The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
My Reading of the Evidence for 1680
Choose the evidence for another year, 1670-1680
Note: this Musing was written in the mid-1990s
January 1680 brought an intensification of the Affaire des Poisons: the Duke of Luxembourg and two of his servants were under arrest. The court however had more pleasant things to think about, for the Dauphin would soon marry. His household was being created, and his bride was about to start her progress from Munich to Paris. Mme de Guise set off with the rest of the court in late February, to greet the Dauphine and attend the wedding at Châlons.
During that same month, Charpentier's oratorio Pestis mediolanensis (H. 398) was performed, to honor the patron saint of Her Royal Highness's charitable confraternity. (The official feast day of the saint was February 28, but not only does the text that will be quoted below show that the annual festivities at the parish church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie to honor St. Charles Borromeo lasted for most of February and took the form of a succession of musical performances, another source tells us that some, if not all of the Confraternities of that saint celebrated on November 4. In other words, it is quite possible that H. 398 was performed late in 1679. The sequence of preludes in Roman cahier XXIII, which begins with a work for June 1679 and moves on to early 1680, places Pestis after the prelude for l'Enfant prodigue, of mid-1680: in other words, if we assume that Charpentier copied out all the prologues chronologically, then Pestis would date from 1680. (Mme de Guise's whereabouts don't provide conclusive evidence: she returned from Alençon in the fall of 1679, so she could have organized an event for November 1679. But in 1680 she left Paris on Feb. 27 with the rest of the court to fetch the Dauphine, and did not return until mid-March.)
As a French devotional text of the day asserts, Charles Borromeo was "comme le martyr de la charité de son peuple," for he had been willing to risk catching the plague. Since the Church recognized that type of martrydom, each February 28 "elle honore comme Martyrs les Prestres & les Docteurs de S. Jacques [de la Boucherie] qui dans une semblable contagion estoient morts au secours des malades" — hence the link between St. Charles and the Parisian parish of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, where a confraternity of St. Charles had been established early in the century, serving as "un second diocèse de S. Charles, puisqu'elle [the confraternity] est establie sous son nom, qu'elle est animée de son esprit, qu'elle imite les exemples de sa charité, qu'elle en continuë les desseins, & nous pouvons dire," the author assures the faithful, "que ce charitable Prelat [Borromeo] assiste encore par vos mains les pauvres que vous secourez." In a word, the charitable women working with Mme de Guise could view themselves as the instruments of the Saint, and therefore of God, just as Judith and Esther and Cecilia were God's instruments. The members of the confraternity established at Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie not only contributed money to the confraternity, they personally sought out the pauvres honteux and the ruined families who were hiding their shame by refusing to go about in the streets and, at the risk of their own health, they fed and nursed these wretches. Members were exhorted to renounce sumptuous banquets and luxurious and vain possessions, in order to help the wretched.1 The Queen joined the confraternity in 1662, and the Dauphin subsequently became a member.
The records of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie reveal that, by 1668, the Feast of St. Charles had become a musical event — indeed, a popular musical event that often ended in riotous behavior:
Plusieurs personnes de la paroisse sainct Jacques et des aultres paroisses ont recongneu qu'à cause de la musique assemblée le jour de sainct Charles en lad. eglise St Jacques, il s'i commect de grandes insolences et indecences contre la saincteté du lieu et du jour, en la presence de St Sacrement, non seullement dans le milieu de la neffe, où la pluspart des personnes ont plus d'attention et d'application à cette ceremonie et aux gestes et postures des muziciens, qui sont toujours plus d'une heure à venir se placer et preparer entre le sermont et le vespre, durant lequel temps il ne se chante aucune priere et chacun s'entretient discourant, assis le dos tourné au St Sacrement, considerant plus les preparations de la musique et l'eschaffault, où il se commect aussy beaucoup d'indecence jusques à frapper des mains quand quelqu'un de la trouppe donne matiere de rizée, et ce qui attire tout de mesme les esprits des auditeurs, divertit et interrompt la devotion et l'aplication des esprits plus devots, ce qui leur donne aussi matiere de murmurer, y ayant mesmes des gens asses miserables et indevots de l'un et l'autre sexe, et qui aparement sont hereticques ou entierement libertins, rangés aux extremités de l'eglize, placez dans des bancs et confessionaux, lesquels commettent des actions sacrileges et qui ne se peuvent escrire sans horeur, ce qui a esté veu et recongnue par plusieurs personnes, et aussy endroictz escartés et retirés à l'obscurité, s'estants rencontrés des ames de femes et filles pieuses en méditation, il y a eu des hommes ou garçon[s], ou pour mieux dire des forme[s] d'homme, qui les ont abordées et interrompues par des parolles et des actions deshonnestes et impudicques, et qui ont obligé ces personnes pieuses à quitter et se retirer de l'eglize. On a aussy veu plusieurs hommes ou garçons monté par des balustrades de menuizerie qui enferme le c[h]œur, sur le bois au-dessoubz du crucifix, la face tournée aux musiciens et le dos au sainct sacrement, ce qui est ireverend et cause aussy dommage à la menuizerie, qui est delicatte et qui ne se pouroit pas reparer si proprement; et enfin cette céremonie faict cesser les heures canonialles, les vespres du jour, et en la presente année 1668, le premier dimanche du mois que la feste St-Charles est arrivée, il n'y a point eu de vespres du dimanche, point de complie ny de salut. L'eschaffault cause encore la rupture de couvertures des vistres de l'eglize, parce que cela attire plusieurs personnes plus curieux que devots; et d'aultant que ces préparatifs de musicque et d'eschaffault se font par la permission que les marguilliers en donne[nt] à messieurs les maistres de la confrairie St-Charles (qui ont du zele et font despence), laquelle assurément sera plus utille aux pauvres qu'aux musiciens, il sera deliberé si doresnavant on doibt permettre cette ceremonie.....2
The presence of a musical offering to St. Charles Borromeo in one of Charpentier's French notebooks, and the involvement of Mme de Guise in a Paris-wide charitable movement that emulated the saintly Bishop of Milan, suggests that the priests at Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie did not put a stop to that month-long "ceremony," and that Mme de Guise (perhaps jointly with Mlle de Guise) offered the composition to the "masters of the confraternity," and perhaps contributed to the expenses of constructing the "scaffolds" that caused brought so many temptations into that church. It is, however, entirely possible that Charpentier's oratorio was performed at the Theatines or at Saint-Sulpice, where Mme de Guise was Superior of the Borromeo confraternity.
The first months of 1680 also saw Charpentier preparing Les neuf leçons de Ténèbres (H. 96- 110) and the Neuf répons de chaque jour (H. 11-119) for the Abbaye-aux-Bois. When the breviary for Paris was revised, the composer abruptly stopped work on the responses, commenting: "Je n'ay pas achevé les autres dix-huit répons à cause du changement du bréviaire." This only the nine "lessons" of Tenebræ were sung at the abbey in April 1680, and this in a quite competitive context that saw several churches vying for music lovers:
La musique de Sa Majesté a excellé à son ordinaire pendant les jours de ténèbres, dont l'office a été fait dans la chapelle du Vieux Château de Saint Germain. [this merits the full quote some day] [...] Nous avons eu aussi une très belle musique à Paris dans les mêmes jours, et l'on a couru en foule à la Sainte-Chapelle et à l'Abbaye-aux-Bois. Ce qu'on entendit à la Sainte-Chapelle, était de MM. Chaperon, la Lande, et Lalouette; et à l'Abbaye-aux-Bois, de M. Charpentier.3
Can we be sure that the lessons in cahiers 26-29 were the ones written for the abbey and sung by nuns wearing a distinctive habit: a grey robe with a rope belt, a black veil, a white mantle and a red scapulary? We can, indeed. One of the nuns is identified, with several phonetic spellings: "Mère Desnots,""Denos," "Dhenaut." Notarial acts show that her full name was Elisabeth Desnots, and that she had become a religieuse professe by 1672 and that she was still alive in 1685.4 For our understanding of Charpentier as a composer it is therefore interesting to note that he chose to have the singers accompanied by instruments, rather than by the abbey organ, a "buffet d'orgue de 4 pieds de long sur 3 pieds et demy de large, posé dans un cabinet de bois de chesne, couvert de poirier noircy," with seven jeux in the upper keyboard and five in the lower.5
That Gaston d'Orléans (using the Grande Mademoiselle's money) created a rente for the new abbey in the 1637s scarcely explains why these lessons appear in Charpentier's French notebooks four decades later, for a different group of Annonciade nuns took possession of the precincts in 1654. Is the explanation perhaps far more personal? The musician Loulié's sister was a nun at the abbey. That these works were transcribed into a French notebook, rather than a Roman one, suggests either that the Guises either loaned, so to speak, their protégé to a friend at the abbey; or that some of the works in the French cahiers were written for primarily personal reasons.
Spring found Charpentier at work on music for the matins of Corpus Christi. He wrote an élévation, O pretiosum, o salutiferum (H. 245) for a haut dessus and two treble instruments — a work that he clearly reused, because the allusions to "un dessus, deux violons et l'orgue" were added in a different ink. And he composed another élévation, Caro meo vere est cibus (H. 246) for the two women's voices and the bass voice (hd, d and b) that he had used for years at the Hôtel de Guise and that he now was using for the Dauphin (hd, d and b). For an unaccompanied haut dessus, he also penned a setting of O pretiosum et admirabile convivium (H. 247), which the breviary specifies is sung at matins. That the composer wrote several consecutive works for a single religious holiday suggests he was writing for two or more events, one of them probably Montmartre and the others for one or more Corpus Christi processions involving one of the Guises or that stopped at a chapel with which they were associated.
The Gazette enables us to identify at least one of the processions. After returning from Châlons and the Dauphin's wedding, Mme de Guise became caught up in the festivities that greeted the Dauphine — who visited Montmartre at least twice and who was fêted lavishly at Monsieur's residence at Saint-Cloud. Indeed, Mme de Guise delayed her departure for Alençon until July. The Corpus Christi procession at court therefore found her marching with the King, the Queen, the Dauphin and the Dauphine, and attending all the saluts of the octave.6 Thus it appears that Her Royal Highness contributed at least one composition to the event, perhaps to acknowledge the royal family's recent commitment to engage her protégé.
With Mme de Guise at Alençon for the summer, Mlle de Guise once again began to make her imprint upon Charpentier's creativity. For a year she had been planning a trip to her lands in Champagne and had toyed with the idea of including Mme de Toscane in the excursion. (Is the delay explained by Marie de Lorraine's desire to find a way to exclude the Grand Duchess?) One of the principal stops would be her chateau of Marchais and the adjoining marian church of Liesse. Early that summer Charpentier began working on several pieces for the Virgin — unless the first two works in cahier 23, (a Miserere, H. 173) and an Inviolata, H. 26, with their atypical combinations of voices, were written for the Abbaye-aux-Bois. Into cahier 30 he copied a Canticum Annæ (H. 325), for the usual Guise trio; and at the end of cahier 29, he transcribed a Canticum in honorem beatæ Virginis Maria inter homines et angelos (H. 400), for an unsual mix of voices: two dessus, a haute-contre, a tenor and a bass. It is as if Charpentier had written himself into this particular piece. If that is so, it is because he was going to join the musique and M. Du Bois on the excursion in Champagne.
Shortly before the voyage, his oratorio for a large ensemble, Filius prodigus (H. 399), apparently was performed, probably in Paris. The prelude was borrowed from the collection in cahier XXIII. Or should the fact that, in cahier XXIII, this prelude precedes the prelude for the oratorio for St. Charles Borromeo, rather than following it, be taken as evidence that cahiers XXIII and XXIV not only were subsequently numbered in the incorrect order, but the works they contain are in not in a rigorously chronological order? (It should be possible to find the date for that text in the Breviaries, but I have not yet managed to do so...)
At the end of September, a procession of several coaches started east from Paris, bearing Marie de Lorraine and her sister the Abbess, their entourage (which included Mme de Saint-André, Sœur Angélique, "Madame Charlotte," — and M. Du Bois and the musique, including, it would seem Charpentier. They spent the night of October 2 in the vicinity of Villemareuil, the Castille country house that Mme Foucquet had apparently more or less abandoned after her husband's disgrace. Du Bois and his companions lodged in the nearby pilgrimage town of Saint-Fiacre and later informed Dr. Vallant that:
Nous arrivasmes hier à Ville Mareuil, qui est une masure où il n'y a ny porte, ny fenestres. Leurs Altesses furent bien étonnez de s'y voir. On fit néantmoins le mieux qu'on y peut pour les bien mettre. Je ne sçay encore comment elles se trouvent ce matin. Pour nous, nous avons couché icy [à Saint-Fiacre], qui est un lieu à un quart de lieue du château le plus misérable du monde. J'y ay passé une très méchante nuit.
Mme de Montmartre concurred: "Nous sommes dans un lieu où [...] tout y manque et à peine y a tout le couvert."7 After a long day that saw the Guises at Jouarre, visiting their relative the abbess, they reached Moustiers at ten in the evening and spent a comfortable night in lodgings provided by a certain La Tour. Mme de Montmartre began to glow, and the greater the distance between her and her physician, the healthier she became.
Two days later, the travelers reached Mlle de Guise's château of Marchais. During a four-day stay, Marie de Lorraine, dame de Liesse, divided her time between devotions at the nearby marian chapel of Liesse and the administrative problems of her estate where, Du Bois observed, "nous trouvasmes touttes choses dans un grand désordre. Dieu veuille que nous nous en tirions bien."8 (Not that Du Bois talks as if he and Her Highness were a single entity, nous!) Remarks scattered through the letters dispatched to Dr. Vallent suggest the flurry of activity that characterized the days at Marchais. The musicians spent most of their time rehearsing and performing: "On concerte, à l'heure qu'il est, un motet pour chanter devant la Ste Vierge au salut," the Abbess told the Doctor. In response to M. Du Bois's efforts to cheer her, a weary Mlle de Guise confessed to Vallant that "Je ne sçaurès m'empecher de vous dire que la musique me distrait d'une telle manière que je ne sçai se que d'écris. Mr du Bois c'est mis dans la teste de me réjouir parce que je n'y bien eu des affaires tout le jour. Il y réusit ci bien que je ne puis casi songer qu'à se que j'entends, et cela me fait faire tant de fautes dans ma lettre que je ne sçai si vous la pouvés lire."9
At that point, each sister went her own way. Renée de Lorraine made a brief excursion Reims to see her friends at the convent where she had been raised, after which the two sisters set off for Guise. The Abbess hoped that the good Doctor would not find fault with her for eating a bit of the distinctive cheese called Maroilles, and Marie de Lorraine also planned to feast on this fragrant cheese: "Ma seur en sera bien d'en profiter, mais ce sera avec sagesse," added Mme de Montmartre.10 I have told elsewhere the tale of Marie de Lorraine's animosity toward La Fitte, the king's representative at Guise, and the "war of the church benches." Although the arms of the House of Guise have been removed, remnants of these benches, with their fine turned columns, survive in the parish church. By October 10, the procession of coaches had turned west, stopping at Laon, next at Soissons to see another relative, "Madame de Notre-Dame," an abbess who was going to return with them to Paris to tend to some business for the abbey, and finally at Philippe d'Orléans' château of Villiers-Cotterets.
The Fous divertissants... (in cahier XXIX) opened on Nov. 14.
The Dauphin fell ill in late September, with a continuous fever and "devoyement" that revived the anxieties about poison. By early November, the king was no longer able to conceal his concern. A few days later, after a dispute between the English healer Talbot and the royal physicians Fagon and Daquin, the latter finally agreed to let the Talbot administer the "English" quinine-based remedy that Mme de Sévigné describes as being "hot and winey." (It had worked wonders for feverish nobles during the summers of 1679 and 1680.) Talbot "a promis au Roi sur sa tête, et si positivement, de guérir Monseigneur dans quatre jours, et de la fièvre, et du dévoiement, que s'il n'y réussit je crois qu'on le jettera par les fenêtres," wrote Sévigné. For fear of poisons, the Englishman was watched very closely: "Le roi lui a fait composer son remède devant lui," continued Sévigné, "et lui confie la santé de Monseigneur." After a succession of ameliorations and relapses, the Dauphin recovered, and by December 27 Resident Gondi observed that all worry was now dissipated.
That year Mme de Guise did not return to Paris from Alençon until mid-November, just as Talbot's remedy was being administered. She hastened to court. Why? Was it to hear the Pièche sisters and Frizon sing Charpentier's Gratiarum actiones ... pro restitua serenissimi galliarum delphini (H. 326) in the royal chapel? Or was this piece not performed until the final days of December, when Monseigneur was fully mended?
Notes
1. J. Biroat, Panégyriques des saints (Paris: Couterot, 1668), III, pp. 836-838.
2. Quoted by M. Benoit, p. 53, which provides an unpunctuated and unaccented transcription of the original text.For the date of Nov. 4, see Mazarine, Rés. 34095: L'office de Saint Charles Borromée, Latin, François, traduction nouvelle, (Paris : Ch. Saugrain, 1685), p. 16.
3. Mercure galant, April 1680, pp. 323-324.
4. A.N., M.C., CXII, 365, transaction, October 5, 1672, and CXII, 393, création de pension, July 25, 1685. She probably was a relative of Notary Desnots, in whose records these acts appear.
5. Dufourcq, [his book on Parisian organs] 192, dated 1662.
6. Gazette, June 27, 1680, p. 239.
7. B.N., ms. fr. 17052, fol. 361 and 359.
8. B.N., ms. fr. 17050, fol. 337.
9. B.N., ms. fr. 17050, fol. 343.
10. B.N., ms. fr. 17050, fol. 357.