The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
"French" cahiers for 1670
Choose another year from the "French" cahiers
The "different pieces" written for this year reveal several things about how the Guises expected to use the talents of the composer they were sheltering under their roof. (These Guises included: Mlle Marie de Lorraine de Guise, age 55, and her newly married nephew the young Duke of Guise and his young wife, Mme de Guise, a royal princess of the House of Orléans who was the first cousin of both Louis XIV and his brother, "Monsieur," the Duke of Orléans.) Charpentier, they seem to have decided, would work for their chapel — or rather, their several chapels — not for their drawing rooms. And so, for either the small household ensemble of the Guises, or the three or four talented musician-nuns at the abbey of Montmartre, where Mlle de Guise's sister was abbess, Charpentier first wrote some pieces for tenebrae services at the abbey (shown as bi-color because sponsored by both princesses), to which the Guises invited the spouse of the Duke of Orléans. Then — perhaps at the request of M. Du Bois, who at the time was very close to the Jansenists of Port-Royal (who, as a travel account that I am currently editing shows very eloquently, went to great lengths to celebrate the feast day of St. Augustine) — Charpentier produced two pieces with a Jansenist or Port-Royal orientation (the recorders make it highly unlikely that these pieces were performed by the cistercian nuns of this abbey, where Charpentier's sister was a converse nun) plus a piece for feasts of the Virgin, who was Mlle de Guise's patron saint and whose Assumption Feast coincided with Mlle de Guise's birthday. The works from this year — contained in cahier 1 and the first portion of cahier 2 — are on the same paper as cahiers I-V (which contain works for 1670, and perhaps a few works for late 1669).
Cahiers 1
and 2:
"Pièces différentes"
These pieces were written for
hd d and 1 or 2 fl, probably two chambermaids and two householders who
played treble instruments
| H 91 Tenebræ:
De lamentatione Jeremiæ matins of Holy Saturday, sung on Friday (April 4) |
| H 92 Tenebræ:
Jod, Jerusalem du Mercredi saint matins of Holy Thursday, sung on Wednesday (Wed., April 2) |
| H 93 Tenebræ:
Aleph, Jerusalem du Jeudi saint matins of Holy Friday, sung on Thursday (April 3) |
| H 306 Pour
Saint Bernard Feast of founder of Cistercians, including Port-Royal, where Charpentier's sister was a converse nun (August 20) |
| H 53 Jesu
corona virginum daily vespers and lauds, common of virgins at vespers: after Lauda Jerusalem (ps. 147) and at Magnificat |
| H 307 O
doctor optime (August 28) For the feast day of St. Augustin, of whom the Jansenists considered themselves the "disciples" (M. Du Bois was a close friend of Port-Royal) H 426 Quæ est ista quæ ascendit de deserto (Aug.15-Sept. 15) matins of octave of the Assumption, matins of octave of the Nativity of the Virgin, fetes of Mlle de Guise's patron saint |