Jacques Duphly (1715-1789)
- Quatrième Livre de pièces de clavecin (1768)
Performers: John Paul (clavecin)
Further info: Jacques Duphly (1715-1789) - Chaconne
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French harpsichordist and composer. He was the son of Jacques-Agathe
Duphly and Marie-Louise Boivin of the parish of St Eloi, whose registers
supply the little that is known of his early life. On 11 September 1734
‘le sieur Dufliq, organist of the cathedral of Evreux’ applied for a
position at St Eloi; the register goes on to make clear that he had been
trained by Dagincourt at Rouen, went to Evreux (c.1732) for what must
have been his first appointment (he was only 19 when he resigned from
it) and returned to his native parish. His tenure at St Eloi began
inauspiciously with his being shut out of the organ loft by his aged
predecessor; but the church quickly changed the locks. To St Eloi he
added Notre Dame de la Ronde in 1740, his sister Marie-Anne-Agathe
filling in when duties conflicted. He left both appointments in 1742 and
moved to Paris; according to the clerk of St Eloi, it was affaires that
drew him there, but other reports suggest that it was the realization
that he would do better as a specialist of the harpsichord in Paris than
as an organist in Rouen. Pierre-Louis Daquin, son of the organist, said
of ‘Duflitz’ in 1752:
"For some time he was organist at Rouen, but doubtless finding that he
had a greater gift for the harpsichord, he abandoned his first
instrument. One may suppose that he did well, since he passes in Paris
for a very good harpsichordist. He has much lightness of touch and a
certain softness which, sustained by ornaments, marvellously render the
character of his pieces."
Marpurg (1754) remarked that ‘Duphly, a pupil of Dagincourt, plays the
harpsichord only, in order, as he says, not to spoil his hand with the
organ. He lives in Paris, where he instructs the leading families’. His
reputation seems to have reached its peak in the 1750s and 60s.
Marpurg’s Raccolta delle più nuove composizioni di clavicembalo, ii
(1757), contains a pair of rondeaux from Duphly’s first book. In 1764
Walsh brought out an edition of his second book; in 1765 the 20-year-old
Richard Fitzwilliam was studying with him. That year Pascal Taskin, the
harpsichord maker, reckoned ‘Dufly’ among the best teachers in Paris,
along with Armand-Louis Couperin, Balbastre and Le Grand. The article on
fingering in Rousseau’s Dictionnaire (1768) contains rules which the
author presents ‘with confidence, because I have them from M Dupli,
excellent harpsichord teacher who possesses above all perfection in
fingering’ (though either Duphly or Rousseau overlooked the fact that
these ‘rules’ were lifted word for word from Rameau’s, in his Pièces de
clavecin of 1724). The titles and dedications of Duphly’s pieces show
him to have been a part of the inner circle of professional and
aristocratic connoisseurs; yet he seems to have been unambitious and
content with a simple life. D’Aquin wrote that ‘in general his pieces
are sweet and amiable: they take after their father’. Although this
represents a curious judgment of his music, which is more often flashy
and energetic, it may reflect a nature that allowed him to drift gently
from view to a point of obscurity where it became necessary to inquire
in the Journal général de la France (27 November 1788) ‘what has become
of M Duphlis, former harpsichord teacher in Paris, where he was in 1767.
If he no longer exists, one would like to know his heirs, to whom there
is something to communicate’. When he died, the next year, no heirs
appeared; even his sister could not be located. But his will and the
inventory of his effects show that he had been living in modest comfort
in a small apartment overlooking the garden in the Hôtel de Juigné. His
dedication of his last pieces to the Marchioness of Juigné, 21 years
before, did not exempt him from paying 300 livres a year for rent.
Evidently Duphly never married: his chief legatee was his manservant of
30 years. There was not even a harpsichord.
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