In early 18th-century Europe, audiences celebrated diversity in their musical entertainment. Public concerts featured a collection of different types of musicians and works by a multitude of composers. Performances mixed together songs and instrumental works for a variety of instruments, designed to appeal to audiences growing larger and more diverse in their musical tastes. Tonight, Nevermind provides a similar kind of concert—one that celebrates numerous instrumental works by a variety of French composers from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. All four composers were contemporaries, but their music represents a variety of musical trends and features different musical instruments.
Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s father, an organist, quickly noticed her musical talents on the keyboard, and she performed for Louis XIV in 1670 at age five. Her royal connections allowed her to pursue a prominent public career, giving concerts and teaching throughout Paris. She also composed. While Jacquet de la Guerre is best known for being the first woman in France to write an opera, she also published a generous amount of music for a variety of instruments, including violin sonatas, keyboard works, songs, and chamber pieces.
Jacquet de la Guerre’s trio sonatas—works for two treble instruments, a solo bass instrument, and continuo—bookend this evening’s program. They were composed around 1695, although they were not published during her lifetime. The three sonatas on this evening’s program—No.1 in G Minor, No. 2 in B-flat Major, and No. 3 in D Major—all highlight her depth of musical knowledge, both in terms of each instrument’s technical capabilities as well as contemporary musical styles. Typical of early Baroque instrumental music, the works often feature a stream of short diverse sections or movements performed continuously with contrasting tempos and styles.
Trio Sonata No. 3 in D Major is full of French ornamentation, such as trills, mordents, and double-dotted rhythms. In some sections, however, it is Jacquet de la Guerre’s facility with the popular Italian style of the day that shines through, including the dynamic interplay between the two treble instruments, as well as two-against-three rhythms and the tension-filled dissonances of the slow movements.
Preserving the somber mood of G minor, the Trio Sonata No. 1 is in eight continuous sections (or movements) marked with different tempos. The opening suggests a French overture style, with the double-dotted rhythms and considerable opportunities for ornamentation. The quick-tempo, duple-meter section shows off the various instruments of the ensemble, treating them as equals as each passes the melody around. The viola da gamba line achieves significant prominence at the end of the sonata, coming out of its supportive role within the trio texture to soar as a virtuoso melody.
Best known as a virtuosic keyboardist, Jacquet de la Guerre’s harpsichord suites reflect her virtuosity by including unmeasured preludes—“unmeasured” because they contain passages with no time signature, bar lines, and often, no specified rhythms (although Jacquet de la Guerre often used rhythm to denote movement). The performer is free to play with a rubato tempo, allowing the music to flow based on chord progression and melody rather than strict time. In the Prelude from the Suite in D Minor, Jacquet de la Guerre contrasts the unmeasured portion with a quick, cut-time passage in a trio sonata texture, before moving back to the free prelude to round out the movement.
The Violin Sonata in D Minor, published as part of a set of six violin sonatas in 1707, revels in freedom as well. The opening slowly allows the violin to develop a lyrical, almost aria-like melody. A Presto section then pits the continuo and violin against each other imitatively, playfully passing tunes back and forth. The subsequent Adagio plucks the viola da gamba out of the continuo for a brief solo, followed by another Presto in the style of a gigue. The continuo shares the melody with the violin in the ensuing Presto. The Air that follows is in the style of a rondeau, with a repeated refrain that appears throughout the movement, sometimes with variation. The sonata closes with an exuberant, delightful movement featuring the nimble virtuosity of both the continuo and the violin.
Like her other works, Jacquet de la Guerre’s Trio Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Major consists of sections or movements that are woven together without pause, transitioning from one idea to the next seamlessly. What starts off as a French overture leads directly into a triple meter, dance-like section. Other sections of the work show different methods through which the instruments play with and against each other. Across the work, Jacquet de la Guerre moves from French to Italianate influence, proving masterfully how both styles can blend.
Today, Jacques-Martin Hotteterre’s methods books for wind instruments remain some of the go-to treatises for Baroque performance-practice specialists. Like Jacquet de la Guerre, Hotteterre was a member of a musical family; through his father’s connections and financial help, he became the king’s flutist in 1717. He also probably made musical instruments alongside members of his family. As a composer for winds, Hotteterre was influenced by many contemporaries, including French composers like Lully, Campra, and Marais, and Italian composers such as Corelli.
L’art de préluder ..., published in 1719, provides instructions for playing the transverse flute, oboe, and recorder. The preludes themselves are both meant for practice and performance; they teach a variety of techniques for each instrument as well as broader musical knowledge about tempo and style. The Prelude in G Minor allows the flute to play around with the melody, practicing both written-out and improvised ornamentation all above a subtle continuo line.
Like the other composers on this program, Michel Pignolet de Montéclair wore many hats: Besides composing, he was a violinist, a teacher, and a music theorist. He spent time as a violinist in Milan, performing and writing music for French dancers who performed in Italian operas. Upon returning to France, he took a job as a violinist in the Paris Opera orchestra and is credited with bringing the bass from Italy to France. Truly a diverse composer, he wrote cantatas in French and Italian, as well as operas and sacred works that featured innovative instrumental writing. As a theorist, he published treatises on teaching music to children, how to play the violin, and a generalist methods book for learning music.
The Premier concert is a series of movements for flute and continuo inspired by a French dance suite, but with character titles describing each of the movements. In this case, many movement titles reflect the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Europe in the early 18th century, representing the musical styles of different regions in France, England, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Montéclair’s creative and idiomatic writing for the flute reflects not only his own familiarity with the instrument’s techniques, but also his talent for absorbing a wide variety of musical styles from across Europe.
Perhaps the most famous composer on this evening’s program, François Couperin was born into a musical dynasty, eventually becoming Louis XIV’s chief organist in 1693. Such a position offered the opportunity to write sacred choral and organ music, but he also published instrumental chamber works, secular songs, and cantatas, and—most famously—works for the harpsichord. A composer who also appreciated the Italian style as much as the French, Couperin experimented with unifying the best of both worlds.
His Pièces de viole avec la bass chiffrée from 1728 represent the peak of viola da gamba music in the early- and mid-18th century. The Prelude in E Minor highlights the instrument’s virtuosity—not just in its melodic nimbleness, but also its ability to play multiple melodies at once. Unlike the violin family of today, the viola da gamba has six strings that are closer together on the bridge of the instrument, allowing for multiple strings to be played at the same time. Couperin deploys this technique not just in melodic lines, but also in rich chords. On top of the counterpoint, the viol enriches the melody with French ornamentation.
Les nations was published in 1726, although Couperin composed “La Françoise,” in the late-17th century. In the preface to the publication, Couperin wrote of his admiration for the composer Arcangelo Corelli as well as Jean-Baptiste Lully. Although entitled “La Françoise” (“The French Maiden”), the sonata is just as much Italian in style. Underneath the ornamented melodies in the French style are dissonant and unpredictable chord progressions. The two treble instruments not only pass the melody back and forth, but also they blend together in series of suspensions, a Corellian signature. Some movements are more galant in style, with consonant, slow-moving chord progressions. In this work, Couperin showed off his ability to master all popular styles of the day.
—Alison DeSimone