by Joyeuse, who was archbishop of Rouen; he had been prepared to succeed the archbishop. Thus Harlay became archbishop in 1652 and remained in Normandy until his nomination to Paris in January 1671. This is not to imply that news of Charpentier's prodigious talent had found its way to the archepiscopal palace of Rouen. Harlay had spent half of 1670 working closely with Gabriel de Roquette (Mlle de Guise's "Tartuffe") during the sessions of the assembly of the clergy, which opened in June 1670 and continued well into December. Could Harlay have failed to hear about the genius to whom the Guises had just offered their protection? Could he have refused a scarcely veiled suggestion that he might wish to give the young fellow an occasional extraordinary commission? Surely not, especially when hiring this unknown composer was, so to speak, the key to favor with his "cousins" the Guises and, even better, to favor with Isabelle d'Orléans, the king's first cousin.
Although these identifications of Charpentier's patrons are tentative, it is quite likely that, if the relatively unknown composer received outside commissions during the final months of 1670 and the first months of 1671, they came from the "friends" of his protectors. That he later gave these notebooks Roman numerals suggests that he considered the compositions to be "extraordinary" and that each lot of compositions brought him either money or a gift — perhaps something along the lines of the silver candlesticks with which Mme de Chaulnes had rewarded Dassoucy in Rome. During these same months, on the other hand, the notebooks that eventually formed the "French" series remained blank.
This does not mean that nothing was happening at the Hôtel de Guise. In fact, the final days of January 1671 brought feverish activity to the rue du Chaume, where the household officers were preparing a lavish fête. Marie-Angélique-Henriette de Lorraine, the daughter of a Lorraine d'Harcourt and, consequently, a close cousin of the Lorraines of Guise, had become engaged to the Duke of Cadaval. The wedding was performed in the chapel of the Hôtel de Guise on February 7. Mlle de Montpensier, who was angry with her aunt, refused to attend the lavish party that was held the following day. Mme de Sévigné provides a quasi-ocular description of the event:
Voici ce que j'ai su de la fête d'hier: toutes les cours de l'hôtel de Guise étoient éclairées de deux mille lanternes. La Reine entre d'abord dans l'appartement de Mademoiselle de Guise,5 fort éclairé et fort paré: toutes les dames parées se mirent à genoux autour d'elle, sans distinction de tabourets; on soupa dans cet appartement. Il y avoit quarante dames à table; le souper fut magnifique. Le Roi vint et fort gravement regarda tout sans se mettre à table. On monta en haut où tout étoit préparé pour le bal. Le Roi mena la Reine et honora l'assemblée de trois ou quatre courantes et puis s'en alla souper au Louvre avec la compagnie ordinaire.6
The Florentine resident in Paris concurred: the banquet was "superbissimo," "magnifica," and very costly — but it was a good investment because it had pleased the royal couple.
The supper was so "magnificent" that Mme de Guise's brother-in-law was consumed with curiosity about the details of the table setting, which, he was sure, "could serve as a norm to imitate when giving banquets." (This description is available on this site, among the "Fugitive Pieces.") Cosimo therefore urged his resident in Paris to obtain a description of the "design of the table," which clearly was "most ingenious." The director the offices at the Hôtel de Guise eventually provided a long description that permits us to measure what the word "magnificent" meant when used to describe a banquet. The principal banquet table was, this household officer asserted, twenty-four feet long and seven feet wide. In the center stood twelve little silver basins full of "all sorts of flowers, although they are scarce at this time of year," and nine candelabras with nine candles each. The food was displayed on a total of thirty- five large silver platters or dishes. In addition, four silver platters were placed at the end of the table for the Queen, Monsieur and Mademoiselle (and for a few fortunate ladies who had been singled-out by the Queen). The food included four different soups, four entrées, four kinds of roast meat, four entremets, plus fruit. The entrées were presented on four "machines," each constructed of four porcelain bowls and nine pots in the finest export porcelain, "the whole filled with the very best and the rarest" edibles. Around these machines were displayed the roasts and 128 different "salads." The fruit, he continues, had been arranged on gilded pyramids that were four levels high and that held nineteen porcelain dishes filled with "the finest raw fruit that could be found at this time of year, garnished with all sorts of flowers," creating a "rather fine effect." Fourteen other porcelain dishes held "all sorts of dried fruit, fruit pastes, marzipan and biscuits,"and near them, in other priceless export china — 252 pieces in all — were "all sorts of liquids" and "all sorts of creams, some of them whipped." "As for the other tables," concluded the domestic, "it is pointless to describe how they were served, for this one was the most important."
Mayolas tells us that this sumptuous meal was "suivy du Ballet & du Bal, doux passe-temps du Carnaval,"8 which implies that, in addition to the banquet and the ball, the Guises had organized a theatrical entertainment with music and dancing — and had doubtlessly prepared staging and costumes that were no less sumptuous than the banquet table. The fact that no music for this magnificent fête ("une des plus belles fêtes qu'on puisse voir," declared Mme de Sévigné, despite the fact that she had not been an eyewitness) does not appear in Charpentier's notebooks supports the hypothesis that he was primarily a composer for the Guise chapel and that, for the ball, Mlle de Guise authorized M. Du Bois to hire violins (perhaps Jean Edouard and his associates?). It is, on the other hand, quite possible that members of the Guise household had prepared a "ballet" and sang some popular tunes selected from Du Bois' musical library.
Indeed, Philippe Goibaut was quite knowledgeable about popular music. A few months before the banquet, Cosimo de Medicis had expressed a desire to procure both the music and the words of "the most cheerful songs that are presently in vogue and that are sung in ladies' salons [nelle loro domestiche conversazione]." Gondi, the resident in Paris, was asked to do the selecting and, with the Grand Duke's permission, to "make his pleasure known to Monsieur Du Bois [Monsù Bué], who resides with the Guises" — but to do so only as a last resort. Cosimo doubtlessly referred Gondi to Du Bois because he recalled seeing Du Bois in action, directing the house musicians, and had admired his taste. If the Grand Duke and the resident in Paris preferred not to involve Du Bois, it clearly was in order to avoid having to reciprocate by supplying him with Italian music — or at least to keep to a minimum their obligations to the intendant of the Guise music. Gondi therefore asked the advice of Mme de l'Hôpital deVitry, "who has very good taste in this sort of music and who knows the best musicians of the court." (Née Pot de Rhodes, the Duchess was the daughter of the grand maître des cérémonies; so the resident had every reason to trust the taste of a woman who had been born into that dynasty of specialists in court etiquette.) Mme de Vitry spoke to a "bravissima Professora" and obtained "8 or 10" songs. Avoiding Du Bois proved to be rather costly: Gondi exchanged a diamond worth 80 livres for that slim volume of French airs.9
The spring of 1671 brought a period of calm. Mme de Guise was pregnant again and was avoiding the critical glances of the courtiers. "Madame de Guise étoit à Vincennes," wrote her half-sister, "mais elle ne se montra guère; elle étoit toujours derrière; elle étoit grosse. Elle avoit déjà un fils."10 Then, in mid-March, Her Royal Highness miscarried of a second son shortly after at visit to Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye: "L'acouchement avant terme de Madame de Guise nous a un peu allarmé," noted Saint-Mesmes (the faithful servant who had carried her train at Saint-Jean-de-Luz), "mais elle a esté si bien secourue par l'ordre de Madame [...] qu'elle en a esté quitte en peu de temps, c'est à dire qu'elle a soufert d'horibles douleurs pendant six heures après son acouchement."11 Mme de Sévigné was less optimistic — and bitingly witty, as was her wont: "Mme de Guise a fait un faux pas à Versailles; elle n'en a rien dit: elle est accouchée, à quatre mois, d'un pauvre petit garçon, qui n'a point été baptisé. Voilà un bel exemple pour se conserver, et pour ne point cacher ses fausses démarches. [...] La Guisarde beauté [...] a été trois jours prête à mourir."12
During Her Royal Highness's recovery from this brush with death, Charpentier copied only five devotional works into cahier 2, all of them for two women's voices and a few instruments. (When he does not specify "flûtes" — that is, recorders — the two upper instruments were probably viols.) Two of these pieces seem to have been intended for a mass that was sung in the chapel of the Luxembourg Palace on Sunday, June 14. That day, in the presence of the general of the Franciscan order, Marguerite de Lorraine, dowager duchess of Orléans, took the vows of the "Third Order of Penitence" and, with several ladies of her entourage, donned the habit of this order. The mass must have been very moving, for the Dowager was in failing health and had suffered a series of minor strokes. Were the Veni sponsa Christi (H. 17), the Domine salvum fac regem (H. 282) and, perhaps, the elevation Ave verum corpus (H. 233)14 written for this event? It appears likely, for the antiphon Veni sponsa Christi could be sung to remind a new nun that she must henceforth wear the "crown of virginity."15
The Guise composer's leisurely schedule continued into the summer. Charpentier wrote only two pieces for his protectors that summer and copied them into the notebook he would eventually call cahier 2. Both works are for September: Sicut spina (H. 309) for September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin; and Jubilate Deo (H. 310) for September 17, the Feast of the Impression of the stigmata upon Saint Francis.16 The latter work would seem to have been intended for the chapel of Dowager of Orléans. Or was it written for the a service at the Capucins of the rue Saint- Honoré, which had been founded by Mlle de Guise's maternal grandfather, Frère Ange de Joyeuse? Were these works actually performed in 1671? Or did the blow that Fate had in store literally place them on Charpentier's shelf for more than a year?
Fate's horrible blow smote the young Duke of Guise. When fair weather returned in April 1671, Louis-Joseph de Lorraine started northward with the King and the court. Early in May they halted at Chantilly, where they were received and entertained by the Grand Condé. (Guise therefore attended the banquet that provoked Vatel's suicide.) Later in the month, the Duke took part in the festivities at Dunkirk, where Louis XIV was conferring with envoys of the King of England, among them the Duke of Monmouth, the royal bastard. Charmed by young Guise, Monmouth invited him to accompany him to London. Louis-Joseph and his suite — which included the "principaux de sa maison," including his écuyer Gaignières and Sieur d'Alzau, "qui étoit auprès de lui comme une manière de gouverneur"17 — made their entry into London in the three coaches of the French ambassador and were soon installed in an apartment that had been prepared for them. The Gazette goes into considerable detail about the Duke of Guise's stay at the court of Charles II. Charles gave him:
six valets de pied pour le servir durant son sejour: et le mena disner, avec Elle, chez le duc d'Ormond, puis à la Comedie [...]. Les jours suivants, ce Prince receut la visite de tous les principaux seigneurs du Royaume [...]. Il a esté pareillement traité par les plus grands Seigneurs, avec toute la magnificence imaginable [...]. Le Roy luy voulant faire voir Hampton court, qui est sa maison de plaisance, l'y mena luy mesme, dans sa Berge, l'ayant fait parer, auparavant, des plus beaux Meubles de la Couronne; & au retour de cette Promenade, le Prince voulant prendre Congé de Sadite Majesté, Elle le retinst pour trois jours, afin de luy donner le Divertissement d'une Comédie, entremeslée de Musique, & d'Entrées de Ballet, qu'on avoit preparé pour cet effet. Il y assista dans la Loge, & sur le mesme Banc de Leurs Majestez: & il en prit Congé au sortir de là, & en receut, de rechef, toutes les marques possibles d'une estime, & affection singulière. [...] Le lendemain, il partit, merveilleusement, satisfait de cette Cour. Il arriva à Douvres, ayant passé par Rochester, où la Garnison se mit sous les Armes, & les Officiers le vinrent complimenter: ensuite de quoy, il s'embarqua pour Repasser en France, sur le Iach du Duc d'York, que ce Prince luy donna pour ce passage, comme le meilleur de tous ceux d'Angleterre.18
Momentarily freed from the benevolent but suffocating surveillance of his "bonne tante" Marie, the young Duke reveled in the lavish entertainment given in his honor. Having tasted these pleasures, did he dream of one day ordering his composer to prepare similar divertissements for him? That the Gazette devoted so much space to the comings and goings of Louis-Joseph de Lorraine suggests that the prince's star was ascending in 1671. It is therefore quite possible that the prince experienced moments of temptation during which he dreamed of emulating the theatrical ventures of his late uncle and predecessor. And, when Mlle de Guise and the young Duchess read this account in the lovely gardens of their hôtel, they doubtlessly also began making plans for the coming social season — and these plans doubtlessly involved Charpentier. The royal favor that accrued from the banquet they had given after the Cadaval-Harcourt wedding, and the increasing affection that Louis XIV was showing for the Duke of Guise, gave the princesses every reason to look forward to a period of enhanced glory for the House of Guise. Fate decided otherwise. In July, the Duke of Guise rejoined the French court and moved slowly toward Paris at the King's side. No sooner had he reached the Hôtel de Guise than he fell with smallpox: "Il l'avoit prise à Compiègne, dans un logis, où il étoit logé, où elle étoit."19
Conforming to the image of the faithful wife or mother that one finds in various writings of the time, Mme de Guise et Mlle de Guise refused to leave the Duke's bedside: "Owing to the affection that Mme and Mlle de Guise have for him, they have not left the room where he is lying," asserted Rabatta, the Florentine resident in Paris.20 Since Isabelle d'Orléans had had smallpox in her youth, she was not risking her life by caring for her husband in this way, yet she nursed him so assiduously that her devotion became legendary. The homely young woman whose face had been pockmarked since her adolescence was portrayed as a princess who had risked her beauty and her life to care for her husband:
M le Duc de Guise fut attaqué de cette espéce de maladie, qui se communicant par la contagion, et qui causant ordinairement la perte de la beauté, si elle ne cause celle de la vie, est plus que toutes les autres apprehendée des jeunes personnes. Qui auroit pû blâmer la Princesse, si se laissant entraîner par sa frayeur, et se reposant sur le zele des Officiers de sa Maison, elle se fut précautionnée contre le peril par une prompte retraite? Mais c'est ici que vous allez voir un grand exemple de tendresse et de fidelité. Cette femme forte se résout à tout ce qui peut lui arriver de plus fâcheux. Elle se devoue à la conservation d'une vie qui luy est plus chère que la sienne. Elle sacrifice à son Epoux une beauté dont elle n'a jamais pris soin que pour luy plaire. Son attachement plus fort que la mort, ne laisse plus dans son coeur de lieu à la crainte. Tout le monde tremble pour elle à la vûë du péril auquel elle s'expose: Elle seule ne tremble pas. Elle s'arrache d'entre les mains d'une Mere, qui fait en vain tous ses efforts pour la retenir. Elle paroît oublier tout ce qu'elle a d'ailleurs de plus cher; cet Enfant [Alençon] même si précieux, qui luy coûta depuis tant de larmes; et uniquement occupée de la maladie de son Epoux, elle se renferma pendant quatorze jours auprés de luy, sans perdre un moment de vûë ce triste objet de son inquiétude et de sa douleur.21
Louis-Joseph de Lorraine died on July 30. Guy Patin penned a critique of the charlatans who had cared for the Duke:
M. de Guise, âgé de vingt-deux ans, est mort ici d'une fièvre continüe, avec une petite vérole et une oppression de poitrine sans avoir été saigné, et sans médecin; il n'a eu pour secours iatriquequ'un grand charlatan d'apothicaire, nommé [Pierre] Baurains, qui est, à ce qu'il dit, plus savant que tous les médecins, qui lui a donné des remedes cordiaux et des poudres de perles, et un nommé du Fresne, soi-disant médecin, qui estoit ci-devant valet de chambre de feue madame de Guise: his gradibus transeunt principes in terram Australem, nulli mortalium adhunc cognitam. Les sages ne savent rien de cette géographie que par la grâce des jansenistes, ou par la voie de révélation.22
Tales circulated about the physician's misconduct: "La commune oppinion veust que ce prince soit mort pour avoir esté trop seigné," observed Rabbatta on July 31. Mme de Sévigné echoed this "opinion" when she sniped at Marie de Lorraine:
Je suis accablée quand je pense à la douleur de Mlle de Guise. [...] Vous savez comme je crains les reproches qu'on se peut faire à soi-même. Mlle de Guise n'a rien à se reprocher que la mort de son neveu: elle n'a jamais voulu qu'il ait été saigné; la quantité de sang a causé le transport au cerveau: voilà une petite circonstance bien agréable.23
Mlle de Guise surely reproached herself over and over for not having consulted other, more respected physicians. Her refusal to allow her "dear nephew" to be bled would return to haunt her in 1675.
During the night of July 30 to July 31, 1671, any Parisians hurrying along the rue du Chaume and lifting their eyes to the façade of the Hôtel de Guise, witnessed an unusual spectacle. Candles were flickering behind the windows of the urban château, and silhouettes were passing back and forth in silent ballet, preparing funeral hangings. By dawn the body of the Duke of Guise was "exposé sous un Poële, garni d'Ecussons, aux Armes du Defunt, en broderie, dans une grande Sale, tendüe de Deüil, avec trois lez de velous, aussi, couverts de mesmes Ecussons, ainsi que la première cour de l'Hostel, un vestibule, et la grande porte."24 Mlle de Montpensier sent a message of condolences, but she refused to come and sprinkle her cousin's body with holy water, asserting that the Lorraines of Guise "en avoient si mal usé pour [Lauzun] et moi que je ne croyois être obligée de garder aucune bienséance avec eux."25 She was, of course, alluding to her aunt, Mlle de Guise, who "se donnoit de grands mouvements" during the Lauzun affair; but she was also thinking of "toute la maison de Lorraine," for "ils ne marchèrent plus qu'en corps pour combattre contre moi."26
On the evening of July 31, the Duke's body was carried to his parish church, Saint-Jean- en-Grève, "à la clarté de quantité de flambeaux, de cire blanche, que tenoyent les gens de Livrée, tous en Déüil et marchans à la teste du Convoy." The procession included a great number of clerics, representing the various religious houses for which the Guises had been patrons for several generations:
Les Capucins des trois Couvents de cette Ville, s'y trouverent, selon ce qui se pratique par ces Peres, pour les Princes de la Maison de Guyse, tant pour honorer la Memoire du Pere Ange de Joyeuse [l'aïeul maternal de Mlle de Guise], qu'en consideration des obligations qu'ils ont au Cardinal de Lorraine, de leur Etablissement en France. Apres eux, marchoyent les Religieux de la Mercy, qui assisterent pareillement, à ce Convoy, pour reconnaissance des graces qu'ils ont receües en diverses occasions, de la Maison de l'illustre Defunt. Tous avoyent des Cierges, et estoyent suivis des Prestres en très-grand nombre, accompangé du Gentilhomme de la Chambre, et de l'Escuyer [Gaignières], avec deux Aumosniers, dans un carosse de Deüil, attelé de six chevaux carapaçonnez de drap noir, environné des Pages dudit Prince defunt, chacun avec un Flambeau, et suivi de ceux des Princes, et Princesses de la Maison [c'est-à-dire, les Harcourt, les Chevreuse, les Armagnac], avec plusieurs autres que les principaux Seigneurs de la Cour avoyent envoyez, et dans lesquels estoyent les Gentilshommes et Officiers du Defunt [dont M. Du Bois and perhaps Marc-Antoine Charpentier]. En cet ordre, le Convoy marcha au milieu d'une foule incroyable de Peuple, assamblé sur le passage, autant pour l'accompanger de ses larmes, que pour en voir la Pompe funèbre.27
This procession of July 31 drew upon many of the images of the so-called "processions of the Ligue," with their white candles, their monks, their heraldic banners and the crowd of bystanders who lined the streets.
When at last the lugubrious procession reached the church, continues the narrative:
le corps y fut déposé sous un Poësle de velous noir chargé des Armes du Defunt en broderie, préparé dans le Choeur, et environné de grand ombre de Lumières, ayant ensuite des Vigiles des Morts, esté mis en Dépost dans la Chapelle de la Maison jusques à ce qu'il soit conduit à Joinville.
.Louis XIV, "qui cherissait fort" Louis-Joseph de Lorraine, was said to be "extrêmement affligé" by the Duke's death. He ordered that "le corps de Mr le duc de Guise repose quarante jours en l'Eglise de S. Jean en Greve [... et que] le deuil de ce prince soit confondu avec celui de M. le duc d'Anjou," the king's young son whose illness and death had forced the King and the duke of Guise to hasten their return to Paris two weeks earlier.
Of the sources expressing shock at this untimely death, Coiffier's letter to Antonio Barberini states perhaps the most succinctly the rôle that Louis-Joseph de Lorraine had begun to play in the realm and the sad state of affairs at the Hôtel de Guise in early August:
Ce Seigneur étoit fort aimé du Roy et suivoit toujours Sa Majesté avec une dépense de grand éclat, comme ont fait ceux de cette Maison. Il y avoit cette différence que l'économie de Mademoiselle de Guise l'auroit fait durer sans crainte de ruiner sa Maison. Madame la duchesse de Guise et M.s.d. d'Alençon sont, pour laisser passer le mauvais air, retirés au Palais Mazarin;[...] ce ne sera que pour quinze jours. Ils sont encore au Couvent de Montmartre où est abbesse Mad. de Guise.29
Note the emphasis on the enormous sums the Duke had spent in order to live up to the glory of his ancestors, but also on Mlle de Guise's determined control of the family's vast wealth.
Several letters dispatched to Grand Duchess Vittora in Florence provide insights into the anguish the Guise women and their entourage were feeling. The young widow penned a brief note to the recently-widowed Grand Duchess that expresses with great elegance the anguish in her heart. (The Grand Duchess was, of course, the mother-in-law of Mme de Guise's sister, known as "Mme de Toscane.")
Madame ma cousine,Il n'y a personne qui se puisse imaginer l'excez de mon affliction de la mesme maniere que V.A. qui a souffert les atteintes d'une pareille douleur. Je me pourrois consoler à vous entretenir de la mienne si elle n'estoit des plus terribles, ce qui me manque c'est d'avoir assez de vertu pour bien supporter toutes ces peines qu'il a pleu à Dieu m'envoyer, elles sont d'une qualité que je ne puis songer à aucune consolation.
Isabelle d'Orléans30
The same packet of dispatches contained a note from the dead man's insane mother, the Duchess of Angoulême who, with a phonetic spelling common among noblewomen of her generation, lamented: "C'est un prince qui est extremement regretté et qui donne une aflicsion à sa famille qui durera longtemps. Madame et Mlle de Guise sont touché à un tel point c'on ne peut les consoler, aussy font-telle une perte qui tire les larmes des ieux de tout le monde." Saint-Mesme's letter focuses on the two grieving women and their worries about little Alençon:
On peut dire que la mort de Mr de Guise n'a pas moins surpris et affligé toute la Cour qu'avoit faite celle de feue Madame [the wife of Philippe d'Orléans] l'année passée. Madame et Mlle de Guise se sont renfermée à Montmartre pour y passer quarante jours où elles ne voient personne si ce n'est la maison royalle. Monsieur les y fut voir dès le lendemain qu'elles s'y furent retirées. On fait cepandant aerrer l'hostel de Guise en y brulant force choses. Le petit enfent y est toujours et tous les medecins concluent qu'il ne le faut point changer d'air. On s'est contenté de bien baricader son apartement en sorte qu'il n'y ait aucune communication avec le reste. Il seroit à souhaiter que Madame et Mlle de Guise fussent dans une maison où elle[s] puissent recevoir des visites pour faire quelque diversion à leur douleur.
And the royal family did not fail to pay the appropriate condolence visits: "Notre aimable et parfaite Reine (un des jours de l'autre semaine)," wrote Lagravète in one of his doggerel newsletters, "à Montmartre se transporta, et dans ce Couvent visita et Madame et Mademoiselle de Guise, qui sont le modelle d'une éclantante piété, et voyant là sa Majesté, ces deux Princesses l'accueillirent et pareillement respondirent tant à sa Royale bonté qu'à sa grande civilité."31 The Florentine resident paints a slightly different picture of this visit: although the two Guises begged Marie-Thérèse to leave immediately because smallpox had broken out in the nearby village, and one of the nuns had caught it, the Queen resolutely did her duty. Their Highnesses of Guise apparently did not leave their seclusion at Montmartre until approximately September 10, almost a month after the forty days of seclusion stipulated by etiquette had come to a an end. Indeed, neither woman is mentioned as being present at the lying-in-state and funeral of the late Duke.
For three weeks Louis-Joseph de Lorraine's body lay in the family chapel at Saint-Jean-en- Grève. His heart, on the other hand, was borne to the abbey of Montmartre soon after his death, where it was received by abbess and the grieving princesses. During the three weeks that the body lay in state near the Grève, the black hangings and the ornate bier decorated with the arms of this princely house reminded parishioners of the deep mourning into which both the Guises and the royal family were plunged.
August 22 brought a solemn service in honor of the dead, presided over by Claude Malier, bishop of Tarbes and first almoner of the dowager duchess of Orléans. (He was the brother of Mme de Bailleul, the protectress of the Edouards). The brief reference to a "pontifical mass" mentions no music, but it is impossible to imagine a mass in memory of the Duke of Guise that did not include music similar to that performed in 1656 at the funeral of his paternal grandmother, Henriette-Catherine de Joyeuse, where "la Sainte et lugubre Musique y fut touchante et pathétique, et tira des larmes des yeux."32 The visual splendor of the funeral pomp can be imagined thanks to engravings of other princely biers; but cahier 3 of Charpentier's archives — a separate notebook that contains a Messe pour les trépassés (H. 2) and its Pie Jesu (H. 234) — permits a reconstruction of the magnificent sounds that accompanied this ceremony. What ensemble did Charpentier have in mind when he wrote this mass? Did he write it for the musique du roi, which Louis XIV (who had agreed to pay for the funeral) may well have loaned to his first cousin?33 Or did Mme de Guise instead call upon the singers who worked for Pierre Perrin, one of the creators of French opera, a man who had long served her father and with whom she had remained in contact?34
At seven in the evening, as the mourners were leaving the church after the mass, the Duke's coffin was placed on a wagon pulled by eight horses "carapaçonnez de Drap noir, parsemé de Croix de Lorraine, de brocart d'Argent." The dead man's household officers joined the convoy, which started off for Joinville and "marcha [...] avec un silence qui rendoit ce Spectacle, encor, plus lugubre... ."35 It took them a week to reach Joinville, for the procession stopped along the way at various Guise properties, and at each stop a service was held in the prince's memory. Louis-Joseph de Lorraine was interred near his ancestors in the church of Saint-Laurent of Joinville. An engraved plate had been nailed to the coffin:
[...] décédé le 30 juillet 1671, en la vingt-unième année de son âge, après avoir été onze jours malade de la petite-vérole, a été mis dans ce cercueil, attendant la resurrection des morts [...] et a laissé un fils unique, seule espérance de son illustre maison. Requiescat in Pace.36
The sumptuousness of this funeral pomp is suggested by the amount that the widow paid from her own pocket: "30,000 livres pour le dueil de madite Dame de Guyse et de sa maison."37
The two princesses did not journey to Joinville. They spent their time of seclusion, which lasted until mid-September, in an extremely agitated state of mind and were preoccupied with worldly concerns. As a minor, twenty-four year-old Mme de Guise could not become her 11 month-old son's guardian. Marie de Lorraine, who had been Louis-Joseph's guardian until the day of the Duke's death (at twenty-one, the duke was also a minor) wanted to carry out identical duties for the new duke of Guise, little François-Joseph de Lorraine, Duke of Alençon. During a long talk with the King in early September, Mme de Guise stated that, if she and Mlle de Guise agreed to have separate quarters at the Hôtel de Guise, she would stay on there. Her prime concern was, however, that Mlle de Guise would do nothing contrary to the interests of little Alençon and would agree to let the child's mother be made guardian.38 This led to an epistolary war.39 The Guise financial situation was extremely complex, owing to the enormous debts incurred by Duke Henri and to Marie de Lorraine's scarcely less massive borrowing during her guardianship of Louis-Joseph. Indeed, the situation was so complicated that Louis XIV appointed Jean-Baptiste Colbert to work with the two princesses, in order to "contribuer quelque chose à leur consolation"40 — in other words, to give them financial advice.
As one can imagine, money triggered the dispute between the two women that soon erupted. Fifty-six year-old Marie de Lorraine expected to continue being the regent for her house during little Alençon's minority — which would not end for a quarter-century — and being regent meant controlling the family purse-strings. The young widow protested vehemently and insisted that, if Mlle de Guise wanted to be guardian, she must first submit a written account of all the income received and the expenditures incurred during Louis-Joseph de Lorraine's minority. Marie de Lorraine retorted that, since she was the late Duke Henri's closest heir, all of Louis- Joseph's property now belonged to her and, she further asserted, it so happened that her nephew owed her 900,000 écus (2,700,00 livres!). Thus she thought it appropriate that her treasurer, Jean-François Le Brun, be named onerary guardian for the child and, as such, take all financial matters into his hands. Isabelle d'Orléans replied that she might be a minor, but she had the right to name her child's onerary guardian, and that this person should not be one of Mlle de Guise's friends or servants, for "si le tuteur oneraire estoit à sa devotion, ce seroit un sujet perpetuel de division." Indeed, Isabelle insisted, Mlle de Guise's behavior was extremely suspect. Her Royal Highness then began to denigrate Mlle de Guise and repeated the accusation that at least two million livres had been stolen from the Duke of Alençon, through dubious transactions in which Mlle de Guise had mixed her own property and property that technically belonged to her late nephew.
Marie de Lorraine possessed a very effective secret weapon, and she did not hesitate to brandish it during these discussions. She haughtily declared that, "if she is molested, she will make public the marriage she secretly contracted with Montrésor, by whom she had children who were nursed and raised in Holland." Doing this would, of course, "alienate from her family 120,000 francs of the income she receives on her property."41 Another Guise family secret can scarcely have been pushed aside during these discussions. Louis-Joseph de Lorraine had a sister or perhaps a half-sister, Mlle de Joyeuse, "élevée incognito sous le nom de Mlle d'Essay pour rendre son frère fils unique."42 Upon her brother's death, Mlle d'Essey (or d'Assy) "devint duchesse et heritière." Instead of claiming her rights, the young woman became a nun at the Abbey of Paraclet after the death of her six-month old bastard son by the Marquis de Blanchefort. (Though "Mère Eugénie" eventually moved to the Abbey of Saint-Antoine in Paris, her existence does not seem to have posed future problems for the house of Guise, nor would it complicate Mlle de Guise's estate in 1688.) Cowed by these threats to bring family secrets into the open, Mme de Guise's advisors deemed it best to "give Mlle de Guise a say in the child's guardianship" and not get involved in the complicated financial dealings of the child's great-aunt Mlle de Guise and his maternal grandmother the Duchess of Angoulême.43
Exasperated, the petite-fille de France insisted that it was impossible to "compare someone with her blood to Mlle de Guise, or a mother to an aunt." Marie de Lorraine was claiming, she asserted, to be her equal: "elle s'est voulu attribuer une entière égalité qui ne lui appartient pas." Isabelle d'Orléans did not rule out the possibility of granting Mlle de Guise control over the minor's property, but she would not tolerate her claim to "avoir part en l'éducation de M. le duc d'Alençon." Just think, echoed Mme de Guise's advisors, of the "honneur qu'elle a fait à la maison de Guise" by agreeing to marry Louis-Joseph de Lorraine. To further demonstrate her social superiority, Princess Isabelle became preoccupied by the appropriate way to address her late husband's aunt. The petite-fille de France would henceforth pattern her usage on that of her cousin the King. Since the monarch always called the princes of the House of Lorraine his "Très chers et amez cousins," she would agree to call Mlle de Guise her "Très chère et très aimée cousine," despite the rancor that had characterized the women's conversations and correspondence since August 3.
It soon became clear that principal contention between the two princesses centered less on money than on the Duke of Alençon's "education." When Isabelle d'Orléans and Marie de Lorraine used that word, they were not debating the merits of one pedagogical approach over another; they were thinking of the child's moral and spiritual training. Mlle de Guise was categorical about wanting François-Joseph to be raised in a pious environment far from court. Indeed, the King having "taken upon himself the care of the Child," the Dowager of Orléans "prepared a superb apartment in her palace" for the little Duke.44 Fearing that the infant would become a dissolute courtier, Mlle de Guise wrote Marguerite de Lorraine, the infant's maternal grandmother, and proposed a compromise: she would give up all her other claims in return for being granted control over the "education" of François-Joseph. She expressed her confidence that, owing to "votre amitié pour moy et de celle que vous voulez avoir pour mon petit-neveu [Alençon]," Madame would support her on this matter:
Je ne pretends point contrarier le dessing que Mr de Braque [qu'on avait proposé comme tuteur onéraire par Mme de Guise] auroit d'estre à Madame de Guise, Madame et elle sont maitresse absolues à cest egard, et de l'en faire pouvoir par le Roy si elles jugent convenable à leur service: mais non, Madame, qu'il soit compris dans les lettres patentes qui feront la tutelle de mon petit-neveu. Pour des raisons insurmontables, je ne puis jamais convenir que cest employ soit donné ni à Mr de Braque ni a personne du monde. J'en ferai la fonction comme je l'ay faict avec succes et approbation dans le tutelle du Pere. Vous êtes, Madame, si sage et si éclairée [...] et je me flatte que vous seres de mon avis, que vous voudrez continuer vos offices après de Monsieur Colbert, et pour les interests de mon petit-neveu et les miens.45
"No one from the world": this is the "unsurmountable" reason that compelled Marie de Lorraine to declare war against Isabelle d'Orléans in August 1671. She wanted, at all cost, to make sure that the child would not be raised at court, where he was likely to absorb, along with his goat's milk, a taste for the debauchery that typified life in "the world." If the child imitated Louis XIV's propensity for mistresses or Philippe d'Orléans preference for mignons, he was sure to become a dissolute and leisure-loving courtier — and an Orléans rather than a Guise. No, the Balafré's great-grandson must be raised in the strictest orthodoxy and, above all, in the veneration of all the traditions of the House of Guise. Thus Marie de Lorraine fought fiercely, in the name of the "seule espérance de son illustre maison."
After two months of negotiations, royal letters-patent granted Mlle de Guise the right to supervise the "education" of the child, while Colbert was appointed onerary guardian. When she attained her majority, Isabelle d'Orléans would be admitted to the guardianship council, but she would have to work closely with Le Brun, the Guise treasurer. Should Colbert decide to take a neutral position on every issue, the two votes of the Hôtel de Guise would inevitably overrule the single vote of the Luxembourg.
Despite these bad feelings, Isabelle d'Orléans and little Alençon remained at the Hôtel de Guise — apparently without actually dividing the urban palace into two separate residences. Her Royal Highness was basking in the heroic image she had created for herself during her husband's illness: for example the Florentine resident praised her for nursing the dying man and for "leaving her palace with only two women and, totally incognita and without footmen, going through the muddy streets to various churches to pray for his recovery. He evoked her frequent laments after the Duke's death and expressed his conviction she would remain faithful to her husband's memory. Indeed, there was already talk that she might marry her recently-widowed cousin (and godfather) Monsieur; but she quickly pointed out that she had a son to raise. For several months after her return to Paris, the widow saw virtually no one: "Comme M. de Guise étoit mort de la petite vérole, quoique les appartements fussent séparés, elle n'avoit vu personne que deux ou trois mois après."46 She nonetheless sent a message to her half-sister, Mlle de Montpensier, saying that she felt "toutes les envies du monde d'avoir l'honneur de [la] voir, de rentrer dans [ses] bonnes grâces." But, when Montpensier appeared at the Hôtel de Guise to assure Mme de Guise of her conviction that the young widow would live "bien avec moi" in the future, Isabelle d'Orléans "ne lui répondit pas un mot." "Je fus la plus étonnée du monde de son silence," says Mlle de Montpensier, "mais je ne devois pas l'être de son peu d'esprit; il y avoit longtemps que je la connoissois pour n'en avoir guère. J'y demeurai peu."47 Some time later, Isabelle paid a visit to the Luxembourg but only spoke with her mother, not her half-sister. "Cela m'étonna," comments the latter. "Enfin, elle y revint, mais une fois seulement, et nous ne nous vîmes plus. On me dit que Madame ne vouloit pas que sa fille me vît, puisque je ne la voyois point."48
It was a trying time for all concerned. Isabelle d'Orléans treated Pier Filippo di Bardi, Cosimo de Medici's envoy, rather coldly when he reached Paris on September 18, 1671, to express his master's condolences. She was at the Luxembourg but was "totally occupied with receiving private visitors" and did not wish to see him. An audience was finally granted him at the Hôtel de Guise on September 27. As he ascended the great new staircase to the étage noble, he was met by "many of Mme de Guise's gentlemen, who ushered me into her Chamber." She received him warmly, standing. The gentlemen then conducted him down to the ground-floor apartment of Mlle de Guise, whom they found in bed. (In other words, the aging princess had chosen the setting in which women of her generation traditionally accepted condolences.) Her Highness "made me put on my hat and sit down," he recalled. Having fulfilled his diplomatic duties, Bardi was escorted back to his coach by the same group of gentlemen.49 In mid-November 1671, when Carlo Gondi, the new Florentine resident, went to pay his official compliments to the Guises, Mme de Guise received him coolly and then, having accepted his letter from the Grand Duke, she "suddenly dismissed" [him] and informed him that she must dash, for when he arrived she was "about to go to little Alençon's apartment." In short, this period of grief apparently caused Her Royal Highness to forget her manners and to behave quite bizarrely. A week later, when Gondi returned to pay his respects to Mlle de Guise, like Bardi he met with a very different reception. He was ushered into the presence of Mlle de Guise, whom he addressed in French in order to avoid the sticky problem of rendering the French word "Altesse" into a less prestigious- sounding Italian equivalent. (Altezza was reserved for heads of state.) Once again Marie de Lorraine was in bed — but she asserted it was because she was suffering from a fluxion of the cheek. Ten days later Gondi repeated the visit. This time, "in exaggerated terms," Her Highness evoked her obligations to the House of Medici "contracted during the time she was in Florence" and asserted that she always remembered the ducal house in her prayers.50
This period of all-out war among the princesses, this dynastic calamity and this lingering fear of contagion had, of course, obliged the musicians of the Hôtel de Guise to fall silent once again. The fall of 1671 must have been an anxious time for Charpentier. With the Duke of Guise dead, there was no reason for his presence at the Hôtel de Guise. (Indeed, were some of the works that he had written for September 1671 and had copied into his cahier 2 performed as scheduled?) A long interregnum had begun, and with it a year of mourning. Even worse, Mlle de Guise and Mme de Guise were fighting about everything. Would they fight over their ownership of Charpentier? Would they end up abandoning him by tacit agreement, rather than see him work for the other? Even if Mlle de Guise decided to continue her protection for him, she was already 56 — so elderly, for that era, that she was likely to die at any time.
Other patrons put an end to these worries circa November 1671. Judging from the contents of cahier IX, it was compiled for services in December, after several friends of the Guises approached the composer. One of them was connected to Rouen and, more specifically, to the cathedral of Saint-Nicaise. The name of François Harlay de Chanvallon, former archbishop of Rouen and now archibishop of Paris immediately comes to mind, for, if my hypotheses are correct, Harlay had sent a commission Charpentier's way just a year earlier. Another name should however be proposed: François Rouxel de Médavy, his successor, who came into possession of the archepiscopal see in December 1671 and who was consecrated on February 17, 1672.51 Médavy was the son of Pierre Rouxel de Médavy, comte of Grancey, a League zelot. He was also the brother of Gaston d'Orléans' chamberlain. There is, however, another possibility — a more plausible one: since the text in honor of Saint Nicaise was written by Father Commire, S.J., these pieces may well have been written for the Jesuit college at Rouen, which Mlle de Guise's maternal great uncle had founded.
Were the three chants in honor of Saint-Nicaise (H. 55-57) composed for the day in December 1671 when Médavy took possession of his see? If so, this would mean that cahier IX dates from 1671 and is more or less contemporary with cahiers VI to VIII. This is not impossible. All it would take to get these notebooks slightly out of order would be for the composer to begin a new notebook in December 1671, having forgotten that some pages remained empty at the end of the notebook that he later called cahier VI (which apparently dates from the spring of 1671). 1671. Committed as he clearly was to saving paper, it would be normal for him to return to cahier VI for his Messe à 8 voix (H. 3), which seems to date from early 1672. Or was he working concurrently on the mass and on the various commissions for December ? And, having begun his personal copy of the mass, did he simply made a new notebook for the latter works?
Whatever the reasons for this slight chronological discrepancy, which clearly did not result from the works themselves but from the order in which the composer copied them into his archives, one thing is clear: cahier IX contains works for the month of December. (That said, the entire notebook appears to have been recopied during the 1690s, for it is on Jesuit paper and the treble clefs are those of the 1680s and beyond. Still, Charpentier put the new copy back in the original chronological order, rather than among his compositions of the 1690s.)
In other words, supposing that my chronology of the works in the Roman series is correct, this means that there was a hiatus of eleven months (February 1671 to January 1672) between folio 5 verso and folio 6 recto of cahier VI. That is to say, the works composed for December 1670 fill cahiers I to V; those for December 1672 begin in cahier XII. Two years therefore separate cahiers V and XII. If works for December 1671 exist, they should appear approximately mid-way between cahier V and cahier XII. They apparently do in fact exist and are to be found in cahier IX. In other words, before he numbered his notebooks (which apparently did not take place until the 1680s), the future cahier IX must have been taken out and put back slightly out of order. That is, instead of putting it in front of the three notebooks that contain the Messe à 8 voix, it was put after the mass.
Let us therefore suppose that cahier IX — apparently recopied onto Jesuit paper in the 1690s — contains works written for December 1671. A number of these works would be appropriate for the Jesuits (and this would explain why Charpentier felt free to recopy or rework them for the Jesuits two decades later). There are two psalms for vespers (H. 160 and H. 161) to be performed by a large ensemble and that use either texts that were recited during the principal high feasts of that month or for the Feast of the Circumcision on January 1, which Louis XIV customarily attended. There is also a duet for two dessus to be sung on December 8, the Feast of the Conception of the Virgin. That particular text, which is part of the Roman ritual for the Immaculate Conception, was recited at the Jesuit church of the rue Saint-Antoine on December 8.52 To this slender clue can be added another that is far more solid. Post-1688 Sieurs "Beaupuy" and "Dun" were among the singers performing the Nisi Dominus (H. 160) and the Lætatus sum (H. 161). In other words, Pierre Beaupuis and Jean Dun, two basses who sang routinely at Saint-Louis during the 1680s and 1690s, took part in this vesper service. In 1671, Beaupuis was singing for Robert Cambert and Pierre Perrin, the creators of French opera; and Mme de Sévigné tells us that, in January 1672, the Jesuits hired the performers of the "Opéra" — that is, of Perrin's academy. The presence of Beaupuis' name in a work written for December 1671 (but recopied, it would seem, in the 1690s) does not, of course, prove that the Nisi Dominus and the Lætatus sum were commissioned by the reverend fathers of the rue Saint-Antoine; but the combined clues provided by the paper, the names of the performers and the text for the motet in honor of the Conception of the Virgin (H. 313) suggest a Jesuit commission.
Pierre Beaupuis' presence among the musicians who performed theses psalms is extremely revealing about the circle with which Marc-Antoine Charpentier was in contact shortly after his return to France. He was working closely with the musicians whom Robert Cambert was directing, and we have already seen that — like Charpentier — Cambert had cousins bearing the relatively uncommon name Croyer. Charpentier was also doubtlessly also in close contact with the holder of the privilege for royal opera, Pierre Perrin, who had remained in the Orléans circle after the death of his master, Gaston d'Orléans. (Perrin's debts would be paid off in August 1672 by Mme de Guise, who demonstrated in this manner that her family did not forget its former servants.53) Through Beaupuis, Charpentier doubtlessly came in contact with other admirers of the new operatic genre, among them Sieur Filz, who ran an academy on the rue de Sèvres of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and who would organize the performance of two "sung" tragedies in 1673, composed by Sieur Le Seur, the dancing master at his school. The pupils who performed these tragedies were helped by Beaupuis and by Mlle Cartilly (who sang in Perrin and Cambert's Pomone in March 1671 and who had also sung for Dassoucy54), who played the leading roles, and by Pierre Beauchamps, the famous dancer who was at the time Molière's choreographer and with whom Charpentier would soon collaborate.55
The available evidence, although frustratingly scant, suggests that there was a connection between the participation of Perrin's singers in the tragedies performed at Filz's academy and the presence of "Bellinzani fils" in the student cast. During negotiations about Perrin's debts in 1671, Bellinzani the father had been Perrin's arbitrator.56 It is reasonably certain that Marc-Antoine Charpentier knew the Bellinzanis, for the schoolboy's sister was engaged to the son of Antoine Ferrand and Isabelle Le Gauffre, Étiennette Charpentier's good friends. In short, Marc-Antoine was beyond any doubt in close touch with Perrin and Cambert's troop in December 1671. Another tantalizing piece of evidence is the appearance of Bellinzani the elder's name in the Florentine correspondence for these years: in October 1670, exactly a year before Colbert was called in to help settle the late Duke of Guise's estate, Mattias Bartolomei, a Florentine gentleman sent to the French court, chatted with "Bellinzani, intendant of the Duke of Mazarin's household and currently Monsieur Colbert's head clerk."57 This brief allusion to Bellinzani not only seems to explain why there was such enthusiasm for operas at Filz's academy, it suggests that, by late 1670, the interest in converting this Italian art form into a French one had enmeshed the Hôtel Colbert and the Hôtel de Guise and the Luxembourg, and that the occupants of these three prestigious residences were in close touch with the Florentine community in Paris — which for years had been serving as a de facto cultural service, shipping company and booking agency for Italian artists and musicians. These ties strengthened as the months passed: by May 1673 Gondi described Bellinzani as both "mio amico" and a close friend of Vittorio Siri, the Florentine agent in Paris who penned lengthy diplomatic reports each week; and he added that Bellinzani was a wonderful source of information because of the "familiarity he has with the Colbert household."58 Even more tantalizing is the fact that Charpentier himself did not lack connections to the Colbert household during these years, for the brother of his family friend, Elisabeth Grimaudet, managed one of the Grand Colbert's estates.
Charpentier's ties to the burgeoning world of opéra would soon become even more close. Having made a brief journey to London in 1672 to sing at the court of Charles II,59 Beaupuis returned to Paris and, before the summer of 1674, became a musician in ordinary to Mlle de Guise. There he would work closely with Étienne Loulié, Cambert's cousin who had joined the Guise ensemble circa October 1673. (Loulié's and Beaupuis' names appear in order of seniority at the top of the list of Marie de Lorraine's musicians in March 1688.) One can therefore surmise that if Beaupuis entered the Guise household, it was in part because of his fine voice, but also because he was connected to Perrin and Cambert; and that Loulié was selected as a musician partly because he was both intellegent and a musical jack-of-all-trades, and partly because he was Cambert's cousin (and, perhaps, Charpentier's distant cousin as well?)
The final work in cahier IX is entitled In nativitatem Domini canticum (H. 314). The text begins with the antiphon for laudes of Christmas Day (the Mémoire of 1726 — which, I surmise, referred to comments on covering sheets or little slips of paper removed when the manuscripts were bound — confirms this use by calling it a "Motet pour le jour de Noël"), and then proceeds to an adaptation of several verses of psalm 97, which was recited for Christmas matins. Did the very first canticum in Charpentier's notebooks owe its existence a commission from the Jesuits of Saint-Louis? It is not quite sure, for, instead of the usual haut dessus, this work was written for a quartet in which the highest voice is a dessus. In other words, the canticum may well have been written for a different friend of the Guises.
Cahier IX originally contained several more sheets that were lost between 1726 and the binding of the manuscripts a years later. The memorandum of 1726 lists the following works:
Allemande grave pour un reposoir [to which H. 515 may allude]
Branles pour des violons à 4 parties
Plusieurs courantes, sarabande espagnole, bourée, menuet, passepied
Prelude pour le Sacrifice d'Abraham [H. 402]
Symphonie pour 3 violons
Elevation: Dilecte me, etc, (incomplete)
That the allemande was for a reposoir suggests that these works were composed for the first half of 1672. Indeed, this would seem to be the work cited in cahier X as belonging to the Symphonies pour un reposoir (H. 515) and which was supposed to be in "cahyer IX." The lost prelude to the Sacrifice d'Abraham may have been reused for existing work by that name, which appears in cahier XXX (of 1681) and which had a prelude in "cahyer XI." (Is the numeral "XI" a slip of the pen, an inversion of the two letters of IX?) One can only guess at the event for which Charpentier composed those dances, one of them a four-part work for violins.
Notes
1. Gazette, February 1671, p. 131.
2. B.N., ms. D.B. 349, "Harlay," fol. 99.
3. B.N., ms. D.B. 349, "Harlay," fol. 99.
4. Montpensier, Mémoires, III, p. 384.
5. Another source says it was "Madame" de Guise, Gazette, 1671, p. 153. But the meal was eaten on the ground floor, where Mlle de Guise's apartment was located; and then everyone went up the grand new staircase to the "noble floor" where the grand apartment and the Duke's apartment were situated.
6. Sévigné, Lettres, February 9, 1671.
7. Archivio di Stato, Florence, Med. del Prin., 4815, May 15, 1671.
8. Mayolas, Lettres en vers, "10th day of Lent, 1671."
9. Med. del Prin., 4815, November 21 and 22, 1670, and June 12, 1671.
10. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 253.
11. Med. del Prin., 6161, March 20, 1671.
12. Sévigné, Lettres, March 20 and April 29, 1671.
13. Gazette, June 1671, p. 604.
14. According to the Mémoire of 1726 (probably compiled with the help of Jacques Edouard, who was but a child in the 1670s and 1680s, the elevation was for the "salut du Saint Sacrement," which usually took place on Thursday. By contrast, the liturgy of the period (and especially the handbooks used by confraternities of penitents) suggests that this text was used for Corpus Christi -- which fell on May 28 in 1671.
15. Bernard Picart, Cérémonie et Coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (Amsterdam, 1739), II, p. 145. This antiphon ws also part of the common of the virgins.
16. The words are made up of borrowings from two offices in honor of Saint Francis, the one recited on his feast day, October 6, and the one commemorating the impression of the stigmata, recited on September 17. The words "gloriam nisi in cruce Domini per quem illi mundus et ille mundo crucifixus est" appear only in the office for September 17, Missale graduale romanum (Paris: F. Coustellier, 1669), pp. 883 and 333. The first work honored Mlle de Guise's holy patronness and the second must have been was intended for the chapel of Mme de Guise's mother.
17. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 278.
18. Gazette, article dated June 18, 1671, pp. 631-633.
19. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 302.
20. Med. del Prin., 4669, July 24, 1671.
21. M. Mareschaulx, "Oraison funèbre [...] d'Elisabeth d'Orléans," B.N., ms. Clairambault, 1100, fols. 157 ff (pp. 13-14).
22. Gui Patin, Lettres, ed. J. H. Reveillé-Parisè (Paris, 1846), III, pp. 781-783. Patin says that Beaurains was eighty years old at the time.
23. Sévigné, Lettres, August 5, 1671.
24. The description of the funeral of July 31 is found in the Gazette, August 1671, p. 737.
25. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 302.
26. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, pp. 219-20.
27. Gazette, .....
28. Vatican Library (B.V.), Barb. lat. 3525, fols. 602v et 604.
29. BV, Barb. lat. 8019, Paris, August 7, 1671 (letter provided by Jérôme de la Gorce).
30. Med. del Prin., 6161, August 7, 1671.
31. Recueil de Lettres en vers et en prose dédiées au Roy par le Sr Lagrevéte, B.N., Rés. Lc2 29, automne 1671 (provided by Jérôme de la Gorce).
32. Loret, Muze, II, p. 171, about the funeral of Henriette-Catherine de Joyeuse, dowager duchess of Guise in March 1656.
33. For examples of events where Louis XIV loaned his musicians to a "prince", see Benoit, Versailles, pp. 332, 334, 78, 79.
34. She paid Perrin's debts in 1672, A.N., M.C., XXIX-216, élargissement, August 27, 1672.
35. Gazette, August 1671, pp. 830-31.
36. Jules Fériel, Notes historiques sur la Ville et les Seigneurs de Joinville (Paris, 1835), p. 162. For other Guise burials at Joinville, see pp. 146, 149.
37. A.N., M.C., LXXV, 163, transaction, 20 December 1672.
38. Florence, Med. del Prin., 4669, Sept 11, 1671. In a declaration dated October 9, 1671, A.N., M.C., LXXV, 157, Mme de Guise declared that she would accept the guardianship of her son, for which she has been proposed, in collaboration with Mlle de Guise and Colbert, but that this will in no way affect her claim to and eventual acceptance of the garde noble of her son.
39. For this correspondence, see B.N., ms. Clairambault 1204, fols. 179-219.
40. B.N., ms. Clairambault 1204, fol. 200.
41. Med. del Prin., 4669, September 11, 1671.
42. B.N., D.B., 403, "Lorraine," fol. 25. The princess did indeed exist: she was baptised, but I have at the moment misplaced that document. I also noted that in Ms. 16214, fol. 296, of Harlay, there was a Mlle d'Assy, natural child of Louis de Lorraine and Charlotte des Essarts, who is probably the same person.
43. Florence, Med. del Prin., 4669, Sept. 11, 1671.
44. B.V., Barb. lat. 3525, fol. 604.
45. B.N., ms. Clairambault 1204, fol. 213.
46. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 305.
47. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 305.
48. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 306.
49. Med. del Prin., 2662, Bardi's report, under the date of September 27, 1671.
50. Florence, Med. del Prin., 4670, Nov. 6, Nov. 16, and Dec. 25, 1671.
51. Gallia Christiana, X, col. 113.
52. [For the moment I'm not bothering tracking down my notes about this office for the Immaculate Conception.... which I consulted at the BN, or the Mazarine, or Rodez library.]
53. A.N., M.C., XXIX-216, élargissement, August 27, 1672.
54. Dassoucy, Les avantures, ed. Colomby, p. 403.
55. Nuitter and Thoinan, Origines de l'Opéra, p. 164.
56. Nuitter and Thoinan, Origines de l'Opéra, p. 184.
57. Med. del Prin., 2662, October 31, 1670.
58. Med. del Prin. 4817, May 9, 1673.
59. André Tessier, "Robert Cambert à Londres," La Revue musicale, décembre 1927, p. 115, n. 1.