The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
My Reading of the Evidence for 1673
Choose the evidence for another year, 1670-1680
Note: this Musing was written in the mid-1990s
[NOTE: I will not talk about Charpentier's compositions for the theater, including the Malade Imaginaire of 1673, because much of the evidence has been presented in articles by H.W. Hitchcock and J. Powell.]
Marie de Lorraine and Isabelle d'Orléans spent twenty-one months in mourning, a period that lasted from the young Duke of Guise's death in July 1671 until the Bout de l'An of the Dowager Duchess of Orléans in May 1673. Although this period of withdrawal and weeping silenced music at the Hôtel de Guise, it gave the two princesses time to think about the future and to envisage the trajectory they would follow.
Marie de Lorraine, who was approaching sixty, made a prompt and quite definitive break with the life of the court. She sold the family hôtel at Versailles to the King1 and had an apartment and oratory built for her at Montmartre so that she and a handful of servants would be able to make lengthy retreats and be near her sister the abbess without upsetting the routine of the convent.2 She arranged to have her daughter, "nommée dans le monde Marie Naudot" and who had been "cy devant à son service" become a nun there. (Did the nun known as "la soeur des Saints Martyrs" look too much like her mother? Was this, as much as a religious vocation, the reason why Marie Nodot left the Hôtel de Guise and Henriette Nodot, her alleged — or her real — sister?)3
In addition, Mlle de Guise sought consolation from the fathers of the Merci, her neighbors on the rue du Chaume. Did she play a role in the creation at their convent of the Confraternity of the Malades Agonisants that the Pope approved on August 20, 1672? This confraternity was created just a year after the illness and death-bed "agony" of Louis-Joseph de Lorraine, that is to say after the appropriate interval for completing the necessary formalities with the Holy See. The convent's archives contain a second revealing bit of evidence about a sudden preoccupation with the dead at the Mercy, circa 1672: "Le même Saint Père a accordé à ladite Eglise un autel privilegié pour trois jours la semaine en faveur des fidelles trépassez." On the day of the Purification of the Virgin, February 2, 1673, the convent celebrated the "ouverture de la confrérie et on commança d'y recevoir ceux qui voulurent y être associez."4 In other words, the altar of the dying was blessed on one of the principal feast days of Marie de Lorraine's namesake. On that day did they perform extracts from the works that Charpentier had copied onto the pages of cahiers 4 and 5 some months earlier? Perhaps the "Heu, heu, mihi Domine..." and the "Ah! penis crucior" from the Motet pour les Trépassés (H. 311)? These two sections of the longer lament call for small numbers of musicians: a basse continue, a male trio, two treble instruments, and two women's voices. Judging from the different ink of the ritournelle, this would seem to be the case. The surviving fragments of the convent's archives provide only a few details about the activities of this confraternity, and they are discussed in the Musing about the two princesses' "regular life."
Isabelle d'Orléans — who was not yet twenty-five when custom obliged her to spend a year in widow's weeds — remained at the Hôtel de Guise, which she still gave as her address in August 1672, but was entertaining the notion of alienating part of the property (in part, perhaps, to wound Mlle de Guise).5 Like Mlle de Guise, the young widow ordered a personal apartment constructed for her at Montmartre, doubtlessly so she could meditate near the hearts of her husband and her mother.6 In the spring of 1673, Mme de Guise doubtlessly was also busy preparing the Bout de l'An for her late mother that would mark the end of her mourning. The service held at Saint-Denis that ended the mourning for any member of the royal family was scheduled for May 6, 1673. Prepared "avec toute la pompe imaginable", it would be attended by the princes and princesses of the House of Lorraine — including, of course, Isabelle d'Orléans and Marie de Lorraine. Mme de Guise was also preparing a commemorative service to be held at the convent of Charonne on May 9 — preceded, "quelques jours auparavant," by a service honoring her late father, Gaston d'Orléans.7 For the service at Charonne, and perhaps for the one at Saint-Denis, it is likely that the princess reemployed some of the works that Charpentier had written for the funerals of 1671 and 1672 and for the Bout de l'An of July 1672. At any rate, Charpentier's notebooks for 1673 contain no new music for the dead. [See also my Musing about Charpentier's funeral music.]
The royal princess who had been raised to be an abbess did not, however, intend to imitate Mlle de Guise and withdraw from the world. To the contrary, she became increasingly active at court. After her participation in the Corpus Christi procession there in June 1672, the Gazette mentions Mme de Guise frequently: although she was still wearing mourning for her mother, she attended a Te Deum with the King; she visited the Carmelites of the rue du Bouloir with the Queen; she celebrated Christmas at Compiègne with the rest of the court; she attended festivities at Sceaux, at Saint-Cloud, at Vincennes, at Saint-Ouen.
If Isabelle d'Orléans plunged into the frivolities of the court, it was in the hope of finding a second husband, thereby avoiding having to spend the rest of her life in the background, wearing the sedate colors appropriate to a widow. Indeed, her husband's body was still lying in state at Saint-Jean-en-Grève, awaiting its transfer to Joinville, when she made an attempt to take the place of the late wife of her cousin and godfather, Philippe d'Orléans. "On parloit de marier Monsieur à la fille de l'électeur palatin," writes Mlle de Montpensier with unconcealed maliciousness. "Madame de Guise y prétendoit; les carmélites de la rue du Bouloi et la Molina [une Espagnole qui était auprès de la reine] vouloient faire cette affaire. La reine en parloit à Monsieur; mais cela fut inutile."8 A few months later she was said to be contemplating a marriage with her maternal cousin, in the context of a reconciliation between the Duke of Lorraine and the French crown: "On parle de l'accommodement de Lorraine, et que la Duchesse de Guise épousera le prince Charles, auquel le duc son oncle donnera 50 mille escus de pension et la qualité de Duc de Bar."9
The young widow then set her sights on another cousin, the Duke of York, (the future James II of England), who had recently lost his wife. While the entire court was gossiping about this possible marriage, which would strengthen the ties between the royal house of France and England,10 Mme de Guise suddenly fled the court and took refuge at Montmartre. Louis XIV and the queen went there to see her on April 23, 1673: Abbess Renée de Lorraine first showed Their Majesties some relics, "en suite de quoy Madame de Guise traita Sa Majesté [la reine], ainsi que les Princesses et Dames qui l'accompagnoyent, avec beaucoup de magnificence."11 Can the young widow's erratic behavior be explained by an overwhelming urge to show the royal couple not only these relics but also the new apartment she had arranged inside the abbey? Or did Isabelle d'Orléans' conduct have something to do with the Duke of York? Was the princess trying to win Louis XIV's support for the match? Did she hope to win York's hearts by having the nuns recite a novena, as she had once asked the Carmelites to do?12
A week later, the princess was back at court. Indeed, on May 4, two days before the Bout de l'An that was being prepared for her mother at Saint-Denis, she was the guest of honor at a fête that Henri Guichard had prepared in Monsieur's gardens at Saint-Cloud. "Le divertissement commença sur le soir, par la promenade dans les jardins, en cinq caleches des mieux ajustées." Madame and Mme de Guise took their seats in the first caleche, beside the English ambassador. It appears that Philippe d'Orléans and his goddaughter were trying to win out over the daughter of the Duke of Modena, who was being proposed as the bride of the English prince. This blatant courting of the English ambassador clearly was done with Louis XIV's approval, for the narrative was deemed worthy of the pages of the Gazette. The attempt failed: York preferred the Italian to his humpbacked French cousin:
Madame de Guise [...] avoit eu grande envie de se marier avec le duc d'York; elle faisoit mille amitiés à l'ambassadrice d'Angleterre; mais ce fut inutilement. Le roi conta un jour dans le carrosse à la reine que le duc d'York lui avoit mandé qu'il épouseroit qui il lui plairoit dans son royaume, pourvu que ce ne fût point madame de Guise.13
This failure put an end to Isabelle d'Orléans' hopes of remarrying. She was condemned to the supporting role of the pious widowed cousin whose sole concerns were God and Louis the "God-given." She would see the future through the refracting lens of the little Duke d'Alençon, the only child she would ever raise — and Mlle de Guise's sole hope for the future of the House of Lorraine.
Shortly after her mother's death, Mme de Guise had renounced her rights to her late husband's property,14 doubtlessly influenced by Mlle de Guise's threat to reveal the existence of her children by Montrésor. A few months later, she signed a contract with Jacques Gabriel (the royal architect who had renovated the hôtel de Guise a few years earlier) for a house at Versailles, to be built near the chateau, on the "place qu'il a pleu au Roy donner à sadite Altesse Royalle." The house was one of a series of similar two-storey stone and painted-brick "pavillons," with attics beneath slate-covered mansard roofs, all in a line and apprently backing onto the rue de la Pompe. A vaulted grand staircase would lead to the "noble" floor of the house, with its five rooms and chapel. Both the façade and the interior of the house would proclaim the occupant's high social position: above the porte-cochère "sera fait les armes et sculptures en relief de Son Altesse Royale, par le costé de l'advenue, et au-dedans seront faicts les chiffres de sadite Altesse Royalle, comme ils sont à toutes les autres portes" of the neighboring pavillions. The contract stipulated that the house must be completed by November 30, 1672, at the cost of 43,000 livres.
Then, shortly after the failure of the marriage negotiations with her English cousin, the young widow moved into the Luxembourg Palace. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who occupied half the palace, provides some gossipy details about the event:
Depuis la mort de sa mère, Mme de Guise logeat à Luxembourg, s'étant brouillée tout à fait avec Mlle de Guise depuis la mort de son mari; mais elle n'était pas délogée encore de l'hôtel de Guise. Je pris l'occasion de me decharger sur elle de la moitié du palais du Luxembourg. [...] Ma soeur vint loger au Luxembourg.16
In reality, the Grande Mademoiselle did not exactly "unburden" herself of half the palace. The transaction that she and Isabelle signed on May 1, 1673, states that after the demise of Gaston d'Orléans, the Luxembourg had been divided between his widow and Mademoiselle, but the latter was allowed to surrender her portion and in its place receive a large sum of money plus annual income from several large domains. Upon her mother's death, Isabelle insisted that Mademoiselle must cede these rights and become half-owner of the Luxembourg. The dispute ended up in the royal council, until, with Philippe d'Orléans as witness, the princesses agreed that: Mademoiselle would have the use of the left half of the Luxembourg for the rest of her life; she would retain the incomes and the rights she had been granted after her father's death; she would not be required to return the lump sum she had received; the entire Luxembourg would belong to Mme de Guise, who, if she survived her older sister, would inherit Mademoiselle's rights and incomes but could not expel Mademoiselle's heirs from the Luxembourg. Above all, Mme de Guise could not sell the building without her sister's approval, and she would be the one to pay for all repairs on the Luxembourg, which promised to be sizeable. As a result of this agreement, it was decided that Mme de Guise and her son, and all their household, would move from the Hôtel de Guise to the Luxembourg as soon as possible, and Mlle de Guise would live alone at the Hôtel de Guise — which her huge debts might, it was surmised, soon force her to sell.17
Mme de Guise and Mademoiselle de Montpensier detested one another, of course. They eventually built a wall in the garden so so that one would not have to bear the sight of the other walking on the shared terrace that opened onto the vast gardens of the palace. And so the two sisters who literally could not bear looking at one another, sentenced themselves to spending the rest of their lives in this opulent palace, where "tous les planchers [plafonds] et les lambris sont chargez de peintures [...] et de quantité de sculptures très-richement dorez, mais d'un goût lourd."18
After delays caused by repairs to the palace, Isabelle d'Orléans was able to move into her apartment shortly before Corpus Christi of 1673, and to live in a manner befitting a petite-fille de France. She immediately carved out a niche for herself in the life of her parish, Saint-Sulpice. Is it a coincidence that, on March 7, 1673, a privileged alter of the dead was created there in the chapel of the Virgin, with indulgences granted for invoking the Holy Name of Jesus? Was the creation of this altar related to the forthcoming anniversary Marguerite de Lorraine's death? Indeed, was the creation of this altar Mme de Guise's reply to the confraternity of the Malades Agonisants at the Mercy?
Exactly two months later, Mme de Guise, "laquelle pour la singulière dévotion qu'elle a toujours eue à la très saincte et sacrée Vierge, mère de Dieu, voullant mettre sa personne et celle de Monseigneur le duc d'Allençon, son fils, soubz la protection de ceste divine royne du Ciel et invoquer incessament son secours," decided to do whatever she could to support the "very pious devotion to the sacred heart of the divine mother of Jesus" that has been created in the seminary founded by Jean Eudes at Caen. Having discussed the matter with Eudes, who was currently in Paris, she gave 12,000 livres to the seminary, to build a church in honor of the Sacred Heart of the Virgin and to found a salut and mass in honor of the Virgin's sacred heart, to be said "every Saturday of the year, the eve of the seven feast days of the church, and on February 8, the feast day of the Sacred heart of the Virgin." The services will include the litanies of the sacred heart of the Virgin that the fathers have written, and a prayer mentioning her pious donation. The goal of this donation was clearly stated: "Le tout pour attirer la protection de la très saincte Vierge sur la personne de Sadite Altesse Royalle et de mondit seigneur duc d'Allençon, son fils." There would, in addition, be a daily mass for the repose of the souls of her late parents, "qui honnoroient d'une dévotion singulière la très Sainte Vierge, et feue sadite Altessle Royale Madame avoit habitude de réciter souvent les mesmes litanies et recevoir d'une dévotion particulière le sacré coeur de la très Sainte Vierge."20 Charpentier's manuscripts show eloquently the extent to which Mme de Guise, in her widowhood, continued the devotion to the Virgin that she had learned from her parents at a very early age.
Madame de Guise did not, however, reside full-time in the parish of Saint-Sulpice: sometimes she lived the worldly, agitated yet repetitiously boring life of the courtier, at others she retreated to the quiet routine of the convent. To show her parish that she was her mother's daughter and planned to focus upon things of the soul, Mme de Guise came to Paris late in May 1673 and honored the Corpus Christi procession of Saint-Sulpice by her presence. On June 1, 1673, we learn from the Gazette:
Madame de Guyse reçeut la procession, pour la première fois, en son Palais du Luxembourg, et l'aprés-disnée, elle alla au Monastère des Filles du Saint Sacrement, entendre Vespres, et la belle Predication de l'Abbé de Fortia, ayant esté reçeüe par la Superieure et toutes les Religieuses de cette maison.21
By visiting the convent, she was representing the House of Lorraine, for the benedictine convent of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament had been created in Lorraine but the nuns had fled to Paris, and to the parish of Saint-Sulpice, in order to avoid the wars that were desolating the duchy.
During the week that followed the feast day of Corpus Christi, Mme de Guise's domestics worked unstintingly on a reposoir she had ordered constructed at the entry to the palace. When the procession of the "petite Fête-Dieu" — that is, the procession that was held one week after Corpus Christi Day — passed before the Luxembourg the following Sunday, June 8, it was greeted this time not only by the princess herself, but by a "magnificent" reposoir:
Madame de Guyse [...] vint recevoir la Procession de S. Sulpice sous le Dôme de son Palais, où Elle avoit fait préparer un magnifique Reposoir, avec un excellent Concert d'instruments, et de voix: ensuite de quoy cette Princesse l'accompagna jusques en la Paroisse, où elle assista à tout le Service.22
"Un excellent concert d'instruments et de voix": this surely is an allusion to the works that Marc-Antoine Charpentier copied into the notebooks that later would bear the numbers 5 and 7: O sacrum convivium (H. 235), for three women's voices, and Pour un reposoir (H. 508), a five-part "symphony" that requires at least seven instrumentalists, including violinists. Always very economical about wasting paper (until he apparently was given a limitless supply by the Jesuits , whose service he entered circa 1688), the composer copied two little preludes and the O sacrum onto the final four folios of cahier 5, into which he had transcribed nothing since the completed copy of the Prose des morts of 1672. For the symphony, he folded some of the paper he had been using since December 1672 (it appears in cahiers XIII and XIV) and made a new notebook, cahier 7.
Comments in Charpentier's manuscripts plus the description of a reposoir constructed before the Palais-Royal in 1648 for Mme de Guise's aunt and cousin, permit us to sketch out the "cérémonie du reposoir" of June 8. The procession doubtlessly moved along the rue de Tournon, which leads to the dome of Luxembourg and its reposoir. As the procession approached the palace, the instruments started an "ouverture." One can assume that the décor of the Mme de Guise's reposoir was similar to the one her relatives had had built. Thus it likely was the intendent of her household supervised the construction of an "espèce de pavillon," inside which stood a "grand autel." He probably decorated the exterior of the pavillon with the "plus riches tapisseries de la Couronne" (great nobles often used their priceless tapestries for outdoor decorations) and with objects not unlike the "quantité de corbeilles de fleurs, dont les soutiens estoient enrichis de diamans, et entre deux corbeilles une quantité de vases de cristal" of 1648. Collecting a large number of precious objects from the vast rooms of the palace, the intendent incorporated them into the pavillon's decor: "peintures", "grands bassins d'or cizelez à coquilles et d'autres façons", "bagues de la Couronne". In the arcade that supported the dome, he may have installed "un ciel de tapisserie," and he probably also hung costly tapestries, "one on top the other," along the façade of the palace and on every bit of the court elevation that could be seen from the street. Around the altar of May 1673 were doubtlessly objects akin to the "cent plaques d'or vermeillis cizelées d'une grandeur admirable remplies de luminaires", the "cinq cadres remplis de cinq grands miroirs, [...] dont les bordures estoient couvertes d'argenterie rare" and the huge gold vases filled with flowers that decoarted the royal reposoir of 1648. On the altar itself the intendent surely place several reliquaries and dozens of candlesticks. The flowers probably were so abundant that they filled the street with what contemporaries called a "spiritual perfume": "A propos de parfums spirituels," wrote the anonymous author of a newsletter in 1677, the priests of the Oratoire of the rue Saint-Honoré, "pour cloire la feste du Saint Sacrement, firent à l'entour de leur église une procession si dévote, si lumineuse, et si pleine de parfums et de fleurs d'orange qu'on jettat sur le chemin de ce soleil admirable, que tout le monde en fut charmé."23
The instrumentalists and the singers surely were less numerous than those of 1648, but, like their predecessors, they doubtlessly were concealed inside the reposoir:
Dans ce grand dome à la droite en entrant estoit un grand eschaffaut sur lequel joüoient les vingt-quatre violons du Roy, [...] à la gauche un autre eschaffaut sur lequel estoit l'orgue et le corps de musique de la chapelle du Roy, qui à chaque procession qui venoit, chantoient differents motets.24
In 1673, notes Mme de Guise's composer, "quand le saint sacrement est posé, les violons jouent Tantum ergo." After this, the chanting of the priests alternated with instruments. The ceremony ended with an "allemande grave" that was played "quand la procession s'en retourna" in the direction of Saint-Sulpice. That day, the king's cousin called upon a group of violinists — either some of the violons du roi to whom she and her sister had access as royal princesses, or else local musicians — why not Jean Edouard and some of his associates? Judging from Charpentier's notebooks, the three singers were the chambermaids of the Hôtel de Guise, including a newcomer, Elisabeth ("Isabelle") Thorin.
Until the spring of 1673, the motets and hymns that Charpentier copied into the notebooks of the so-called French series were written for two women singers, one a haut dessus and the other a dessus. Since he was writing for only two singers, he did not mark their names in the margins of his scores. Indeed, rather than lending weight to the hypothesis that Charpentier only came to the hôtel in the 1680s, when the names of the Guise musicians appear in the margins of his works, the absence of names can be viewed as evidence that only two singers were available to him during his first years at the hôtel de Guise.
The situation had in fact changed in March 1673, when he set to music a lesson for a tenebrae service and specified that it was to be sung by "Melle Magdelon" (a haut dessus) and "Melle Margot" (a dessus). Shortly afterward, he specified that his new Ave Regina coelorum (H. 19) should be sung by "Melles B et T", respectively a haut dessus and a dessus. There were now two dessus at the hôtel de Guise: Margot (either Marguerite de la Humière, who remained with Mlle de Guise until 1688, or Marguerite de Mornay, "cy devant une des filles d'honeur de S.A. Mademoiselle de Guise," who seems to have left the household during the 1670s) and Mlle "T" (surely Isabelle Thorin). The references to "Magdelon" and "Melle B" doubtless refer to a single person who was a haut dessus: "Magdelaine" (Elisabeth) Boisseau, who had been in Mlle de Guise's service since the 1660s. Charpentier clearly knew Magdelon and Margot very well, for he did not hesitate to use their nicknames. Doing so raised no risk of appearing to make advances toward these women, who were considerably older than he was. Toward young Isabelle Thorin (who was probably only fourteen or fifteen at the time and who had just entered the household), he behaved quite differently. He politely called her "Mademoiselle Thorin" — and used a parallel expression for Isabelle Boisseau. Circa January 1673, a fourth singer (a bas dessus) mingled her voice with the other chambermaids; then, after the ceremony of the reposoir of June 8, 1673, this woman with the low voice disappears from the French notebooks. She must have "belonged" to Isabelle d'Orléans and, therefore, withdrew from the ensemble of the Hôtel de Guise when her mistress moved to the Luxembourg.
The year 1673 — specifically, the month of March — was a critical moment for the musique of the Hôtel de Guise. It was also a critical moment for Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Molière had just died, and Charpentier's future in the theater was threatened by this death and by Lully's ever-invasive monopoly. Since the two women whom Mme de Sévigné enjoyed called the "Guisardes" were ending their mourning for Marguerite de Lorraine, their musical patronage could resume — if one or both of the princesses wanted it to resume, that is. Isabelle d'Orléans (who at the time was still hoping to marry the Duke of York) was clearly eager to get out of Mlle de Guise's clutches and was preparing her move to the Luxembourg. Since she planned to spend at most two or three months a year in Paris, she no longer needed a composer and musicians, although she could doubtlessly find opportunities to give her protégé a commission now and then. Indeed, lest she offend her royal cousin — and Lully, the superintendent of his musique — Mme de Guise could not drag a composer and musicians in her wake, as she dragged the goat who provided milk for the little Duke d'Alençon.
Charpentier clearly would have to remain in Paris. Mme de Guise — the obedient daughter who had just paid the debuts of her later father's servant, Pierre Perrin — could not , however, simply abandon her protégé. Having "given" himself to her, he merited her continuous protection until death dissolved the compact. It therefore appears that the petite-fille de France made an agreement with Mlle de Guise. Charpentier would remain at the Hôtel de Guise, where Marie de Lorraine would keep him occupied and give him the appropriate rewards. He could, however, compose for Isabelle d'Orléans whenever she wished. And the two princesses would each see to the "establishment" of the composer they no longer quite knew what to do with.
The final sheets of cahier 5 and the whole of cahier 6 show the gradual reawakening of the musique of the Hôtel de Guise (which we will henceforth call "Mlle de Guise's musique") after the spring of 1673. Actually, it must have been late in December 1672 that Charpentier began sketching, for Margot and Magdelon, a motet for Holy Week of 1673. This work was probably performed in the ancient church of Montmartre, although I have as yet found no sources that prove that the two princesses retreated to the abbey for Holy Week that year, as they had in 1672 and as they did in subsequent years.
That this work for tenebrae (H. 95) was written with the two mourning princesses in mind is confirmed by the content of the lesson. The words come from Lamentations 5:1-9 and are one of the readings for the matins sung on Good Friday (but technically for Saturday). The text is not one of the "lamentations" chanted by the religious; it is a text normally read aloud. In other words, Charpentier set to music a text that, like a psalm, is usually recited but can be transformed into a motet. The message conveyed by this motet is unequivocal:
Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach. Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.... Our fathers have sinned and are not; and we have borne their iniquities ... The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick. The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning... renew our days as of old....
Theses verses from Lamentations come as the heart cry of Marie de Lorraine and Isabelle d'Orléans, as the mirror of the situation in which the princesses found themselves in March 1673. The anniversary of Madame's death was approaching. The House of Guise had been in mourning for over eighteen months and was deeply indebted owing to the "iniquities" of the previous dukes. With Gaston d'Orléans' death, and owing to his "iniquities," the King's brother had gained control of the vast possessions of the House of Orléans. Mme de Guise and her son had become tributaries to their cousins' generosity. The futures of the House of Guise and of the Duchy of Alençon now depended on the heartbeat of a fragile child. Were that heart to stop beating, the vast possessions of the Guises would revert to Mlle de Montpensier and the Gonzagas. Would that God might permit this anxious situation to be reversed! Now, during these months, Mme de Guise was working to obtain an indulgence for Montmartre that was related somehow to her later mother's heart and her late husband's body, and she had begun pressuring Cosimo de Medicis , her Florentine brother-in-law, to pressure Rome on her behalf.27
This lament was accompanied by a Miserere (H. 157) apparently written for the same musicians. The Miserere was an integral part of the laudes sung on Good Friday. Together they form a slender notebook (the future cahier 6) folded from paper that the composer had been employing at the end of 1672, when he transcribed the mass for four choirs into his personal archives. At about the same time, Charpentier copied out onto the final sheets of cahier 5 three extremely short pieces destined for a three women's voices: a Salve Regina (H. 18), the Ave Regina coelorum for Mlles "B" and "T", and the O sacrum for the octave of Corpus Christi. In other words, during the period between February 4 and June 8, he prepared two antiphons for the Virgin (for whom both Marie de Lorraine and Isabelle d'Orléans had a special reverence), two lessons for tenebrae, and the music for the ceremony of the Luxembourg reposoir — all of it for the chapel of the two Guise women.
A look at the two series of notebooks reveals that the final half of 1673 was, on the other hand, characterized by an astonishing inactivity. The sources do not permit a hypothesis about the cause of this inactivity. They do reveal that Mme de Guise was absent from Paris until November 1673, but they tell us nothing about what Mlle de Guise may have been doing. Interestingly enough, the notebooks for 1683 show the very same sort of inactivity: but we know the reasons behind that silence. That is to say, in May 1683 Charpentier fell very ill, had to withdraw from a competition and clearly spent several months regaining his health. Was the inactivity of 1673 likewise caused by an illness? Doctor Vallant had not yet arrived at the Hôtel de Guise, so the papers of M. Du Bois's close friend cannot help us move from hypothesis to assertion. With 1674, Marc-Antoine Charpentier resumed work. First he wrote four instrumental preludes for two treble instruments and a basse continue, all suitable for the Pascal season. The fact that one of these preludes was to precede the Regina coeli of cahier 2 (which dates from 1671) would seem to indicate that the musique of the Hôtel de Guise was brushing up familiar pieces.
Late in 1673, the group had taken its first step toward becoming a "musique entretenue," that is, what we would call today a "professional" group. An eighteen year-old musician trained at the Sainte-Chapelle joined the ensemble circa October 1673. Etienne Loulié — the cousin of saddle-maker Croyer and above all of composer Robert Cambert — played recorder, viol and keyboard. He also knew how to compose. In short, during the summer of 1673, Marie de Lorraine had decided to create the high quality "musique entretenue" for which she would be praised at her death fifteen years later. To ensure the quality of the group, she engaged the equivalent of a conservatory graduate who could show the secrets of his craft to her chambermaids. The group of the rue du Chaume therefore turned its back on the amateurism that typified the music performed in the houses of most nobles, parlementaires and bourgeois; it took its first step toward a "professionalism" that would enable it one day to surpass the performance of the ensembles maintained by "plusieurs souverains."
Notes
1. On November 12, 1672, the royal treasury paid her 60,000 livres, Jules Guiffrey, Compte des Bâtiments du Roy sous la Règne de Louis XIV (Paris, 1881), I, cols. 593, 630, 644. The building was destroyed to make room for the queen's commons.
2. Maurice Dumolin, "Notes sur l'Abbaye de Montmartre," Bulletin de la Sociéte de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France, 58 (1931), p. 198.
3. A.N., M.C., XCIX, 282, December 18, 1679, donation and pension (300 livres) to the Soeur des Martyres; B.N., D.B., 403, "Lorraine," fols. 24v and 66.
4. A.N., LL 1559, fols 85, 85v, 88.
5. Archivio di Stato, Florence, Med. del Prin., 4767, May 9, 1673.
6. A.N., M.C., LXXV, 162, promesse, August 1, 1672: living on the "rue du Chaune"; Arsenal, ms. 6534, fol. 152: she had a bed made for her apartment at Montmartre.
7. Gazette, 1673, p. 436.
8. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 303.
9. Turin, Lettere ministri, Francia, mazzo 92, March 11 and 18, 1673.
10. Saint-Maurice, Lettres, II, p. 160, September 18, 1671; B.V., Barb. lat. 3525, fols. 456v and 685, for the months of October and December 1671.
11. Gazette, 1673, p. 388.
12. In September 1664, at the time when her sisters were becoming engaged, she asked the Carmelites to say a novena for her, Tournoüer, "Elisabeth d'Orléans," p. 88.
13. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, p. 346.
14. A.N., M.C., LXXV, 161, rénonciation, May 19, 1672.
15. A.N., M.C., LXXV, 162, marché, September 22, 1672.
16. Montpensier, Mémoires, IV, pp. 530-31.
17. A.N., M.C., LXXV, 166, transaction, May 1, 1673; Med. del Prin., 4671, April 14, 1673.
18. Germain Brice, Description (1752), III, pp 399-400.
19. Doncourt.. [but I didn't stop to search for my notes...]
20. A.N., M.C., LXXV, 166, fondation, June 3, 1673.
21. Gazette, 1673, p. 508.
22. Gazette, 1673, p. 532.
23. B.N., ms. fr. 23506, fol. 240v.
24. For this description, see B.N., ms. 500 Colbert, 143, fols 16v-18v.
25. A.N., M.C., XCIX, 251, quittance, April 10, 1672, where Mlle de Mornay receives a gift of 6300 livres from Mlle de Guise, "pour luy donner des marques de sa bonne volonté" after the girl ceased being an official domestic.
26. Arsenal, ms. 6631, dossier V, certificate signed by Boulet, her carter, in October 1674.
27. Med. del Prin., 4817, November 3, 1673.