The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
Guise Musicians Jacquet and Brion
"Nanon/Manon" Jacquet
The chambermaid who bore these nicknames was Anne Jacquet, the elder sister of Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Anne's relatively large legacy (5,000 livres), combined with her position near the top of the musical hierarchy in Mlle de Guise's will, suggests that she entered their Highnesses' service very young — doubtlessly in her early teens, and perhaps around the time her sister Élisabeth was creating a stir at court. Indeed, since Anne Jacquet and Geneviève de Brion, q.v., received more money than the three youngest filles de la musique — 5,000 livres compared with the 4,000 willed to Talon, Grandmaison and Guyot, we can assume that they entered Mlle de Guise's service before 1677, when they were in their early teens. (We shall see that their colleague, Mlle Talon, began singing solo parts at fifteen.)
Since Anne's name does not appear in Charpentier's manuscripts, she doubtlessly played an instrument, surely the harpsichord. Competence on the viol also seems probable, for besides Loulié, q.v., could not have played both of the treble instruments for which Charpentier regularly composed, and Toussaint Collin, q.v. and Anne Jacquet are the only two musicians other than Loulié for whom Charpentier never wrote a solo vocal line.
Did Mlle de Guise seek the young girl out, circa 1675, in order to rival the king and ornament her court with a child prodigy? A prodigy who happened to be the elder sister of the little girl who was causing such a stir at court? Such a motivation cannot be ruled out; but if Marie de Lorraine engaged little Anne, it appears to have been because the Jacquets had long "belonged" not only to her family but to the family of Mme de Guise, her niece by marriage.
Through her first husband, Nanon Jacquet's mother, Anne Touchet,
"belonged" to the House of Orléans. Claude Bourlier, Anne Touchet's
first husband, was a "valet de lymiers en la maison de Monseigneur le
duc d'Orléans," that is, he managed the hounds. In other words, he had
been a domestic of Mme de Guise's father [MC, LXII, 106, no 465,
marriage, Aug. 31, 1644]. That Bourlier came from "Charbouillières en
Lorraine" suggests that his family who had served Mme de Guise's mother
or grandparents. (Marguerite de Lorraine, Duchess of Orléans, was the
Duke of Lorraine's sister.) By her mother's first husband, Anne Jacquet
can therefore be said to have "belonged" to Mme de Guise before her
birth. But still more solid links bind the Jacquets to the Guises.
In 1655, Anne Touchet (by then a widow) married Claude Jacquet, an
organist. The Jacquets were among the leading masons of Paris in the
late sixteenth century. The earliest document I have found is an
inventory drawn up in May 1584 after the death of Jehanne Dalybert, the
first wife of Marceau Jacquet, mason of the rue du Temple, near the "eschelle"
in the parish of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs. This act enumerates the
couple's seven minor children— the same ones who appear in the acts and
parish records that Catherine Cessac amassed for her pioneering thesis
on Jacquet de la Guerre. The bulk of the inventory concerns Jacquet's
business affairs in Paris, but "titre IV" contains a revealing bit of
information about the Jacquet family. Marceau Jacquet came from the
region of Calais, and Calais had come under Guise influence after
François Duke of Guise wrested Calais from the English in 1558. To be
specific, Marceau Jacquet and his brother-in-law Jacques Dalybert, a
Parisian charpentier, were co-owners of a house at Belleville-sur-Sablon.
The house definitely was not Dalybert property, for Jacques Dalybert
owned his share "à cause de [sic] Jacquet, sa femme." In other words,
the Jacquets may well have first become known to the Guises in the
mid-sixteenth century, first at Calais, and subsequently in Paris.
Wondering about the role the Jacquets of Calais may have played in
the arrival of Anne Jacquet at the Guises a century later would be idle
musing had a Jacquet child not married the cousin of a very faithful
Guise servant. In 1628, Charlotte Duchesne, the daughter of Marguerite
Jacquet and Nicolas Duchesne, a painter, wed the famous painter,
Philippe de Champaigne. Champaigne was technically an immigrant from
Brussels, but he clearly descended from one of the brothers or first
cousins of Claude de Champaigne, sieur de Vaud, receveur général for the
finances of Champagne.
That is to say, in the 1570s, the Champaignes
were serving the Guises. Hugues de Champaigne was secretary to the Duke
of Guise ,and Guillaume de Champaigne was his treasurer [BN, ms., D.B.,
166, "Champagne," especially f. 6-7]. During these same years, Claude
Champaigne "avait géré les biens du duc de Guise et rendu ses comptes en
novembre 1586." These accounts showed that Guise owned Champaigne 7,000
livres, "en garanti de laquelle on avait laissé entre ses mains un
buffet d'argent vermeil doré qui disparut pendant la Ligue." The
disappearance of the buffet, apparently while it was still in Guise's
possession, meant that the House of Guise remained indebted to the
Champaignes. Not until 1649 did Mlle de Guise's mother reimburse
Champaigne's three granddaughters, who lived on the rue des Écouffes.
The street is quite short: judging from the Turgot plan, it contained
only 24 houses, plus a large building with a blank façade that was
either a convent or a private hôtel. In one of those houses lived, in
1636, Claude Collin, husband of the late Marguerite Jacquet, and the
couple's young daughter. And it so happens that Philippe de Champaigne,
the guardian of the child, gave the same address at various times
between 1657 and 1673. Champaigne's house has been identified: 20, rue
des Écouffes. That the three Champaigne heirs of 1649 were "demeurant au
logis de dame Berthelin," does not mean that they were renters. This
clearly is yet another instance of a house that has been subdivided as a
result of inheritances, creating a situation in which a cousin (in this
case Dame Berthelin) "rents" her share of a family house to another
cousin (the grandchildren of Claude Champaigne), while Philippe de
Champaigne and the Collins rent other portions inherited by other
descendants of the Champaigne family. In 1894 the vicomte de Grouchy
therefore concluded that Philippe de Champaigne and the three Champaigne
women were "cousins" and that the artist "descendrait en ligne directe
de ce Claude de Champaigne, sieur de Vaud, attaché à la maison du duc de
Guise, qui fut sans doute obligé d'aller chercher un refuge à Bruxelles
après la chute de la Ligue. Ainsi le peintre des jansenistes, né en
exile, descendrait d'un ardent ligueur. Il n'en serait pas moins bien
français d'origine." In a word, Philippe de Champaigne had "belonged" to
the Guises since birth. As, by extension, did "Nanon" Jacquet.
In April 1689, Anne Jacquet collected 1250 livres, the first installment of her legacy from Mlle de Guise and stated that she was a "fille majeure," a "femme de chambre" lodged at the Hôtel de Guise [Chantilly, A 15, receipt of April 18, 1689]. A month later, she married Louis Yard, the son of Nicolas Yard, bourgeois of Joinville, and Barbe Yardin. Louis had been a valet de chambre for Mlle de Guise ,but a few months later, when he redeemed one rente and purchased another, he described himself as a "bourgeois de Paris y demeurant dans l'hostel de Guise." The wedding contract was signed by the bride's parents, sister and brother, plus Marin de la Guerre, Élisabeth's husband, organist of Saint-Severin. Anne's dowry consisted of 1,000 livres accumulated by her "espargne" and 5,000 livres worth of wishful thinking, that is, her legacy from Mlle de Guise. (Although she received one-fourth of that legacy shortly before her wedding, the balance probably was never paid in full.) The couple soon moved to Joinville, where Louis Yard had been appointed "greffier en chef des traites foraines de Joinville." Anne bore several children who became musicians and died in the 1720s.
On the Champaignes and the Guises, see Vicomte de Grouchy, Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France, 21 (1894),pp. 35-36; and Bernard Dorival, Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674), (Paris, 1976), I, pp. 198, 218, 225. For Anne Jacquet's acts: MC, XC, 277, Dec. 19, 1689; XC, 178, Jan. 9, 1690; LXI, 174, testament, Nov. 2, 1702.
Geneviève de Brion
Jacqueline-Geneviève de Brion's family tree could only be traced back
as far as her parents. Her father was Nicolas de Brion, doctor of
medicine at the faculty of Valence, and her mother's name was either
Jeanne Prieur or Jeanne Parent. That I found no Brions in the parish
records of Valence during the 1670s and 1680s suggests that the family
was not actually from Valence or its vicinity.
This raises the
possibility that Mlle de Brion was somehow distantly related to the
Brions who had married Marc-Antoine Charpentier's cousins at the time of
the League. Or that she was still more distantly related to the Brions
who had served the Guises during those years. The two possibilities are
far less divergent than they seem on the surface.
A relatively modest leathermaker of Meaux named Nathaniel Brion
married Pasquier Charpentier's daughter Marie in July 1609 [AD
Seine-et-Marne, 135 E 24, July 9, 1609]. During those same years, among
the faithful surrounding the Guises was Gabrielle Dudère, the paternal
aunt of Mme Roland Croyer. (Roland Croyer, an official at the Châtelet
of Paris was the first cousin of David Croyer, Pasquier Charpentier's
son-in-law). Mlle Dudère had married Nicolas de Brion, sieur d'Alloue,
whose family came, asserts one source, from Chaumont-en-Bassigny, just
south of the Guise principality of Joinville. (Another source claims
that the Brions came from Langres, just to the south of Chaumont.)
Nicolas Brion d'Alloue was attached to the Guises by more than
geography, for his aunt was related to the trésorier général of François
de Lorraine, Duke of Guise.
A more modest family named Brion also
caught my attention: a Parisian wine merchant and his wife. They
continue to intrigue me, not only because the wife's maiden name was
Jacquet but because their daughter — christened Geneviève (like the
as-yet-unborn singer) — became a nun at Montmartre in 1639. Assuming
that this Geneviève de Brion survived her noviciate and took her vows,
she was well acquainted with Mlle de Guise's sister, Françoise-Renée de
Lorraine, who came to Montmartre in 1645 as the de facto abbess. But the
Jacquet-Brion union is intriguing for other reasons. That is to say, in
1611 Mlle Claude Jacquet, the daughter of Jeanne Semele and Claude
Jacquet, a Parisian wine merchant, married Jehan de Brion, a wine
merchant of the rue neuve Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, and produced eight
surviving children. The family had long been a pillar in the Parisian
wine trade, for Jehan's cousin, Jehan de Brion, was also a wine
merchant. During the next two decades, the Brions married a Jolly (one
thinks immediately of the Guise musician, q.v.) and two Le Roys (the
family name of Marc-Antoine's cousins in Meaux). I have followed the
trail of two of the Brion children: Geneviève, the nun, and Marie, the
Brion's fifteen year-old daughter who married Pierre Singlin, a "juré
vendeur et controlleur de vin" shortly after her father's death in 1633.
Pierre doubtlessly was the close relative of Nicolas Singlin, also a
wine merchant, who by 1639 had become the second husband of Claude
Jacquet — now a widow with eight young children. Nicolas Singlin had a
brother named Antoine [BN, ms. fr. 23968, fol. 62, "M. Singlin prestre"],
who eventually become one of the "directeurs de Port-Royal-des-Champs."
He eventually broke with MM. de Port-Royal "parce qu'il estoit de l'avis
que les Religieuses signassent le formulaire et M. Arnaud estoit d'un
sentiment contraire." It is easy to brush these family names away as
mere coincidences that cannot possibly take us to Marc-Antoine
Charpentier. Still, a close examination of Marie de Brion's death
inventory reveals that, through the Singlins, the Jacquet-Brions were
linked to Marc-Antoine Charpentier's family! The link may have been
purely professional, but it probably involved blood or marriage. For in
1608, stating that they were cousins of the bride, Guillaume Singlin and
his wife, Marguerite Gosselin, attended the wedding of Nicolas Chaillou,
also a wine merchant. Now, Nicolas Chaillou was the godfather of young
Madame Jean Edouard, a wine merchant whose dancing-master son would wed
Charpentier's sister in the early 1660s! Then there is the tantalizing
allusion to Port-Royal, to which the Charpentiers and Philippe Goibault
has close affective and devotional ties (Charpentier's sister was a nun
there, and Goibault was a close friend of MM. de Port-Royal). And to
Montmartre, where Mlle de Guise's sister exercised increasing
authority. And to the wine trade in which the Edouards were earning
their livelihood in the 1630s. These different threads lead us from the
Jacquet-Brions to the Guises and to the Edouards. Did they also lead to
Brie, and to the cousins of Marc-Antoine Charpentier?
All I can
reply is that not all Mlle de Brion's close relatives were illustrious,
not all of them added a de to their name. One of the witnesses at her
wedding in 1690 was Antoine de Torey, "employé aux fermes du Roy." Only
four years earlier, Antoine de Torey, then — "receveur des aides à
Montreuil sous Versailles" — had signed the wedding contract of a girl
whose mother was named Madeleine Brion (no de) and whose father was a
Parisian frippier. In short, Jacqueline-Geneviève de Brion's father may
have been a physician, and she may have dressed her name up by adding a
de, but her late uncle seems to have sold second-hand clothes!
Jacqueline-Geneviève herself was born during the summer of 1665, but I do not know where. This date can be deduced from the fact that she was still a legal minor in April 1689 but was described as a "fille majeure" in July 1690 ["fille," Chantilly, A 15, April 19, 1689, compared with "majeure, jouissant de ses droits,"Y 256, fol. 487, marriage of July 5, 1690]. Brion seems to have entered Mlle de Guise's service at approximately the same time as Anne Jacquet, that is, in the mid or late 1670s, when both musicians were barely into their teens. Was it Brion's youthful, fresh voice that sang the angel's part in Charpentier's first Christmas oratorio (H. 393), which dates from December 1676? She was the angel in the Christmas oratorio (H. 417) of 1684, but sixteen year-old Talon was given the angel's part in the Cæcilia (H. 415) of 1685.
After Mlle de Guise's death, Mlle de Brion immediately moved to Versailles, for she was now one of Louis XIV's "filles de la musique" [Chantilly, A 15, April 19, 1689, receipt for 1250 livres, the first installment of her legacy]. She promptly became engaged to Pierre Pièche, who had performed with the Guise singers in the mid-1680s. In July 1690, seventeen illustrious persons assembled in the "château de Versailles, sa Majesté y étant," to sign the musicians' wedding contract [Y 256, f. 487, marriage, Sept. 28, 1690]: among them were the Duchess of Modena, the Dowager of Conti, the Count of Armagnac and his wife and daughter-in-law (the late Mlle de Guise's cousins and close friends), the Duchess of Valentinois, the Countess of Caylus. Also present were Châteauneuf, minister and secretary of state, and his wife and son. Among the couple's friends and relatives were Marguerite and Madeleine Pièche, the groom's sisters, who had sung for Charpentier during his service to the Dauphin, plus Jeanne de Brion, the bride's spinster aunt. The bride had accumulated a dowry of 6,000 livres.
Brion's voice, coupled with the modest demeanor she had learned in the devout entourage of Mlle de Guise, soon attracted Mme de Maintenon's attention. Geneviève became a specialist of sorts in singing the "cantiques" written for Saint-Cyr, with poetry by Jean Racine. Thus, in the fall of 1694, Maintenon wrote that she was setting off for the visitandine convent at Melun, to see "nostre Sœur de Montfort," who was "charmed" by the constitutions that had been drawn up for Saint-Cyr and by the spirit behind the establishment, and that "j'y menerai M. de Brion, pour chanter nos cantiques." Although the editor rendered this passage "Mr" de Brion, he clearly was referring to young Mme Pièche. Indeed, a man scarcely would have been selected to sing at a convent.
Brion remained active in the royal music until her retirement in 1714. During these years she gave birth to at least four children. She died February 1721 and was succeeded by her daughter Marie Pièche.
On the Brions who were part of the Guise circle during the League, see BN, ms., Chérin, 38, no. 797; D.B., 136, f. 6-8; P.O., 520, #11687, f. 157, re Girard de Brion, sieur de Savigny, avocat in the Parlement of Paris, Nicolas's uncle (he and the treasurer were co-seigneurs of Orcheux through their wives). For the wine merchants named Jacquet and Brion: see MC, XX, 231, entrée de religieuse, May 31, 1639, which bears the signatures of the Brion and Jacquet clans. By 1639, Claude Jacquet had become Mme Singlin. A son born to Guillaume Singlin and Marguerite Gosselin was baptised at Saint-Jean-en-Grève in 1588. Claude Gosselin (who married Elisabeth Geneste) was Pierre Singlin's maternal uncle and died circa 1645, MC, LXXV, 95, inventory, Apr. 17, 1659, titles 13, 14, which implies that Pierre's mother was née Gosselin (Marguerite Gosselin?). If so, Guillaume was probably Pierre's father, or else a double Gosselin-Singlin marriage took place late in the sixteenth century, MC, L, 191, marriage, Nov. 17, 1686. Re the singer's family: Torey's wife was Jeanne Le Noir, the sister of Madeleine Le Noir, the bride. After Michel Le Noir's death, Madeleine Brion had married a tapissier of Saint-Roch parish. The groom, a receveur des aides, came from Clermont en Beauvaisis (which, by what is surely not a coincidence, is the cradle of the Baussan family, q.v.). Madeleine Brion seems to have been either the aunt or the close cousin of Mlle "de Brion," the Guise singer. Another cousin was Nicolas Desfontaines, "commis de Monseigneur le marquis de Louvois" (which leads us back to intendants Carlier, q.v., and Baussan, q.v., who were Le Tellier's and Louvois's creatures). For Brion's work with Mme de Maintenon, see Lettres, no. 923, Oct. 9, 1684. The early-modern copyist doubtlessly misread the abbreviation. (The footnote to Maintenon's letters identifies this Brion as the gentleman who eloped with Mlle de la Force in 1687 and was therefore confined to Saint-Lazare, a most implausible identification!) For Brion's children see the records of the parish of Notre-Dame, deposited at the Mairie of Versailles. They show a son, Pierre, baptized on May 5, 1692, whose godfather was Pierre Chabanceau de la Barre, the famous royal musician, and whose godmother was Magdaleine Pièche, the Dauphin's singer; a son Jacques, baptized on May 14, 1693, whose godfather was Jacques de Brienne, ordinaire de la musique du Roy, and whose godmother was Magdaleine Pièche; and another Pierre, baptised on July 1, 1694, whose godfather was Pierre Ferrier, ordinaire de la musique du Roy, and whose godmother was the daughter of Jean Rebel, the famous royal musician. That no baptism appears for Marie (who succeeded her mother in the royal music) suggests that she was born elsewhere. For Brion's career at court, see Marcelle Benoit, Musiques de Cour.