Three Pieces from Ordre No.6 (Harpsichord Book No.2)

Les Moissonneurs

Les Langueurs tendres

Les Baricades mistérieuses

François Couperin has lived twice in French musical history - in his own day as the most important composer between Lully and Rameau and, after a long period of neglect, in the early part of the this century when he was rediscovered as the embodiment of the French musical virtues. It is true that he was a strongly influenced by Corelli but Italian values had long been absorbed into French music anyway. The essential quality about Couperin, when composers like Debussy and Ravel turned to him for inspiration during the First World War, was that he represented a period when German influence on French musicians was minimal.

There is no better place to look for the French virtues than the four Harpsichord Books Couperin published in Paris between 1713 and 1730. Divided into twenty-seven Ordres - he preferred “ordre” to “suite” presumably because the latter was associated with dance movements of the kind he did not want to write - the four books contain well over two hundred pieces of an astonishing expressive variety and of extraordinary resource in scoring for the harpsichord. The best known of the Ordres is probably No.6 in B flat major, which opens with a delightful example of structural lucidity in Les Moissonneurs, a cheerful rondeau alternating clearly defined episodes with a high-profile main theme. While that harvesters’ march represents popular tunefulness, Les Langueurs tendres is a poetic study in courtly sentiment, its tender expression heightened by well chosen embellishments to the languorous melodic line.

As for instrumental colouring, Les Baricades mistérieuses is the most famous example of all, the obscurity of its title notwithstanding. Unembellished except at the cadences, its interest is in its arpeggiated harmonies, its rhythmic subtleties and its “mysterious” texture.