The Mirror of Human Life: Reflections on François Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin (review)

The picturesque titles that Couperin gave to his harpsichord pieces probably aroused curiosity from the time they were first published in the early eighteenth century. Couperin seemed to delight in coded references, ambiguities, and teasing possibilities that perplexed many (or most) of his contemporaries as they still do us today. This fascinating book may well be as close as we will ever get to understanding their significance. Yet despite this scholarly and enlightening book much is still conjectural, words like ‘perhaps’ and ‘possibly’ constantly haunting its pages. Couperin’s music was only taken seriously in modern times after the relatively late appearance of his complete works (as they were then known), published in Monaco in a magnificent edition in 1933 from Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre. Among the earliest scholarly attempts to unravel one of the titles was by the French literary and musical scholar Pierre Citron, who in 1955 convincingly demonstrated the admiration Couperin felt for Corelli in a musical reference where the closeness of Corelli’s beloved La Folia melody can be seen entwined in Couperin’s Folies françaises (thirteenth Ordre). Fairly early in the modern chase for explanations of the titles was the harpsichordist/scholar Jane Clark, who published an article in Early Music in 1980 with a similar title to Citron’s, but which considered quite a large number of picturesquely entitled pieces from various movements of Couperin’s ordres. Since then, in association with the literary scholar and music-lover Derek Connon, she has pursued her quest much further. The collaborative result presents a rich scene of Couperin’s day and, indeed, a pen portrait of Couperin himself, for as Connon has observed, the titles of the harpsichord pieces are in a sense a musical autobiography.

This is a revised, corrected, and slightly expanded version of the first edition, which was published in 2002. For this later edition Jane Clark has recorded a CD entitled School of Politesse (Janiculum JAN D206), which attempts to illustrate Couperin’s theatrical sense. There is a short Foreword by Clark, a Preface by Connon, followed by two sizeable chapters: ‘Aspects of the social and cultural background’ which includes pen-portraits and short biographies of a number of personalities who may well have been models for some of Couperin’s musical portraits (Clark), and ‘Aspects of the literary scene’ (Connon), followed by a final, short chapter entitled ‘The architecture of the ordres ’ (Clark). So well do these chapters match each other that one flows almost imperceptibly into the next. The remaining part of the book (100 pages) is Jane Clark’s ‘Catalogue of the Pièces de Clavecin ’ with explanations where possible about the titles. There are cross-references in this catalogue and footnoted documentation.

Couperin’s own comments about his harpsichord pieces are enough in themselves to generate curiosity about their titles. In the preface to his first book (1713) he claims to ‘have always had an object in composing all of these pieces; different occasions have furnished them to me. Thus the titles correspond to the ideas that I have had; I may be excused for not rendering an account of them.’ At our distance, to understand them we need the kind of help given by Jane Clark and Derek Connon (and a little previously by David Fuller in a beautiful essay—as much literary as musical—entitled ‘Portraits, Sapho and Couperin’, published in Music & Letters, 78 (1997), 149–74). Although we know very little about the details of Couperin’s life, it would seem from the harpsichord titles alone that the composer moved in circles that touched court, church, theatre, and the Paris fairgrounds, where Italian and French comedians thrilled and shocked their audiences with ribald (indeed, often obscene) satires aimed at anyone except the king (although his morganatic wife Mme de Maintenon was not immune from them). Derek Connon’s literary...