The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
My Reading of the Evidence for 1679
Choose the evidence for another year, 1670-1680
Note: this Musing was written in the mid-1990s
The first months of 1679 saw Mme de Guise spending most of her time at court, where Charpentier was embarking on a potential career in the entourage of the prince whom everyone expected would soon succeed Louis XIV, already an old man for that day. Shortly after his Super flumina for the Pièches, Charpentier began filling notebook after notebook with devotional music. Quite a bit of the music in cahiers XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, and in Rés. Vmc ms. 27 (which bears the name "Pièche") — primarily for hd, d and b — is appropriate for matins, but the pieces in the French series of notebooks written for a similar ensemble (hd, d, b) tend to be settings of texts recited during vespers. Did the Dauphin primarily attend matins services? Or was Charpentier preparing for virtually any liturgical event on relatively short notice, by combining these new works with the music he had previously prepared for the Guise vespers? (One must assume that the two princesses authorized this borrowing of works that technically belonged to them in exclusivity.) Just as his compositions for the Guises mirror their preoccupations, so his works for the Dauphin reflect the preoccupations of the Queen. That is to say, his Sola vivebat in antris, pour la Magdaleine (H 373), and especially his Flores, flores O Gallia, pour Sainte Thérèse (H 374), may well have been composed for performance at the Carmelites of the rue du Bouloir, where Marie-Thérèse customarily spent her saint's day.
Another, rather parenthetical comment should be made about the pieces Charpentier wrote for the Dauphin's musicians. As I pointed out in the Bulletin Charpentier (number 14, 1997), the central sheet of cahier XXVI and all of cahier XXVIII were copied out on paper bearing the arms of Jean-Baptiste's Colbert. That these notebooks contain works for hd, d and b, plus two treble instruments, suggests that the "Grand Colbert" played a role in Charpentier's selection as composer to the Dauphin.
By early May Isabelle d'Orléans started off for Alençon, at which point Marie de Lorraine — or, more likely, M. Du Bois — set Charpentier to work on a setting of a newly approved text for the Feast of Our Lady of the Mercy, scheduled for mid-August. On March 17, 1679, Rome had approved the text of the Antiphona in honorem Beatæ Virginis a redemptione captivorum (H. 25), to be recited by all faithful Christians in the Kingdom of France who observe the canonical hours, be they secular or regular, male or female. This text was henceforth to be recited on the Sunday closest to August 15 (the Feast of the Assumption), during the third nocturn of the Officium B. Virginis Mariæ de Mercede Redemptionis Captivorum.1 That Charpentier set the antiphon for haute-contre and tenor, rather than for the two woman and bass that predominate in his French notebooks during these years, suggests that the two male voices were supposed to float mysteriously from Mlle de Guise's chapel and form a seamless whole with the chant of the Mercy fathers.
By contrast, only a week later, for the Feast of Saint Louis (August 25), Charpentier called upon the two high voices, bass and two treble instruments that he had long been using for the Guises — and that he was now duplicating for the Dauphin. Are the In honorem Sancti Ludovici Regis Galliæ (H. 323) of cahier 22 and the "messe en musique" that were played during the Saint-Louis's Day service that Charles Le Brun sponsored at Saint-Hippolyte, near the Gobelins one and the same compositions?
M. Le Brun, premier peintre de Sa Majesté, qui la solennise tous les ans avec un zèle particulier, fit chanter une messe en musique ce jour-là, dans la paroisse de Saint Hyppolite. La composition de la symphonie était de M. Charpentier. L'église se trouva toute tendu des plus riches tapisseries qui se fassent aux Gobelins. Elles représentoient l'histoire du roi, et furent admirées aussi bien que la musique, de ceux qui se rencontrèrent en ce lieu-là. [...] Les trompettes et les hautbois furent de la fête et firent connoître fort loin ce qui se passoit aux Gobelins.2
Charpentier's motet scarcely can be considered a "symphonie," so it is may well be that, like Le Brun, Mlle de Guise was celebrating the King's feast day. If so, one of the final works in the lost cahier XXII must have been the "symphonie" commissioned by Le Brun. It is also possible that some of the instrumental music in cahier XXIII, for example the Offerte non encore exécutée (H. 522), was intended for Le Brun's service. One cannot, of course, rule out the possibility that the In honorem of cahier 22 was performed in two different venues during the week of August 25, having been, so to speak "loaned" to Le Brun, with Mlle de Guise's approval. This possibility should not be ruled out as far-fetched, for as my Musing about Charpentier and Pierre Le Brun shows, the two men seem to have been linked not only through the Guises but through their grandparents, who came from two adjacent villages south of Beauvais.
The year 1679 brought an intensification of the Affaire des Poisons, which had surfaced in 1676 when Mme de Brinvilliers was executed for having poisoned her father and her brothers. Over the next two years, especially when the sudden death of the Duke of Savoy revived the specter of poison (just as Henriette d'Angleterre's demise had done in 1671), investigators began to identify a network of individuals with ties to Italy, to the houses of Orléans and Guise and/or to the remnants of Foucquet's circle — and sometimes to two or three of these networks. An anonymous tip asserted that at least one of these poison plots was aimed at the King and the Dauphin. Numerous incidents suggesting black magic or poison therefore began to be reconstructed, and several of them involved people who were known to have ties to the Guises, or who happened to bear the name Charpentier.
One incident involved the sudden death of Jacques I Dalibert's close relative, Pierre Dalibert, in 1671. Not only had Jacques I and Jacques II Dalibert been important household officers of Gaston d'Orléans, early in his career Pierre Dalibert had also served Monsieur. Thus all former associates of the Daliberts were considered suspect, even though the principal suspect was Pierre-Louis Reich de Pennautier, Dalibert's colleague in the collection of taxes for Languedoc, who had ties to Brinvilliers.3 That Jacques II was now employed in Rome doubtlessly heightened suspicion, for, as Boileau's first satire (1668) suggested, poison was more or less inseparable from Italy in the thinking of the day:
Mais enfin, je ne puis sans horreur et sans peine
Voir le Tibre à grands flots se mesler dans la Seine,
Et traîner à Paris ses mômes, ses farceurs,
Sa langue, ses poisons, ses crimes et ses mœurs,
Et chacun avec joie en ce temps plein de vice
Des crimes d'Italie enrichir sa malice.
Another aspect of the investigation focused on a certain Robert de la Miré de Bachimont and his associates. Bachimont not only was an experienced distiller, he had been in Turin at the time of the Duke of Savoy's death — and his wife happened to be Foucquet's cousin. Thus June and July 1678 had brought repeated interrogations of one of the Bachimonts' domestics, Marie-Anne Gaignier ou Gaignière (usually called "La Gaignière"), the widow of a soldier of the Comte d'Harcourt. She would end up spending the next four years in the fortress of Vincennes before being transferred to the General Hospital of Lyons — the latter a most unusal step for the royal investigators to take.4 Marie de Lorraine's écuyer was, of course, Roger de Gaignières, and he happened to be the grandson of a merchant of Lyon, and the son of the secretary of the Count d'Harcourt! Was La Gaignière a relative? That would seem to be the case, for Roger de Gaignières saved only one of the notes that Mlle de Guise wrote him over the years, and that note dates from May 1679: "Vous m'avés faict un grand plaisir de me mander ce que vous sçavez de ses [sic] malheureuse [sic] criminels," wrote Her Highess, with her usual phonetic spelling, "et la liste de ceux qui sont accusés ne pareitra point. Je vous le promets."5 Here then was a "wretched criminel" whose fate would have such impact upon a member of the Guise household that the princess was about to pull every string to ensure that La Gaignière's involvement would not become public knowledge. That is to say, in this intentionally vague note she gave Gaignières to understand that she would speak to the members of the Chambre Ardente that had met for the first time on April 10, 1679 and that would continue its sessions until July 1682 (when it decided to send La Gaignière to Lyon). Conveniently, the president of the Chambre happened to be Louis Boucherat (either the husband or the close relative of the lady who had been present at Riants' "opera" only a year earlier!), and another member was Councillor of State Denis Voisin. (His wife, Marie Talon, had of course signed Elisabeth Charpentier's wedding contract a decade and a half earlier!)6
Another incident in the Affaire des Poisons involved François Belot, who was said to have poisoned several silver cups and who was very close to one of the Queen's household officers. The Chambre Ardente began looking for him in March 1679, but Louvois told the investigators that "Sa Majesté a jugé à propos d'attendre encore quelques jours auparavant que de faire parler à Madame de Guise, pour voir s'il ne pourroit pas tomber entre les mains de [leur agent] par les expédients qu'il a pris pour cet effet."7 By June 10, Belot had been apprehended, interrogated and executed. His connection to Mme de Guise can scarcely have made things comfortable for the householders of the Luxembourg Palace and the Hôtel de Guise, for Her Royal Highness was known to be receiving regular shipments of medicines and distillations from Florence. Nor can Belot's familiarity with the mysterious Mlle "Catho" (who had served the first Madame and was now one of Mme de Montespan's domestics) could have been very comforting for Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The wife of a glove-maker of the Pont-Neuf, Catho had been inseparable from her late aunt, who was known as "La Charpentier," and "avec laquelle Cato avoit été à Rome."8 Was there not a risk that the investigators would draw a parallel between Catho's aunt, a cloth-seller accused of having tried to do away with one of Mme de Montespan's rivals by poisoning fabric,9 and the Roman-trained composer's sister Etiennette, who sold linen fabric?
By October 1679, the investigators were interrogating another woman called Charpentier: Marguerite Charpentier,10 the widow of Jean de Refuge, who had been the secretary of "feu M. de Bretonvilliers, maître des requêtes," (who would seem to be Jean, Mme Louis de Bailleul's brother, but I don't have his death date to be sure). Although Mme de Refuge interested the judges because of the "eaux, poudres et drogues" found in her dwelling, her link to Mme Louis de Bailleul preoccupied the investigators of the Chambre Ardente. In the records of the Chambre, in an entry marked "sans datte," Mme de Bailleul's name appears beside those of other suspects: "Conclusions du procureur général," reads the entry, "tendantes à un plus amplement informé contre le Chevalier de Certigny, la dame de Tierceville, et complices, que cepandant ils fussent décrétés de prise de corps, et que cepandant Made la présidente de Bailleul fut décrété d'ajournement personnel."11
At that point, Mme de Bailleul's name disappears from the records of the Bastille, but her possible involvement resurfaced during the months when two of Mazarin's nieces, the duchesses of Bouillon and Soissons — who were Italians, and who therefore were perceived as having an innate affinity for poison — were avoiding arrest; and when the Duke of Luxembourg (for whose funeral service Charpentier would compose music!) took the nobler course of action and surrendered to the King, proclaiming his innocence; and when royal mistress Montespan had become the focus of the entire investigation. All the while, Colbert (Mazarin's former intendant, who had been Foucquet's nemesis and was now Montespan's defender) was pitted against Louvois, who was digging ever deeper.12 Indeed, going back in time, the investigators focused briefly on yet another woman called Charpentier: "Mme Charpentier, sœur de Pinon," that is, the sister of Jacques Pinon de Martroy,13 who was also related to Foucquet and who was being posthumously accused of planning to use black magic to kill the king. The Pinons descended from a faithful Guise officer during the League. Suspicion also rested briefly on a "priest at Montmartre" who had "passed poisons under a chalice" to increase their power.14 The Guises of Montmartre, of the Luxembourg and of the Hôtel de Guise; Italy; revenge for Foucquet's disgrace: these undercurrents flowed together during the Poison Affair and go a long way to explain the arrests made between 1678 and 1681.
As Mme de Scudéry remarked wittily, "On ne parle que de gens pris pour poison. [...] Cela fait peur à tout le monde; grâce à Dieu, je n'ai jamais acheté de fard ni fait dire ma bonne aventure."15 It was, in short, an anxious time — an most uncomfortable moment for individuals in the Guise circle. The summer of 1679 was especially frightening, for it brought many executions, including Belot's. Is this why there was little music in Charpentier's French cahiers (principally cahier 22) for 1679 — as of musical events risked attracting too much attention? (There are only the piece for the Mercy, prayers for peace, music for Corpus Christi, Saint Louis — and a psalm for a large ensemble that cannot be identified.) Even worse, did the fact that so many people called Charpentier, so many protégés of the Guises, so many people with ties to Italy were involved in the Poison Affair seal the doom of Charpentier's bid to become a householder of the prince who was expected to become the next king of France? Had the royal councillors begun questioning the wisdom of allowing a a Charpentier who belonged to the Guises to approach Monseigneur? It was probably safe to let him display his God-given gifts in the royal chapel, but should he be granted access to the Dauphin's private apartment? In a word, can Charpentier's illness of May 1683 be attributed to the cumulative effect of nervous exhaustion and despair over the cards that Fate had recently dealt him?
Cahier 23 begins with Pour le sacre d'un évêque, ouverture pendant qu'il s'habille (H. 518), an event that can be presumed to have taken place in mid- or late-1679. One can only guess at the identity of the new bishop. We know that on the first Sunday after Easter, 1679, Denis-François Le Bouthillier succeeded François Malier (the brother of the woman who had witnessed Elisabeth Charpentier's wedding contract many years before) and was consecrated bishop of Troyes at the Oratoire. We also know that Charpentier's relative, Nicolas Sevin, bishop of Cahors, had died in November 1678, and that his successor, Noailles, was consecrated in Paris, at the abbaye of Saint-Antoine, in June 1679. To propose that this overture was for Noailles would mean, however, that Charpentier did not get around to copying the music into his notebooks until several months after the consecration — which is not impossible. Few other consecrations took place in Paris during the final half of 1679, and none have been found for the first months of 1680. Another event involving a bishop must not be omitted from this list: at a service held at the Grandes Carmelites on June 21, 1679, Mlle de Guise's "Tartuffe," Gabriel de Roquette, who had been named bishop of Autun some years earlier, finally received the pallium that had been delayed by the "regalium" squabble. Yet it is difficult to imagine Charpentier calling this event a "sacre."
While the Guises were apparently keeping a low profile, Charpentier continued to compose for the theater. When Le Sicilien was revived on June 8, in included a Sérénade pour le Sicilien (H. 497) by Charpentier; and a month later, July 11, he supplied an Ouverture (H. 498) for the revival of Le Dépit amoureux. October 17 brought a revival of L'Inconnu, for which the composer reused the Ouverture (H. 499) he had written for Acis et Galatée a year and a half earlier — an atypical gesture that may suggest that he was never paid by the financially pressed Riants.
Notes
1. A copy of this service was bound with summer volume of the Brevarium Augustinianum (Paris: Coignard, 1684), in the Rodez public library, call number T. 1019.
2. Mercure galant, September 1679, pp. 55-56 and 63.
3. Archives de la Bastille, IV, pp. 293, 295-297; and for a summary of the case against Pennautier, Georges Mongrédien, Madame de Montespan et l'Affaire des poisons (Paris: Hachette, 1953), pp. 26-27.
4. Archives de la Bastille, V, pp. 15, 40-41, 55, and VII, pp. 114, 117; Jean-Christian Petitfils, L'Affaire des poisons (Paris, 1977), pp. 39, 42; Mongrédien, Poisons, pp. 36-40; and B.N., ms. Clairambault, 986, p. 357.
5. B.N., ms. fr. 24987, fol. 290.
6. Mongrédien, Poisons, p. 40.
7. Archives de la Bastille, V, pp. 282, 298, 310, 388, 391-392; and Mongrédien, Poisons, p. 46.
8. Archives de la Bastille, V, p. 388, interrogation of Belot; and for Catho, V, pp. 8, 102, 478, 484-485.
9. Mongrédien, Poisons, pp. 83-88.
10. B.N., ms. Clairambault, 986, pp. 223 ff; and p. 234 for yet another prisoner named Marguerite Charpentier.
11. B.N., ms. Clairambault, 986, p. 327.
12. See Mongrédien, Poisons.
13. In the late sixteenth century, Jean Charpentier's daughter Catherine married Merault, a Guise treasurer during the League. Her nephew, Louis Charpentier wed Jeanne Pinon, Jacques' sister. And Pinon knew the Charpentiers of Meaux quite well. For the Fouquet group, see Mongrédien, Poisons, pp. 203-207.
14. Mongrédien, Poisons, p. 99.
15. Quoted by Mongrédien, Poisons, p. 44.