"French" cahiers for 1677

Choose another year from the "French" cahiers

The colors on this table show how the principal focuses of the Guise music — the royal family, the Infant Jesus, the Virgin and St Genevieve, patronness of fevers and the conversion of Huguenots — had coalesced by 1677. The Guise ensemble of these years, which emerged in 1676, is firmly in place now: 3 singers (a haut dessus, a dessus, and a bass) plus 2 treble instruments, which I highlight in bold type, to call attention to this ensemble. We also see Charpentier busily constituting a corpus of polyvalent works for this ensemble that are suitable for performance at the different venues of Their Highnesses, throughout the liturgical year.

Something unusual does occur during 1677: the "hd, d and b" are briefly joined by an ensemble with an haute-contre (hc), doubtlessly Charpentier. And this happens during the months when Du Bois is ill ! It's as if Du Bois didn't care to have Charpentier sing with the ensemble, and as if Charpentier seized this opportunity to have some fun. I'm showing the hc in red. In my Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier I call this ensemble the "Guise Core Trio."

How to explain the presence of music for the Abbaye-aux-Bois in a "French" notebook? And several years before the famous tenebrae services? First of all, we know that the sister of Etienne Loulié, one of the Guise musicians, was a nun there, so that may be explanation enough. But we also know that the coadjutrice of the abbey (since the abbess was by then senile, the coadjutrice was de facto abbess) was the sister of the Duke of Chaulnes who had been ambassador to Rome while Charpentier was there — and to whose theatrical-operatic ventures I believe Charpentier contributed. In other words, this music could be a sort of belated "thank-you" to the Chaulnes family. Finally, we know that Mme de Guise and Mme de Montmartre were acquainted with the abbess and coadjutrice: in Dec. 1670, they all participated in an event at the Filles-Dieu (Gazette, 1671, p. 22)

Most of the pieces written in 1677 are for one of the small Guise ensembles, The Core Trio or the male trio, hc, t b. Both trios are often accompanied by two treble instruments.

Cahier 13, continued

H 316 In circumcisione Domini (January 1)
for the Feast of the Circumcision, one of the Infant Jesus's principal high holy days

H 317 Pour le jour de Sainte Geneviève (January 3)
"motet pour le jour de Ste Geneviève" (that is, St-Genevieve of the Ardent, to whom Mme de Guise would turn when she was feverish

Cahier 14

H 395 Pour la fête de l'Epiphanie (January 6)
for Epiphany, one of the feasts of the Infant Jesus

H 318 In festo purificationis (February 2)
"motet pour la Chandeleur." The text is inspired by the liturgy of the vespers and matins of the feast of the Purification.

H 164 Prière pour le roi (March 8)
matins for Sunday and for several high holidays. (According to the Mémoire of 1727, this was followed by a Dominum salvum fac regem.)

Cahier 15

H 165 Precatio pro rege (March 15)
Sunday matins

H 166 Precatio pro filio regis (March 3-25)

Cahier 16

H 58 Pange lingua (an hc sings)

H 21 Alma redemptoris Mater (winter)
daily lauds or complins, complins of Virgin, from Advent to Feb. 3. (The allusion to haute-contres was added later.)

H 22 Ave Regina cœlorum (Lent)
daily laudes or complins, complins of Virgin, from Feb. 4 to Holy Saturday

H 23 Salve Regina à 3 voix pareilles (an hc sings)
daily complins or matins, complins of Virgin

H 319 Motet pour la Trinité (June 13) (an hc sings)
(there was an annual mass that day founded by Marthe Croyer, a cousin of Charpentier's, at the Mercy)

H 59 Gaudia Virginis Mariæ
"motet pour la Vierge." One of the seven "Gauds" of the Virgin

Cahier 17

H 24 Salve Regina à 3 chœurs, for a large ensemble
daily complins or matins, complins of Virgin, Feb. 4 to Holy Saturday

H 320 Motet de Saint Louis (August 25) (an hc sings)

H 321 Motet de Saint Laurent (August 17) (an hc sings)
the feast of the patron saint of the Mercy

H 239 O sacrum à trois (early September?)
for Corpus Christi, but also sung at Saint-Jean-en-Grève at the salut service founded by Henriette-Catherine de Joyeuse, Mlle de Guise's mother. (Is the "hc" Charpentier? I think not. It's probably a nun with a very low voice, as below.)

Cahiers 17 and 18

H 396 Historia Esther (September 30-early October), for a large ensemble)

H 287 Domine salvum fac regem (an hc sings)

Cahier 19

H 288 Domine salvum pour trois religieuses

H 322 Motet de la Vierge pour toutes ses festes pour les mesmes religieuses
for "Mère Camille," "Mère Sainte Cécile," and "Mère Denos/Dhenault," nuns at the Abbaye-aux-Bois.

H 397 Cæcilia Virgo et Martyr octo vocibus (November 22), for a large ensemble
"Dialogue ... avec grande symphonie, le tout en latin" and once again about conversion

The Ranums'

Panat Times

Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014

Contents

Volume 1

Panat

Orest's Pages

Patricia's Musings

Marc-Antoine

Charpentier

Musical Rhetoric

Transcribed Sources

"French" cahiers for 1677