Louis Couperin (c. 1626 – Aug. 29, 1661) was a French Baroque composer who made significant contributions to the development of Baroque keyboard music. A skillful harpsichordist, organist, and gambist, he was one of the founders of the French harpsichord school and invented the genre of unmeasured prelude for harpsichord. He and his nephew, François le Grand, were the most renowned members of the Couperin family.
Life
The church of Saint Gervais in Paris, where Louis Couperin served as organist from 1653 until his death.
Most of the information about Couperin's life comes from two sources. Le Parnasse François, a 1732 book by Évrard Titon du Tillet, contains a biographical sketch describing certain details of his life, and some 30 organ pieces list not only the date but also the place of composition. Couperin was born around 1626 in Chaumes-en-Brie, a town 40 km south-east from Paris. His father, Charles Couperin, sieur de Crouilly, was a small landowner and part-time organist of a local church. Louis was reportedly an accomplished harpsichordist and violinist by 1650 (and was already composing by then), but had no connections whatsoever with any important musicians of the era. His sudden rise to fame, which happened during 1650-51, is explained in Le Parnasse François. Titon du Tillet writes that Louis, his two younger brothers Charles and François, and some of their friends visited Jacques Champion de Chambonnières on the feast of Saint James—Chambonnières' name day. The Couperins offered the host and his guests a short concert, playing several pieces composed by Louis. Chambonnières was impressed by Louis Couperin's talents, became his teacher and persuaded him to settle in Paris. There Chambonnières, who was the most prominent French harpsichordist of his time and musician to the King, introduced the young musician to the Court; Couperin's talents met with appreciation; by 1651 Couperin was already living in the city.
He almost certainly met Johann Jakob Froberger in 1651-52, Froberger's style becoming a major influence on Couperin's music. On 9 April 1653 he became organist of the Parisian church of St. Gervais, where he was paid 400 livres a year, plus lodgings. The position at this ancient church was one of the most important ones in France at the time. At some point–most probably after he became organist at St. Gervais–Couperin entered the royal service as a treble viol player. Titon du Tillet writes that Couperin had refused, out of loyalty to his old friend and teacher, to replace Chambonnières as royal harpsichordist, and so the post of violist was created especially for him. On 22 October 1655 he stood godfather to his sister's child at Chaumes-en-Brie; from July to October 1656 and around November 1658 he was frequently travelling to Meudon, where he was probably employed by Abel Servien, a diplomat and statesman. He travelled to Toulouse with the court in 1659. During his last years, Couperin lived in the organist's lodgings at St. Gervais with his two brothers, and died on 29 August 1661, aged thirty-five according to Le Parnasse François.
His brothers both played an important role in the development of French baroque music. No compositions by François (known as "The Elder" or "Couperin de Crouilly") are known to survive, but his line of the family carried the name of Couperin into the 19th century. Charles Couperin (known as "Couperin-cadet") succeeded Louis as organist at St. Gervais and, in 1668, produced an only child, François Couperin le Grand, who became one of the most important French composers of the late Baroque era.
Works
- See also: List of compositions by Louis Couperin
Fragment of a page from the Bauyn manuscript; the piece gradually dissolves into an unmeasured coda, written out using Couperin's unique unmeasured notation system.
None of Louis Couperin's works were published during his lifetime. There are three important manuscript sources for his music: the Bauyn manuscript (122 harpsichord pieces, four for organ and five chamber works), the Parville manuscript (five unique harpsichord pieces and 50 also found in Bauyn) and the Oldham manuscript (70 unique organ pieces, four five-part chamber fantaisies from 1654/55, several dance movements). All three also include works by composers such as Chambonnières and Jean-Henri d'Anglebert, and are important sources on French music of the 17th century. Oldham is the only document which originated more or less during Couperin's lifetime, Bauyn and Parville both having been created at the end of the 17th century. Couperin's works are commonly referred to by numbers used in the princeps Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre edition of 1936, based entirely on Bauyn, the only document known at that time. Progressively, however, Davitt Moroney's numeration is replacing that of this classic source.
Dance movements comprise around two thirds of Louis Couperin's harpsichord oeuvre; they include courantes, sarabandes, allemandes and gigues (in decreasing order of numbers). These pieces are more complex than those by Chambonnières and display more variety within an individual piece. His reputation as a composer comes mainly from his chaconnes, passacaglias and unmeasured preludes. These latter pieces, written out in a unique kind of notation (whole notes only, arranged in groups and connected by graceful curves) are influenced by Froberger's free-flowing allemandes and programmatic pieces, some borrow short passages from his toccatas.
Couperin's organ music exerted a great influence over the 17th century European composers; it represents the transition from the strict counterpoint in the Titelouze vein to the colorful, concertant organ style introduced by Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers and Nicolas Lebègue, who influenced late Baroque composers such as François Couperin and Nicolas de Grigny. Couperin was the first French composer to write for specific registrations and also the first to compose leaping division basses in the style of divisions for the bass viol. Both of these stylistic traits are among the defining characteristics of French organ music of the 17th and the 18th centuries.
See also
References
- Louis Couperin: Oeuvres de clavecin. 2d modern edition, edited by Davitt Moroney. Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, Monaco, OL 58 (1985, reprinted in 2004). Moroney omits the ornaments included in the first edition, since they were not contemporary with Louis Couperin. Moroney's lengthy introduction is, to date, the best biographical source on Couperin in English.
- Louis Couperin: Pièces d' orgue. Transcribed and edited by Guy Oldham. Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, Monaco, OL 300 (2003). 144 pages. The organ part of the Oldham manuscript has finally been published. Skip Sempé believes that some or all of these pieces may have been written by a different member of the Couperin family (Charles?) than the composer of the "Louis Couperin" pièces de clavecin. This volume contains the musical text of 70 pieces, "as well as the relevant plainchant melodies with their texts to facilitate alternatim performance, a facsimile page, editor's notes, and a Critical Commentary." It promises a companion publication consisting of extended prefatory material, including a technical description of the source, information on the organs played by Louis Couperin, and suggestions for performance.
- Davitt Moroney. Liner notes to CD "Louis Couperin: Intégrale de l'oeuvre de clavecin", Harmonia Mundi France 1901124.27
- David Fuller, Bruce Gustafson. "Louis Couperin", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 30 January 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
- Harry Halbreich et al. Notes to a complete recorded compendium (1989-91) of Louis Couperin's harpsichord works played by Blandine Verlet on 5 Astrée~Naïve CDs. Gives Moroney's numbered catalogue of the extant harpsichord compositions of L. Couperin.
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