Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729)
- Suite (I) en ré mineur (1707)
Performers: Thurston Dart (1921-1971, harpsichord)
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French harpsichordist and composer. She came from a family of master
masons and musicians, and from the age of five played the harpsichord
and sang at the court of Louis XIV. Noticed by Madame de Montespan, she
stayed for three years in her entourage. On 23 September 1684 she left
the court to marry the organist Marin de La Guerre. Their son, as
precociously gifted as his mother, died at the age of ten. In Paris
Elisabeth Jacquet gave lessons and concerts for which she was soon
renowned throughout the city. Her first compositions were dramatic
works, of which only the libretto of Jeux à l'honneur de la
victoiresurvives. Her first publication, Les pièces de clavessin …
premier livre, dates from 1687. In 1694 her only tragédie en musique,
Céphale et Procris, was performed at the Académie Royale de Musique with
little success, but the prologue was revived in 1696 at Strasbourg,
where Sébastien de Brossard had founded an academy of music. In 1695
Brossard made copies of her first trio sonatas and those for violin and
continuo. Only in 1707 did she publish her six Sonates pour le viollon
et pour le clavecin and the Pièces de clavecin qui peuvent se jouer sur
le viollon, followed later by her two collections of Cantates françoises
sur des sujets tirez de l'Ecriture to texts by Antoine Houdar de
Lamotte, and by three secular Cantates françoises. Whereas all her other
works were dedicated to Louis XIV, this last was addressed to the
Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian II Emanuel. Le raccommodement comique de
Pierrot et de Nicole is a duet which went into La ceinture de Vénus, a
play by Alain-René Lesage performed at the Foire St Germain in 1715.
Elisabeth Jacquet's last work seems to have been a Te Deum sung in
August 1721 in the chapel of the Louvre in thanksgiving for the recovery
of Louis XV from smallpox. Elisabeth Jacquet was the first woman in
France to compose an opera, and she is also remembered for her
innovative work in the Italian genres of cantata and sonata, as well as
for her music for accompanied keyboard. The Pièces de clavessin of 1687
are remarkable for their balanced structures and their préludes non
mesurés. Her sonatas, both manuscript and printed, are conspicuous for
their variety, rhythmic vigour and expressive harmony, as well as for
certain innovative features in the violin writing. Her 12 sacred
cantatas show a fine balance between a style appropriate to the genre
and the restraint required by the subject; no other composer of the time
handled the genre so consistently. The secular cantatas are
characterized by dramatic qualities and a quest for formal freedom. In
Le Parnasse françois Titon du Tillet devoted a long and appreciative
notice to her, and her portrait is shown in a medallion with the motto
‘I contended for the prize with the great musicians’.
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