The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
"French" cahiers for 1675
Choose another year from the "French" cahiers
Charpentier wrote very little for the Guises in 1675. If one looks at the chart of Guise activities for that year, the reasons are self-evident: Their Highnesses spent much of the year in deep mourning, after the death of little Alençon in March. That is not to say that they were inactive! During these months they not only managed to settle the financial issues of the succession, but each princess set about creating memorials to the dead child (and, in Mlle de Guise's case, a memorial to all the dead Guises who had left her the last stately tree in a cut-down forest). Top be specific, Mme de Guise interviewed and approved of the educator from Rouen, Father Barré, who promptly began creating schools for poor children in Mlle de Guise's parish of Saint-Jean-en Grève, and an academy for young nobles in Mme de Guise's parish of Saint-Sulpice. Both establishments were placed under the aegis of the "Infant Jesus." (And mid-1675 marks the beginning, in Charpentier's French notebooks, of a spate of compositions devoted to the Christ Child and his high holy days.) Almost simultaneously, Their Highnesses also set about selecting and decorating private chapels in monastic churches: Mlle de Guise chose the Merciades, popularly known as the "Mercy," which was situated just across the street from the Hotel de Guise and which was one of the principal Parisian churches devoted to the Virgin. Mme de Guise chose the Theatine church of Sainte-Anne-la-Royale, located along the Seine in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, not all that far from her Luxembourg Palace. (The church was founded in honor of Mme de Guise's aunt, Anne of Austria; but owing to uncertainties about whether H. 315 was initially part of cahier 9, I am not prepared to assert that there is a connection between Anne of Austria, Sainte-Anne-la-Royale and H. 315 ! And, if something by Charpentier was performed at the Theatins on Dec. 24, 1675, I can't say what work it might have been: since nothing in cahiers 9-11 fills the bill, the work would seem to have been either lost or survived in a reworked form in cahier 12.)
It is doubtlessly significant that, in the early summer of 1675, Mme de Guise selected a church run by Italian religious: her sister Marguerite was at the time arranging her separation from Cosimo III de Medicis and was about to return to France. Now, "Mme de Toscane," as Marguerite was known to the French, was quite a musician and organized musical events at Montmartre, her "prison." I therefore think it extremely likely that the Italianate oratorios about "femmes fortes" (the first one tells of Judith) that Charpentier began to compose shortly after Mme de Toscane's return to France were prompted by Marguerite's presence in Paris and probably were born of her sister Elisabeth's determination to prove that her composer could do as well at this Italian genre as a native Italian could. In giving Mme de Guise the credit for launching these oratorios at the Church of the Theatins, I do not however wish to suggest that Mlle de Guise was not involved. To the contrary, the idea would have pleased her, for as a young woman she had spent about 8 years at the Medici court and ever since her return to France had been in touch not only with her Medici friends, but also with their agents in Paris, who visited her at least weekly and brought Italian visitors along with them.
| According to the Mémoire of 1727, (Bn, Res. Vmb. ms. 71, p. 13) a "Languentibus à 3 voix," now lost, began cahier 9, presumably for the burial of the little Duke at Montmartre (March 19) |
| H 315 Pour
Sainte Anne ? (July 26) on a stray sheet of paper that may not belong in this cahier and perhaps came from the "gros cahier" cited in the Mémoire of 1727 |
| "Motet pour St Augustin," since lost * (August 28) |
| H 391 Judith (September 22-28) |
* According to the Mémoire of 1727, a "Motet pour St Augustin," now lost but located in "cahier 9", followed Judith. This is the second piece for St. Augustin in the Guise notebooks: like H. 307, we can assume that it was written at the request of M. Du Bois, a Jansenist. Nor can this lost motet possibly be H. 307 (of cahier 2). Because H. 307 could not possibly have been amputated from its position in that notebook and inserted somehow in cahier 9: to do that would have required amputating the final measures of H. 53.
Indeed, it is difficult to see how this lost motet could ever have been at the end of cahier 9 ! Judith continues into cahier 11 (specifically, to the recto of fol. 19); and it is followed directly (on fol. 19 verso) by H. 392 (for early 1676). This makes it virtually impossible for the missing motet to have once been located just after Judith. In short, I think we have to conclude that this piece for August 28 was located before, rather than after Judith: in fact, chronologically it fits nicely there.