Charles Dieupart (1676-1751)
- Suitte (II) de Clavessin des 'Six suittes de clavessin divisées en
ouvertures, allemandes, courantes, sarabandes, gavottes, menuets,
rondeaux & gigues composées & mises
... dédiées à Madame la
Comtesse de Sandwich' (1701)
Performers: Luc Beauséjour (harpsichord); Hervé Niquet (harpsichord)
Further info: Musique Française À Deux Clavecins
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French harpsichordist, violinist and composer. Nothing is known of his
early years. Son of Nicolas Dieupart (?-1700), an ordinary musician to
Louis XIV's Grande Ecurie, at some point, he befriended Elizabeth Wilmot
of Rochester, countess of Sandwich, and Jacques Paisible who were
visiting James II of England in his exile at Saint-germain-en-Laye near
Paris. He is first heard of in England in an advertisement for a concert
at Drury Lane, London, on 11 February 1703, when he accompanied Gasparo
Visconti in some of Arcangello Corelli’s sonatas. According to John
Hawkins, he played the harpsichord and Nicola Francesco Haym the cello
in this and Giovanni Bononcini’s 'Il trionfo di Camilla' (1706), and he
wrote an overture and chaconne for Peter Anthony Motteux’s pasticcio
'Thomyris' (1707). He was evidently a prominent member of the Drury Lane
musical establishment. In the winter of 1707-1708 he was among those
involved in setting up a rival operatic project at the Queen’s Theatre
in the Haymarket, London, and wrote and arranged music for its first
production, Motteux’s pasticcio 'Love’s Triumph' (1708); Motteux wrote
in the preface that any success ‘will owe not a little to Mr Dieupart,
for his share in the Contrivance of the Entertainments and his supplying
what Recitative and other Music was necessary’. According to Hawkins,
Dieupart played continuo with Haym in Alessandro Scarlatti’s 'Pyrrhus
and Demetrius' (1708), and he played in the Haymarket orchestra until
about 17 November 1710, when he was apparently dropped. He did not
entirely retire from concert life: concertos by him were performed at
Drury Lane for ‘Two Hautboys and Two Flutes’ (14 March 1722), ‘Little
Flute’ (11 May 1722), ‘Hautboys, Flutes and Violins’ (15 May 1723), as
well as a trumpet sonata (14 May 1726). Hawkins wrote that Dieupart
‘grew negligent’ towards the end of his life, ‘and frequented concerts
performed in ale-houses, in obscure parts of the town, and distinguished
himself not more there, than he would have done in an assembly of the
best judges, by his neat and elegant manner of playing the solos of
Corelli’. His last known appearance was in Hampstead on 11 September
1724, when he played ‘Violin Concertino’ and was billed as ‘Capt Dupar,
Scholar to the late celebrated Signor Corelli, and late Musick Master to
his present Highness the Prince of Orange’.
