The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
My Reading of the Evidence for 1677
Choose the evidence for another year, 1670-1680
Note: this Musing was written in the mid-1990s
Charpentier's notebooks reveal that, throughout 1677, music frequently accompanied the devotions of the two Guise women, although the precise chapel usually cannot be identified. The works written that year for the three singers and two treble instruments that typify the Guise ensemble of the late 1670s generally lent themselves to use in more than one venue. In fact, it seems that Charpentier and Du Bois were slowly building up a repertory that could be used year after year. This repertory provided works for virtually all the principal feasts of the Infant Jesus, for most of the feast days of the Mercy fathers, for the Saturday and Sunday services for the Virgin and for most of her high feasts.
So it was that, for the feasts occurring in January 1677, Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed two works for the Guise ensemble. The first was In circumcisione Domine (H. 316), written for the Feast of the Circumcision, one of the principal holidays observed by the "domestics" of the Infant Jesus. The work begins with a verse from Luke 2 but rapidly moves on to an invented text extolling Jesus, as if the author were expressing the thoughts these devoted services of the Holy Child. On the other hand, Charpentier's Pour la fête de l'Epiphanie (H. 395) is a straightforward summary of the visit of the Magi as told in Matthew 2. Epiphany was one of the great feast days for the Merci fathers and was celebrated by a procession, by the singing or reciting the litanies of the Glorious Virgin and by the singing of the antiphon Alma Redemptoris Mater (H. 21) — which Charpentier would set to music the following year. Epiphany was also one of the solemn feasts over which Mlle de Guise's sister, the Abbess of Montmartre, presided in person.1 In other words, unlike the composition for the Feast of the Circumcision, this work would seem to have been intended for a more formal liturgical event.
Charpentier also penned a piece for the Feast of the Purification, In festo purificationis (H. 318), held on February 2, which borrows from texts recited during the matins and the vespers of that day. Chandeleur was one of the principal festivals of the Virgin — and, of course, of the Mercy convent, which held a solemn procession on that day. It was also one of the solemn feasts observed by the "domestics" of the Infant Jesus.
Among these works, which would seem to have been destined for the Mercy, the Hôtel de l'Enfant Jésus and/or the Theatines, is a piece (H. 317) honoring St. Genevieve: for the "jour de Sainte Genevieve" says the memorandum of 1726, that is, for January 3. Each year on that day, "Messieurs de Notre Dame" (that is, the clergy of the cathedral) would go in procession to the abbey church of Sainte-Geneviève, on the hill above the Latin Quarter, for a pontifical mass celebrated by the abbot. Since the music was provided by the master and singers of the cathedral, any hypothesis that Charpentier's "Motet pour le jour de Ste Geneviève" was written for this event must be ruled out. The text does, however, provide an important clue about the event for which this piece was written. Although the work clearly was written during the final weeks of 1676, it contains the words ardens perpetuo and flagrabat amore — allusions to one of the protective powers of the saint, who was also known as "Sainte Geneviève des Ardents" because her relics could calm fevers. (And indeed, Charpentier's text includes the words Nobis exposse me de jam infirmis.) But the feast day of Sainte Geneviève des Ardents fell on November 26. One cannot, of course, exclude the possibility that this work was written for November 1676 and was not copied into the notebook until several months later. There is, however, a very plausible explanation for the existence of this work and its presence among works intended for performance in January and February 1677. Was it performed during the coldest weeks of winter in order to thank the saint for having broken the fever of one of the princesses? Only a few months later, in July 1677, Isabelle d'Orléans would ask just such a boon of this popular saint. She had been ill since June with a "fievre tierce," that is, a fever that "la tient en trois jours une fois." Her prayers to St. Genevieve having been answered by July 30, Mme de Guise thanked the "Savior of the world" for having healed her, through St. Genevieve's intervention:
L'Altesse Royale de Guise, hors de tout acces & de crise, d'une fiévre qui fort longtemps l'avoit tourmentée au dedans, alla d'une ardeur sans seconde rendre grace au Sauveur du monde, à Sainte Geneviève aussi l'illustre Patrone d'icy; elle entendit la Sainte Messe dans son Eglise avec tendresse, et tout le monde y fit des voeux que ses jours soient longs comme heureux.2
In short, one of Mme de Guise's standard household remedies was praying to St. Genevieve. Was Charpentier's composition in Genevieve's honor performed again on July 30, 1677, this time in the awesome presence of the saint's relics?
In mid-February, when Mlle de Guise prepared a lavish banquet for Monsieur and Madame, and "all the illustrious House of Lorraine,3 she apparently did not ask her protégé to compose a musical to honor her guests. Since it is difficult to imagine a reception of this sort without music, it is clear that the Guise ensemble was not restricted to performing works by Charpentier. It may, however, have performed several of his secular songs that day, perhaps the very ones he had woven into the Petite pastorale of the previous fall. Information about Mlle de Guise's social activities is extremely scant, so almost nothing is known about any secular music that may have been performed in the vast rooms of the hôtel on the rue du Chaume. By contrast, the princess is known to have been at Montmartre on February 25 for a very different sort of "social" event, a taking of the veil:
[Une] aimable fille prit le voile blanc d'une Vestale de l'abbaye en tout Royal de Montmartre; on m'a teu le nom de cete fille, & son surnom. Mais Mademoiselle de Guise, qui pour ses vertus chacun prise, et d'autres Princesses encor priserent à l'égal d'or le beau sermon de ce beau Père [Athanèse de Saint Charles, Carme des Billettes].4
Was the nun whom the author of these lines could not — or would not — name, young Marguerite Nodot, Mlle de Guise's supposed daughter? This may well be the case, for the fact that "other princesses" were present suggests not only that the girl had been born to a great noble but that the House of Lorraine felt a family obligation to be present at this event.
The early days of March 1677 saw all the churches of the capital preparing for an important religious event. The king had set off for the northern frontier on February 28, and Archbishop Harlay de Chanvallon had ordered prayers be said "dans toutes les Eglises de cette ville & du diocèse [...] pour la conservation de la Personne du Roy et pour la prosperité de ses Armes." The prayers began with a pontifical mass at Notre Dame and "elles y seront continuées, ainsi que dans toutes les autres Eglises, during a campagne de Sa Majesté."5 Charpentier therefore prepared a Prière pour le roi (H. 164) (whose French title would seem prompted by the wording of Harlay's order) and a Domine salvum fac regem that is mentioned in the memorandum of 1726 but that was subsequently lost. The text of the "prayer" is Psalm 20, the standard prayer for the king specified in a variety of French liturgical books and recited every Sunday at matins.
This prayer, which flows from cahier 14 into cahier 15, was followed by two additional "prayers" that clearly formed a pair: Precatio pro rege (H. 165), a setting of Psalm 19, and Precatio pro filio regis (H. 166), a setting of Psalm 71. These two works clearly were commissioned for the "Jubilee" of March 1677, when the Dauphin and his mother went separately on foot to all of the churches if the capital, each church being considered a "station" in their journey. Although Gui Patin did not hold a high opinion of jubilees — "On parle ici d'un nouveau Jubilé, comme d'une chose necessaire. Je pense que c'est pour faire trotter les femmes et faire gagner les Moines," he had written a few years earlier6 — the devout Guise princesses clearly did not agree with him and preferred to "trot" (or be carried in their sedan chairs) from church to church and make financial contributions at each church along their route. "Les Prières pour le Roy se continuent en toutes nos Eglises, avec un concours extraordinaire de Personnes de toute condition," observes the Gazette for the week of March 13; for the Dauphin's Jubilee, which had virtually fused with the prayer services being held for the king and his troops, did not end until the final days of that month.
Although the young prince does not seem to have walked all the way out to the Hôtel de l'Enfant Jésus, the boys held a special service for the Jubilee on Wednesday, March 10. (Does the importance of Latin in the curriculum at the academy explain why these two pieces were given a Latin title, while a French title was given to the preceding work, a setting of the psalm that the French people as a whole traditionally recited for their king?) A priest from Saint-Sulpice presided over the ceremony that morning:
J'ay esté chez Mr Le Jeune dire la Ste Messe et faire une petite exhortation à ces petits Messieurs sur le jubilé. J'en n'en suis revenu qu'après midy, ayant dit la Ste Messe très tard parce qu'on a esté fort longtemps à aller querir un calice et que je ne les ay entretenus du St Jubilé qu'après avoir dit la Ste Messe. L'on m'a dit que j'avois esté plus d'une heure, à quoy il ne faudra plus retourner.7
Was the delay caused in part by a flurry of activity surrounding the participation of the Guise musicians in this event?
Determining the exact church or churches where Charpentier's three prayers for the king and his son were sung remains problematic. Since every church was expected to conduct at least one prayer service, it is highly possible that, during these three weeks, the Guise singers performed these works at Montmartre, at the Mercy, at the Theatins, in the parish churches of Saint-Jean-en-Grève and Saint-Sulpice and at the abbey of Charonne — to say nothing about the princesses' own private chapels and the galerie basse of the Hôtel de Guise where the domestics attended chapel services.
This is, in fact the picture that emerges from the Florentine resident's summary of Their Highnesses' activities during the week of March 5-12. Mme de Toscane was being permitted to leave Montmartre each day, he says, in order to go on foot to "four" churches. At each church the princesses would chat for awhile with friends, sit in quiet meditation, and sometimes partake of light refreshments. In other words, they selected the churches to which they had devotional ties — which often were inseparable from social and affective ties. Thus, on Wednesday March 10, Toscane and the Grande Mademoiselle walked from the Luxembourg to Notre-Dame, a promenade that surely omitted Saint-Sulpice, for Mademoiselle was not on speaking terms with the curate and had had Saint-Séverin declared her parish church. One can therefore assume that she and her half-sister stopped at Saint-André-des-Arts (the parish church of the Edouard family), at Saint-Séverin (the Grande Mlle's parish and, of course, the parish of Etiennette Charpentier), and one or more of the smaller churches along the route that led them across the Petit-Pont and to the cathedral. Thursday found the Grand Duchess at the Hôtel de Guise, where she probably lunched with Mlle de Guise and walked with her hostess to four churches. The identity of some of these churches can be guessed: the Mercy (where Marie de Lorraine had recently acquired a chapel), Saint-Jean-en-Grève (the Guise parish church), Saint-Merry (where Nicolas Le Bègue was organist) and Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie (home of the charitable confraternity of St. Charles Borromeo, over which the Queen was the titular head, just as Mme de Guise was titular head for the parish of Saint-Sulpice). On Friday, Toscane lunched at the Luxembourg with Mme de Guise, after which the sisters did their stations together, probably stopping at Saint-Sulpice (Mme de Guise's parish, where she directed charitable activities), the Jesuit Novicate, the Carmes Déchaussés (whose chapel of the Virgin Mme de Guise had copied for the Theatines), and the Filles du Saint-Sacrement (the convent of nuns from Lorraine whom she had visited on her first Corpus Christi Day at the Luxembourg). By March 26, Their Highnesses had completed their jubilees.
A few weeks later, on April 2, Toscane was back at the Luxembourg with Mme de Guise, and "both went to the memorial service that is held every year" at Charonne in honor of their mother; "and then they lunched with Mlle de Guise," who doubtlessly had also attended the service. Taking advantage of fine weather, Toscane, the two Guises and Mme de Lillebonne then went for a ride in the Bois de Vincennes,8 perhaps stopping at the Ménagerie, Mlle de Guise's retreat at Bercy.
It was about then that M. Du Bois fell ill and spent "quarante jours enfermé apres une operation de chirurgie que l'on luy a faicte." His dear friend Dr. Vallant was so worried that he stopped to see Du Bois virtually twice a day.9 The repercussions of this illness on the Guise ensemble — and on Charpentier's production — can be deduced from notebooks 16 and 17. Pieces for the established trio suddenly disappear, to be replaced by a series of works composed for every possible permutation of the five available voices. Indeed, left to his own devices, the composer began to experiment with a variety of vocal combinations. He wrote a Pange lingua (H. 58) and a Salve Regina (H. 23) for three men, the former work accompanied by two treble instruments. (Was this for the Mercy? Less than two years later, he would write a work specifically for this chapel and, it would seem, for this same ensemble.) One of the three male voices was a haute-contre, hc, a voice that until then had rarely appeared in the French notebooks. (True, it appears in a few of the élévations that accompany works for a large ensemble — for example, the Elevation pour la paix (H. 237) of cahier 12 — but the Guise singers may not have participated in these performances.) And, in October 1676, a haute-contre, perhaps Charpentier himself, had sung one of the shepherds' roles in the Petite pastorale of cahier 13. This suggests that, during the summer of 1677, the composer began writing pieces that would permit him to sing with the Guise musicians, something he does not seem to have done during his first seven years in the princesses' service. Why was he not part of the ensemble of the 1670s? Did M. Du Bois, or one of the princesses, dislike the timbre of a high tenor voice? Was Du Bois so jealous of the composer as to exclude him in this way? Or did Charpentier generally play one of the two recorders? No answer to these questions is possible for the moment. Still, during the summer of 1677 Charpentier clearly was behaving like the mouse who could at last gambol freely because the cat was away. Indeed, his conduct suggests that throughout his seventeen-odd years at the Hôtel de Guise, he was forced to take into consideration some very powerful constraints upon his professional life.
A haute-contre is also required for the Motet pour la Trinité (H. 319), where it joins a haut dessus and a bass — a very unusual combination of voices for the French series of notebooks. Although the Pange lingua and the Salve Regina for a male trio may have been intended for three fathers of the Mercy rather than for Charpentier, Beaupuis and, apparently, Baussen, the composition for the Feast of the Trinity was surely written for a woman and two men. The composer was clearly experimenting, was having fun casting aside the usual trio and mingling the voices of the Guise musicians in new ways. Were the three other works that he composed at this time for hauts dessus intended for Mlle de Guise's chambermaids, rather than for nuns? Although the texts were appropriate for the weekly services in the chapel of the Virgin of Loreto at Montmartre, all three of these compositions — Alma redemptoris Mater (H. 21), Ave Regina coelorum (H. 22) and Gaudia Viginis Mariae (H. 59)10 — were integral parts of confraternity services. The first two works require merely two hauts dessus, but the Gaudia requires three. Now, until the summer of 1677, Charpentier had never composed for more than one haut dessus at a time. (The work in honor of St. Anne in cahier 9 was written for two hauts dessus, but we have seen that this piece may have been inserted into this cahier in the eighteenth century.) This sudden abundance of high voices can mean one of two things: either Charpentier was writing for a convent, or two new chambermaids had entered Mlle de Guise's service in the spring of 1677. The order in which her chambermaids are listed in her will of 1688 suggests that the princess did indeed engage two very young girls during the final years of the decade. The singing and playing of little Elisabeth Jacquet, who was not yet twelve, was all the rage at court. As if determined to engage her own child prodigies, Marie de Lorraine hired Elisabeth Jacquet's older sister Anne circa 1677, when she was approximately fifteen, and shortly afterward found an even younger girl, twelve year-old Geneviève Brion, a haut dessus whose voice was so lovely that Charpentier often cast her as an angel.
During these months, Isabelle d'Orléans immersed herself increasingly in devotion:
Made de Guyse, qui est princesse du sang, [...] estant allée à Alençon, terre de sa maison, dans le dessein d'enterer dans l'abbaye de la Trape, apparemment comme descendante des fondateurs, et plusieurs dames de qualité l'ayant suivie pour cette dévotion, elles sont revenues toutes embaumées de l'odeur de ce Saint Lieu, et elles en ont rapporté du foin du cimetiere, où tant de corps de grands sains de nos jours sont enterrés. Leur foy leur donne de la veneration pour de monument de leur pelerinage dont le prix vient de la pieté chrestienne.11
A few weeks earlier, one of the Medici contacts in Paris observed that Her Royal Highness "continue dans une grande dévotion. Elle ne perd aucune occasion de bien faire."12 Her activities were, however, somewhat curtailed that summer, for she came down with a violent fièvre tierce that she could not shake off, despite prayers to St. Genevieve of the Ardent13 — some of the prayers perhaps to music, thanks to Pour le jour de Sainte Geneviève (H 317), which Charpentier had composed earlier that year and copied into cahier 13.
As August approached, Charpentier prepared two solo works for haute contre: the Motet de Saint Louis (H. 320) and the Motet de Saint Laurent (H. 321) of cahier 17. Though the feast days of these two saints are August 25 and August 10 respectively, the motet for St. Laurence includes lines normally recited for the octave of his fête,14 that is, August 17. This raises the possibility that the two works were written for a single service to be held circa August 17; and, since St. Laurence was the principal patron saint of the Mercy fathers, the service doubtlessly was held at the convent on the rue du Chaume. No source will probably ever reveal whether the soloist was Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
These works for August are followed by an O sacrum convivium (H. 239) that at first glance appears to be out of chronological order, for this text is usually associated with the Corpus Christi processions of late spring. That this work was written for two hauts dessus and a haute-contre — the clefs Charpentier used for his first tenebrae and that he would later use for the singing nuns of the Abbaye-aux-Bois — raises the possibility that the piece was written for a convent. Still, we have seen that each year in early September the Guises sponsored a procession at their parish church of Saint-Jean-en-Grève, and that this service honored the Holy Sacrament. In short, that this O sacrum convivium follows immediately two works written for mid- to late-August, suggests that it was intended for the Guise singers and was first performed at Saint-Jean-en-Grève in September 1677.
The final weeks of August 1677 were spent rehearsing a lavish historia, the Historia Esther (H. 396), inspired by texts appropriate for the fourth week of September or the first week of October. In other words, this work extolling Esther was a pendant to the Judith of late September 1675. And, like Judith, it tells of a strong woman who takes great risks to save her people. Indeed, Esther too occupies a position in Father Le Moyne's "gallery of strong women": Judith, he writes, "n'est pas l'unique de son espèce.[...] Esther sauva [le peuple] des mains d'Aman, et du massacre general qui luy estoit preparé par toute la Perse."15 In short, Mme de Guise apparently planned another service for the final days of September, quite possibly at the Theatines. But why this date? For example, was she commemorating a devotional experience or a family event that had taken place in late September? And why this particular image? In the seventeenth century, when the story of Esther was recounted it was to make one of three political points, according to the characters emphasized. If the narrative focuses on Esther and Mardochée, as in Racine's Esther, the couple is portrayed as a passive instrument of all-powerful divine justice. If the central characters are the virtuous Ahasuerus and the traitor Aman, the work alludes to the origins of royal power and the relationship between religion and politics within the state. And if the text focuses on Ahasuerus and Esther, Esther ceases to be God's instrument and is, instead, portrayed as the object of an earthly love. The latinist who glued biblical phrases together to form the text that Charpentier set to music focused on the first of these messages: Esther and Mardochée were at last "freed from all danger." The message of this historia was, therefore, that God's justice would guide the true believer, and that the believer should become God's passive instrument. This was the very position, God's tool, that Isabelle d'Orléans had adopted by the mi-1670s: "Mon bonheur est de servir Dieu, je suis d'une maison Tres-Chrétienne, c'est de ma Religion que dépend toute ma gloire," she is said to have asserted.16 In other words, the first three historia that Charpentier copied out into the notebooks of his French series all deal with women — Judith, Cecilia and Esther — whose in whose conduct Mme de Guise could see a parallel with her own. Judith represented Isabelle d'Orléans, the pious young widow; Cecilia was Isabelle, the converter of the heathens; and Esther was Isabelle, God's tool.
The cahier into which Esther was transcribed ends with a Domine salvum fac Regem (H. 287), perhaps destined for the same event. (Only eight staves remained blank after Charpentier had finished copying out Esther, just enough room to squeeze in this work honoring the King.) The composer then folded another notebook, the future cahier 19. Although it is not possible to determine whether the O sacrum convivium of cahier 17 was written for nuns or for the Guise musicians, the first two pieces that Charpentier copied into cahier 19 were undeniably composed for the nuns of the Abbaye-aux-Bois. The composer identified each of the singers: Mère Camille, Mère Sainte-Cécile and Mère "Dhénaut." These are the nuns who would perform his famous tenebrae services in 1680. (Indeed, all doubt can be removed as to whether the tenebrae music written for these three nuns and copied into cahiers 26-29 is the much-touted music sung at the Abbaye-aux-Bois in 1680: the signature of "Soeur Elisabeth Desnots" appears on acts signed by the nuns of the abbey in 1672 and again in 1685.17)
Is there a connection between this abbey and the Luxembourg Palace and/or the Hôtel de Guise? The most obvious and immediate connection involves the musician Loulié, whose sister was a nun there.18 But, even one supposed that Mlle Loulié was a skilled singer and had, for that reason, assumed St. Cecilia's name, this link seems altogether too tenuous to explain why Charpentier was about to compose so many works for this abbey. If we dig deeper and focus on the Guises and the Orléans, we find that little Mlle de Montpensier had "founded" the convent in 1637 and had presided over the benediction of the building. Considering the ill feelings that kept welling up in Mlle de Montpensier about her half-sister and her aunt, this link may be too tenuous to explain the presence of works for the Abbaye-aux-Bois in the French series of notebooks. A somewhat tighter link involves a friendship between Mme de Guise and the Coadjutrice. A final explanation — and a potentially telling one, should new research ever confirm the accuracy my hypothesis about Marc-Antoine Charpentier's contacts with the Duke of Chaulnes in Rome — involves the composer's gratitude toward the Chaulnes: for the Coadjutrice was the former ambassador's sister.
The fall of 1677 saw the composer at work on a second and more ambitious tribute to St. Cecilia, conceived for eight voices: Caecilia Virgo et Martyr octo vocibus (H. 397), which the memorandum of 1726 calls a "Dialogue [...] avec grande symphonie, le tout en latin." Once again the emphasis is upon conversion, on the "aqua baptismalis," the "aquiis lustralibus" to which Valerianus was "initiated," and upon the way the newly-weds "swore, with one mind, their faith in Christ." Though neither gazettes nor memoirs nor correspondence mention Mme de Guise's participation in a conversion service in late October of 1677, the text of this "dialogue" suggests that the work celebrated the entry of one or more Huguenots into the Catholic sheepfold, and only incidentally the feast day of the patron saint of music.
Notes
1. See Ceremonial des religieuses de l'ordre de S. Benoit (Paris: Chevalier, 1626), p. 33.
2. Jacques Laurent, Lettres en vers, July 18 and August 1, 1677. The fever is mentioned several times between July 2 and July 16, 1677, Florence, Med. del Prin., 4678; and Med. del Prin., July 19, 1677.
3. Jacques Laurent, Lettres en vers, February 20, 1677; Med. del Prin., 4768, February 19, 1677.
4. Jacques Laurent, Lettres en vers, March 6, 1677.
5. Gazette, March 1677, p. 176.
6. Gui Patin, Lettres, (Rotterdam, 1725) 4:392.
7. Archives of Saint-Sulpice, "Journal des Actions de M. Tronson," by G. Bourbon, ms. 96, item 82.
8. Med. del Prin., 4768, April 5, 1677.
9. B.N., ms. fr. 17050, fol. 482, letter from Vallant, dated June 1, 1677.
10. At the end of this work Charpentier wrote, in a browner ink: "... au lieu de fulget resurrectio il faut mettre splendet resurrectio," which suggests that the Church modified this text slightly between the summer of 1677 and the early 1690s.
11. B.N., ms. fr. 23506, fol. 240, circa June 1677.
12. Med. del Prin., [sorry: I didn't mark the "busta" and don't feel like checking my notes at this time: it's probably # 4768], May 31, 1677.
13. Med. del Prin., 4768, July 2 and 16, 1677.
14. The closing phrases of the motet, "probasti cor meum et visitasti nocte Igne me exaministi et non est inventa in me iniquitas" are from the octave service, Missale graudale romanum juxta missali (Paris, 1669), p. 233.
15. Le Moyne, Galerie des femmes fortes, p. 67.
16. Jerothée, Oraison funèbre d'Elisabeth d'Orléans, p. 14.
17. A.N., M.C., CXII, 365, transaction, October 5, 1672; and CXII, 393, création de pension, July 25, 1685. Elisabeth Desnots was a relative of the notary.
18. Loulié's cannot be identified among the nuns signing the act with Elisabeth Desnots in 1685, which suggests that she either was considerably younger than the Guise musician (who was born in 1655) and had not yet taken her vows in 1685, or else that, like Charpentier's sister, she was a converse sister.