Like Joseph Haydn, another master who left a deep mark on music history, François Couperin (1668-1733) was a modest, dutiful servant in the court of King Louis XIV who expressed everything we need to know about him in music. A new Italian album opens a stained-glass window on his craft as a church organist.
GRUPPO VOCALE ARMONIOSOINCANTO
Couperin, Messe pour les paroisses & Messe pour les couvents (Brilliant Classics)
Couperin was in his early 30s when he paid to have two sets of sacred organ pieces published. The first set is “for ordinary use in parishes, for solemn feasts” the second “for convents of the religious.”
Both are recorded in full on this excellent two-CD album by the eight women of Gruppo Vocale Armoniosoincanto, along with Maurizio Verde, conductor Franco Radicchia and organist Adriano Falcioni playing a modern Pinchi instrument built in baroque style in an Italian church.
It’s a bit odd to have an all-Italian recording of the music of a French icon, but Couperin made a point of combining 17th century French and Italian composition styles.
The music on this disc is conservative in structure. The Vatican had clear instructions on how plainchant and organ were to be used in worship. Taking over the organist’s job from his father at the church of Saint-Gervais in Paris as soon as he was old enough to reach the pedals, Couperin inherited an old tradition.
The service would be chanted all the way through, but what is called the Ordinary of the Mass — Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei — would be sung in small sections followed by an elaboration on the organ. The instrumental portion would need to play to certain affects, to underline specific moods or attitudes.
Couperin’s invention is in how he weaves fragments of chant into the music. Radicchia’s success on this album is selecting chant that nicely complements the organ music.
You don’t have to know more about Christian worship of the time to appreciate the music, but you have to like the scrapey, nasal tone of a baroque church organ to appreciate this excellent recording.
My only beef is with Radicchia and the persons who produced the CD booklet. All were deluded into thinking that an ineptly translated scholarly treatise is appropriate background information for a general listener.
For more information on this album, click here.
Here is the great instrumental centerpiece of the Mass for the Parishes, the Offertoire sur les grands-jeux, played by the dean of French organists, André Isoir, at the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris:
John Terauds
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