The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
My Reading of the Evidence for 1678
Choose the evidence for another year, 1670-1680
Note: this Musing was written in the mid-1990s
The disappearance of cahiers XX to XXII makes it very difficult to sketch Marc-Antoine Charpentier's activities for 1678. The only surviving clues to his "extraordinary" work are found in a cahier of instrumental pieces, cahier XXIV. Nor are the French notebooks for that year any more revealing about the preoccupations of the two Guises. The six works in cahiers 20 and 21 seem to date from the late spring and early summer and contain none of the oratorios that characterized 1675-1677.
This sudden shift in content, and the apparent absence of musical activities during the first few months of the year (and also during the final six months of 1678) would seem to mirror a rather abrupt change in Mme de Guise's spirituality. That Charpentier's production marches in step with Isabelle d'Orléans's devotions can be taken as strong evidence that the members of the musical ensemble were at Mme de Guise's disposal whenever she was in Paris, even though it would be Mlle de Guise's testament of 1687 that would reward them for their faithful service to both princesses.
For much of January and February of 1678, Mme de Guise was in retreat at a house run for that purpose by a charitable woman, just beyond the Porte Saint-Martin, where they "live a sort of cloistered life, like nuns, and care for the sick." The establishment described by the Florentine resident was not a hospital, it was a "large house" whose layout resembled that of a convent. There "many ladies lived" and would go out to the homes of the sick and the poor throughout the city and bring them food and medicine. And, he noted in code, Mme de Guise is one of the directors of the organization.1
Not only was the young widow withdrawing from the social whirl at her cousin's court, she announced that she would not travel to Lille with the court, and that she did not plan Mardi Gras activities to cheer up Mme de Toscane. In fact, she had convinced her sister to join her in retreat! (There were underlying reasons for discouraging these festivities: the Grand Duchess was seeing too much of the notoriously dissolute Furstemberg, bishop of Strasbourg.2) A routine for Mme de Toscane's outings was soon established. Each Wednesday, she had lunch at the Hôtel de Guise and then would either visit the Carmelites of the rue du Bouloir or the Capucines of the rue Saint-Honoré, or with her sister she might attend the "assembly for the poor" and take food to the indigent. Mme de Guise and Mme de Lillebonne (another princess of the House of Lorraine) also were involved in these lunches at the Hôtel de Guise, but it is difficult to determine whether Mlle de Guise joined them in the charitable activities that followed. These activities were directed by Mme de Nicolai, wife of the First President of the chambre des Comptes, in collaboration with Joly, the general of the Missionnaires. This was an "illustre Assemblée de Dames, qui prenne[nt] soin de procurer du secours aux misères extraordinaires, aux bruslez, pillez ou ravagez par les guerres, peste famine et autres malheurs," and who do so under the aegis of St. Charles Borromeo and, of course, the protection of both the Virgin and the "Saint Enfant-Jésus." The by-laws — "fait à Paris par un missionnaire" and published in 1676 — suggest that the organization had only recently been created: "qu'on établit à présent," "quelques personnes charitables de Paris [...] entreprirent il y a quelques années." "Inspired by God," and modeling their activities on the "assemblées de la primitive Eglise, et Confréries du grand S. Charles Boromée dans le dernier siècle," these charitable individuals — "qui sont de la première qualité et qui professent une vertu éminente" — had only recently established "des Assemblées et Confréries dans la Paroisse de S. Sulpice et ailleurs." In addition to helping the poor, the sick and the imprisoned, "ces Confréries s'appliquent aussi à présent à la conversion des Hérétiques et à secourir les convertis" and "il s'est veu tant de Conversions procurées par ces Confréries," that the devout can be guided by a general maxim: "Il n'y [...] qu'à imiter la conduite de nostre grand Cardinal et S. Archevesque de Milan," whose charitable and converting activities can serve as an example for all.3
Thanks to this little handbook, we begin to understand more fully the tight link that connects what initially appear to be separate devotions for which Charpentier composed music after 1675: these charitable Judiths and Esthers simultaneously adored the Holy Sacrament and sought guidance from the Virgin, the Infant Jesus, Saint Charles Borromeo, and Saint Cecilia the Converter of heretics. Put another way, beginning with 1675, we literally witnessed, in Charpentier's notebooks, the emergence of a preoccupation with the Infant Jesus and the Virgin, and with three "strong women," Judith, Esther, Cecilia. Now, in 1678, Charles Borromeo appears in the Guise devotions, and by 1680 the saint will find his way into Charpentier's "French" notebooks.
We have already met one of the "superiors" who directed the charities: Mme de Miramion, one of the "Dames des plus considérables et des plus vertueuses de Paris." "Princesses, Duchesses" and other high-ranking women directed the charities of the different parishes of the capital, usually through confraternities, sometimes devoted to Borromeo, and sometimes to the Virgin. In addition to feeding the poor, tending the sick and collecting alms, the members of these confraternities worshipped together. Every time the Assembly met, the by-laws of the Borromeo confraternity stipulate, "on en députera deux [membres] pour adorer le S. Sacrement, deux pour visiter l'Hospital, deux pour visiter les prisons, et deux pour communier." They would then report back to the Assembly. On the feast day of their patron protector, "on exposera le saint Sacrement, on fera une Procession publique, on y portera l'image de la sainte Vierge."4 Mme de Guise attempted to involve the Medicis in her charitable efforts, giving Gondi long lists of medicines and asking him to transmit to the Grand Duke her request for free medicines — and some perfumed white gloves!5
While Their Highnesses were preoccupied with this confraternity, their composer was preparing a Carnival entertainment, Acis et Galathée, for a certain "M. de Rians" — the overture for which (H 499) survives in cahier XXIV. It so happens that, owing to Quinault's disgrace over Isis, Lully did not produce an opera that Carnival season. That "Rians" dared to do so, and that Charpentier's friends at the Mercure galant dared to praise the work — and to call it an "opera" — can therefore be seen as a jab at Lully:
Il y a eu icy ce Carnaval plusieurs sortes de Divertissements mais un des plus grands que nous ayans eus a esté un petit Opéra intitulé Les Amours d'Acis et de Galatée, dont M. de Rians, Procureur du Roy de l'ancien Chastelet, a donné plusieurs representations dans son Hostel avec sa magnificence ordinaire. L'Assemblée a esté chaque foix plus de quatre cens Auditeurs, parmy lesquels plusieurs Personnes de la plus haute qualité ont quelquefois eu peine à trouver place. Tous ceux qui chanterent et joüerent des Instruments furent extrêmement applaudis. La Musique estoit de la composition de M. Charpentier dont je vous ay déjà fait voir des Airs. Ainsi vous en connoissez l'heureux talent par vos mesme. Madame de Beauvais, Madame de Boucherat, Messieurs les Marquis de Sablé et de Biron, M. De Niel, Monsieur de Saint-Colombe, si celebre pour la Viole et quantité d'autres qui entendent parfaitement toute la finesse du Chant ont esté des admirateurs de cet Opéra.6
Who was this Rians who was courageous enough to flout Lully's privilege by presenting an "opera"? Although his full name sometimes appears as "Jean-Armand" de Riants, the majority of the notarial acts he signed call him "Armand-Jean" de Riants. In other words, Riants would seem to have been either a godchild of Cardinal Armand-Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, or the godchild of one of the Cardinal's godchildren.
That Marc-Antoine Charpentier's younger brother bore these two very exclusive first names raises the possibility that Riants was Armand-Jean Charpentier's godfather. Born in 1623, he was twenty-three when Armand-Jean Charpentier was born. Indeed, as a procureur du roi in the Châtelet of Paris, Riants had long been a colleague of the Croyers (Charpentier's cousins) and the Ferrands (Etiennette Charpentier's protectors). For example, in the early 1660s, Riants and Ferrand routinely co-signed documents at the Châtelet. There are, however, other ways in which Riants could have first become acquainted with the Charpentiers and subsequently received the Guises approval for commissioning an "opera" from their protégé. Riants' sister Marie had wed Urbain II de Laval, marquis de Sablé, signaled out by the Mercure as one of the connoisseurs at Charpentier's opera. Sablé was not only the son of the famous Mme de Sablé (who was one of Dr. Vallant's good friends and correspondents), he was the grandson of a Ligueur, Urbain I de Laval, marshal of France. In addition, Mme de Sablé's brother, Jean Souvré de Courtenvaux, was a close enough cousin to Louis de Bailleul (the son of Elisabeth Charpentier's friend, Marie Mallier-Bailleul) to witness Bailleul's marriage contract in 1644.7 In addition, Mlle de Guise was so close to Mme de Sablé's niece, Mlle de Saint-Gelais de Lusignan, that Her Highness attended Mlle de Lusignan's taking of the veil. But why does the Mercure name the Boucherats and the Beauvaises? Mme de Beauvais doubtlessly was mentioned for her ties to the Riants family: Armand-Jean's brother had married the daughter of Isabelle de Beauvais. On the other hand, it is not clear which of several Mme de Boucherat attended the performance, nor why Charpentier's friends at the Mercure mentioned her. At the time he commissioned this opera, Riants was deeply in debt: in 1684 his furniture was sold to pay his debts and he moved to the abbey of St. Victor, thereby depriving musicologists of the chance to recreate the rooms into which some four hundred people had been squeezed in February of 1678.
On Monday, March 18, a month after this "opera" and a day after the Queen had attended both a Te Deum at Notre Dame and a fête on the Grève in honor of the King and Monsieur, who were fighting in the North, Mme de Guise, Mme de Toscane, and the Grande Mademoiselle entertained Marie-Thérèse at the Luxembourg: "Le beau Trio des trois Sœurs trois princesses, le lendemain au Palais Luxembourg, A son disner se fit mille caresses, La sœur aisnée [Montpensier] y fit voir ses largesses."8 Is there a connection between the Te Deum, the luncheon and the Psalmus in tempore belli pro rege (H. 168) of cahier 20, a work for a large group that uses a text normally recited at Sunday matins? One cannot rule out the possibility that the cathedral chapter was pressured to perform Charpentier's music that day, instead of a composition by their master, Mignon; but it is more likely that the Te Deum at Notre-Dame was not the only one sung that March. In fact, immediately after Charpentier's overture for Acis et Galatée, in cahier XXIV, comes a fanfare for two trumpets and a Prélude pour le Te Deum à 8 (H 145) that he had copied into cahier X. In other words, Charpentier's Te Deum of 1672 clearly was reused in early 1678. He also penned a prelude (H 521) for his Exaudiat of cahier XI and copied it into cahier XXIV; but in the end that prelude was not used.
If Charpentier composed any extraordinary pieces in 1678, they were lost with cahiers XXI and XXII. His remaining Guise compositions in for that year (to be found in cahiers 20 and 21) were intended for either the high feasts of the Virgin or for the Corpus Christi octave, which began June 9. The dating of these works suggests that they were for Mlle de Guise, for Mme de Guise set off for Alençon in mid-May, where she grasped at every excuse to keep the Grand Duchess from moving into the residence she was preparing there on the site of a house and gardens in the Saint-Blaise quarter that she had just reclaimed from the nuns of the Visitation and that she enlarged and improved — and that the townspeople called the "Hôtel de Guise."9
At Alençon, Isabelle d'Orléans continued the charitable activities in which she had immersed herself during the early months of 1678. She would go out and care for the sick at the hospital she had founded there, visit her favorite convents and bring food to prisoners.10 These charitable activities were more or less inseparable from her conversionary ones: she and a Jesuit missionary named Father Chaurand, had founded a confraternity at Alençon "qui prend soin des malades seulement." In addition, "la Duchesse de Guise, qui est très charitable, y a estably un Hospital," and Chaurand has "obtenu de cette Princesse des remèdes pour les pauvres" (hence Mme de Guise's repeated requests that Cosimo de Medicis send her medicines!) and will be coordinating the various charitable and conversionary activities at Alençon.11 Thus began two decades that a modern guide to Alençon describes thusly: Mme de Guise "y vécut une vingtaine d'années, imposant à ses sujets une vertu austère, [...] tempérée par de nombreuses œuvres charitables, mais rendu plus rigoureuse à l'égard des protestants dont les manifestations de résistance aux conversions forcées, spécialement celles des enfants, furent sévèrement réprimées (1681) peu de temps avant que la révocation de l'édit de Nantes ne les contraignit à l'exil."12
These activities prompted a brief article in the Mercure galant that praises both Her Royal Highness's zeal and the city fathers material response to her fervor:
Mme la Duchesse de Guise est à Alençon depuis quelque temps. C'est un grand sujet de foye pour cette Ville qui est dans de continuelles admirations de sa vertue. Elle y donne de grands exemples de piété et s'employe particulierement à faire des Conversions. Elle est déjà venuë à bout de plusieurs. [...] Messieurs d'Alençon, pour marquer leur zele à Mme de Guise ont faire faire une nouvelle porte à leur Ville, qui va en droite ligne de son Palais à la grande Eglise. Ainsi du haut du Fauxbourg S. Blaise, on découvre presentement le fond de la grande Ruë et la vuë y trouve une Perspective en éloignement très-agreable.13
Creating a superb view from the "heights of the fauxbourg Saint-Blaise" of course meant creating a fine panorama from Mme de Guise's residence — from which she tore herself away in order to make a trip to Caen to venerate a famous statue of the Virgin.
Before she left for Alençon, Mme de Guise apparently began exerting pressure to have Charpentier incorporated into the Dauphin's entourage, although this pressure would not bear fruit until early 1679. For it was surely she, rather than Marie de Lorraine, who was instrumental in creating for the composer an entrée into the Dauphin's household. Indeed, since the elder princess was not favored by an entrée to the Queen's apartment, she was scarcely in a position to make Charpentier's talents known to Their Majesties.14 At any rate, in April 1678, Mme de Guise began talking about taking the Grand Duchess to visit the Dauphin, who at sixteen would soon complete his formal education: he was practicing riding, and now lunched with his father each day. He soon would select a household — and doubtlessly marry. Monseigneur clearly was eager to become emancipated from his teachers and governors: for example, when Gondi and several other ambassadors went to present their compliments to him in March 1678, the youth "was proud of having carried out that function alone, and having received such compliments for the first time without the King and the Queen."15 In fact, the indolent and hesitant prince was making a few attempts at patronage: that is to say, he was responding in a quite predictable way to the more or less subtle pressures being exerted upon him by the courtiers in his entourage. Thus, in December 1678, after the death of Guillaume I d'Estival, a singer in the royal chapel, the Dauphin promised Mme de Richelieu that he would propose one of her protégés for the post. Louis XIV promptly humiliated his son by saying that he had no business meddling in such matters.16
During the interval between Mme de Guise's burning desire to visit Monseigneur and the youth's futile attempt to name a singer to the royal chapel, someone clearly spoke on Charpentier's behalf. And, judging from the Estival incident, that person spoke to the King or, perhaps, his minister, rather than to the Dauphin. That Charpentier's earliest composition for Marguerite and Madeleine Pièche — who, with their brothers Antoine and Pierre, and the bass Frizon, would soon form what would be called the "musique du Dauphin" — is to be found at the beginning of cahier 22 (which clearly dates from the first half of 1679), suggests that late in 1678 (or perhaps early in 1679), Isabelle d'Orléans asked Charpentier to "offer" Monseigneur a psalm for Thursday vespers: the Super flumina des demoiselles Pieches (H 170). The fact that the composer copied the prelude to this psalm into a cahier of the Roman series (XXIV) seems to suggest one of three things: the work may have been written for the Guise singers and then was promptly reused, with a prelude, for the Dauphin; or Charpentier wrote the prelude concurrently with the psalm but copied the prelude into one of two notebooks of purely instrumental music that he was then gradually filling up (cahiers XXIII and XXIV, which he later numbered in reverse chronological order); or else the composer perceived the psalm as belonging partly to his protectress and partly to the Dauphin, who can be presumed to have presented the usual reward for this "gift."
Meanwhile, we can suppose that Mme de Guise called upon the Guise musicians in mid- December of 1678, when she and the Grande Mademoiselle treated their friends to a Saint Catherine's day party, known as the fête des nonnettes, that is, the "feast of the spinsters":
Au Palais Luxembourg,/ Beau Sejour des vertueux cœurs,/ Dans les Appartemens on y voit des Hostesses/ En bannir en tout temps les fâcheuses tristesses,/ Les tristes helas, les soûpirs,/ Pour y faire regner les innocens plaisirs;/ Le Jeu, la Danse & la Musique/ A la Mélancholie y font toûjours la nique.17
In a word, Their Royal Highnesses entertained a group of women with gambling (the profits went to Mme de Guise's charities), a ball, and musical entertainment that apparently consisted for vocal and instrumental airs, rather than a replay of the "opera" written for Riants.
Notes
1. Archivio di Stato, Florence, Med. del Prin., 4767, February 18 and April 22, 1678.
2. Med. del Prin., 4767, February 18 and April 22, 1678.
3. Mazarine, A 16599, Reglemens des Confreries de la Charité ... et Confreries du grand S. Charles Boromée..., dated 1676, which focused on converting heretics and creating charitable services in each parish of the city.
4. After lunch on March 25, 1678, Mme de Guise went to Saint-Sulpice for a charitable meeting, and on April 21 she went to the "assemblée des pauvres chez la présidente de Nicolai," as she had done the preceeding January 14: Med. del Prin, dossier 1. For this assembly, see Mazarine, A 100694, pièce 84 (for Miramion), pièce 88 (Miramion and Nicolai). In the Règlement, Mme de Guise is named on p. 32, as "superior" for the parish of Saint-Sulpice," an "Assemblée et Confréries" having been created in that parish (p. 6). For the devotions of the Assemblies, see pp. 11 and 13.
5. Med. del Prin., 4820, March 14, April 2, April 29, 1678.
6. Mercure galant, February 1678, pp. 131-132.
7. A.N., M.C., V, 98, wedding contract of July 16, 1644.
8. Jacques Laurent, Lettres en vers, Lc2 30, March 31, 1678.
9. A.N., M.C., LXXV, 190, transport, May 7, 1678.
10. Med. del Prin., 4769, dossier 1, July 22, 1678.
11. Règlement, p. 51.
12. Jean Gourhand, Alençon, Cité des ducs (1970), Mazarine: 8o 84379 (32).
13. Mercure galant, June 1678, p. 200.
14. Med. del Prin., 4769, May 3, 1678, which points out that it was not desirable that Mme de Toscane go to court with Mlle de Guise as a chaperon: this made the Grand Duchess independent, because she did not go to the Queen's apartment, where the usual spies could keep tabs on her behavior.
15. Med. del Prin., 4674, March 28, June 27 and October 6, 1678.
16. Med. del Prin., 4820, December 16, 1678.
17. Laurent, Lettres en vers, December 17, 1678, B.N., Lc2 30.