It has been months since this project (issued in toto in England two years ago) stalled with Book II, and I have worried about it ever since. You'd be surprised how many Volume Ones I possess of ambitious series that became spurlos versunken--the Demus Brahms piano music, e.g., or the Complete Recordings of Mattia Battistini. This one represents the first satisfactory modern recording of a body of keyboard music that is both a synthesis of such French music up to its time and a harbinger of things to come--in short, one of the great syntheses. Twenty years ago there was a short-lived recording by Ruggero Gerlin which was, at the best, damned with faint critical praise. It is no small surprise to discover that Canadian Kenneth Gilbert is a Gerlin pupil, for he far outstrips his teacher in every department. Moreover, in the intervening two decades musicological science has learned a great deal about how baroque music was played, and Gilbert appears to have mastered it all.
In the beginning there were three Couperin brothers who migrated to Paris at the behest of Jacques Champion de Chambonnieres, a sometime neighbor in the provinces. The eldest, Louis, was making it big when he ups and dies at around thirty-five. He was succeeded by the youngest, Charles, as organist at the church of St. Gervais. Charles forthwith got married and moved into the organist's house, overlooking the cemetery. But one cannot overlook the cemetery forever and when his son and heir, Francois, was only eleven, Charles went to join his brother in that great organ-loft in the sky. Six years later young Francois, took up his father's post and shortly thereafter produced the two organ masses, the only things for which his uncle Francois was famous until it was discovered that he was not their author.
To make a long story short, in 1693 Louis XIV himself selected Couperin as one of four organists for the Chapelle Royale. This was a rather strange appointment since there was no organ operable there until after Couperin's death. But never mind; he went on from success to success. Louis made him clavecin-teacher to the Royal Brats and later knighted him, so that he called himself Francois, Chevalier Couperin, which was less confusing than if he had been Maurice. Other people called him "le Grand," to his face even, but he didn't mind because he knew he was.
We know a good deal about Couperin's music, including his efforts to synthesize Italian style (shall we say homophonic song?) with French (shall we say polyphonic dance?), but considering his reputation and his virtual dictatorship over court music, we know surprisingly little about him. Thus we can only surmise that his harpsichord took a new direction after Bk. 1--from traditional dance suites to groups of fanciful, ironic, or comic little tone-paintings, loosely linked by key--because he no longer had to cater to the taste of the
Sun-King, who set in 1715.
Book III contains Ordres 13-19, and first saw the light in 1722--about the time Couperin's pen-pal, J.S. Bach was writing his French Suites! Each suite contains from five to eight pieces, including some of Couperin's most famous--the swooning "Nightingale in Love" from 14, the "Alarm Clock" in 18, and the set of satirical variations on "La Folia," "The French Follies'' in 13. One hopes that this box contains the same sort of detailed and scrupulous annotations as its predecessors.
