sonnerie & other portraits french baroque chamber works fantasticus marais • leclair • francoeur du phly • rameau • dornel RES10122 Sonnerie & other portraits Marin Marais (1656-1728) Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764) French Baroque chamber works 1. Sonnerie de Ste. Genevieve du Sonata VIII Mont de Paris (1723) [8:37] from 12 Sonatas, Op. 2 (1728) 11. Adagio [2:06] 12. Allegro [2:12] Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) 13. Sarabanda [2:34] Fantasticus Cinquième concert 14. Allegro assai [2:50] from Pièces de clavecin en concerts (1741) 2. Fugue La Forqueray [4:42] 3. La Cupis [5:38] Jacques Du Phly (1715-1789) Rie Kimura baroque violin 4. La Marais [2:44] from Troisième livre de pièces de clavecin (1756) 15. La Forqueray [5:56] Robert Smith viola da gamba Guillermo Brachetta harpsichord Marin Marais from Pièces de viole (1701) Louis-Antoine Dornel (c.1680-c.1756) 5. Tombeau pour Monsr. de Lully [7:01] Sonate IV from Sonates, Op. 2 (1711) 16. Prelude [1:48] François Francoeur (1698-1787) 17. Allemande [2:01] Sonate VI 18. Lentement [2:06] About Fantasticus: from Deuxième Livre de sonates 19. Vivement et marqué [1:42] à violon seul et basse continue (1730) 20. Chaconne [3:37] ‘Its vigorous, dramatic and highly extrovert readings make for compelling listening, 6. Adagio [3:41] demonstrating not only versatility and flexibility but also intimacy and incisiveness’ 7. Allemande [2:00] The Strad (’The Strad Recommends’) 8. Courante [2:21] Total playing time [71:06] 9. Sarabande [2:05] ‘ This is music-making of maturity, its evident free spirit and exuberance of line 10. Rondeau [5:12] allied to control and expressed in impeccable ensemble-playing’ Gramophone Sonnerie: French Baroque Portraits commemorative pieces and pièces de hommage which flattered and celebrated their In one of the sharpest passages of Molière’s subjects, leaving deeper meanings to the comedy of manners Les Précieuses ridicules imagination and discretion of the listener. (1659), the masquerading Marquis de Mascarille discusses the most fashionable Most of the portraits contained in the four literary genres of the day with the harpsichord books of Jacques Du Phly pretentious young ladies Magdelon and (1715-1789) are of well-known aristocrats, Cathos. He claims, rather extravagantly, personalities and musicians. La Forqueray that nearly 2000 of his own sonnets, was published in the Troisième livre de pieces epigrams and madrigals are in circulation de clavecin (1756) and honours Antoine in Paris ‘without counting the riddles Forqueray, one of the greatest viol players and portraits’. Cathos says she’s ‘awfully of the age, whose works were published fond of riddles’, while Magdelon suddenly posthumously in 1747 by his similarly gifted finds she absolutely ‘dotes upon portraits’ son, Jean-Baptiste. Father and son were and can ‘think of nothing more gallant’. infamously at odds. Forqueray le père Mascarille, though, insists upon the scandalously neglected his family and had distinction between lightweight galanteries his son imprisoned and banished from like riddles and the rather more demanding the country; his wife, who left him five task of penning portraits which, he swears, times, pronounced him ‘hot headed’. is truly ‘difficult and calls for penetrating wit’. Du Phly doesn’t take sides, nor even hint at the turbulence of his subject’s life; his There were few with more probing insight portrait is a serious celebration of than the philosopher and moralist Jean de Forqueray’s virtuosity in the form of a La Bruyère who made his name with the sombre rondeau which explores the rich, piercing portraits of Les Caractères (1688). lower register of the harpsichord, in imitation Yet they proved too thinly-disguised and of the bass-viol. Fantasticus unflattering for comfort, and La Bruyère paid a high price for his wit and candour. Louis-Antoine Dornel (c.1680-c.1756) was Musicians, though, showed more tact. one of many other composers who honoured From the second decade of the eighteenth Forqueray. The fourth of his Sonates for century composers began to populate violin Op. 2 (1711) is entitled La Forcroy, their publications with musical portraits, and while there’s no attempt at a character sketch or an evocation of Forqueray’s device had to be balanced by greater textural echoed well beyond the graveyard. François friendly approach uniting the best of French musical style, Dornel does write an interest in the music. As the leading viol Francoeur (1698-1789) mirrored the same and Italian styles. In his second book of independent part for the viol in the third virtuoso of his generation, Marais ensured fluidity of emotion in the slow movements violin sonatas of 1728 Leclair speaks with and fourth movements. Such moments of that his instrument was kept busy mediating of his more searching sonatas. The opening a strong Corellian accent, but it isn’t until freedom for the viol, temporarily liberated between the continuo and violin parts – ‘Adagio’ of Sonate VI, from his second book Sonata VIII – an unexpected trio sonata – from its bass line duties, are often found doubling and enhancing the bass with of violin sonatas of c.1730, runs the gamut that we witness the goûts réunis in action. in solo sonatas of the time, creating improvisational diminutions, and consorting of grief with some of the same gestures Outwardly Leclair follows Corelli’s typical proto-trio sonatas with the viol acting as (and occasionally even vying) with the top employed by Marais and Jean-Fery Rebel four-movement da chiesa design, alternating a fleeting second melody instrument. line. in their celebrated tombeaux for Lully. Later slow and fast movements, with a fugue Stylistically, it’s clear that Dornel had been in the sonata Francoeur lightens the mood in second position and a profusion of listening to the brand-new sonatas of Many of Marais’ pieces offer more profound with a carefree ‘Courante’, a technically sequences and euphonious parallel Corelli. The fourth movement, with its insights. From the second third of the more ambitious ‘Allemande’, and an movement. But what would have surprised simple fugal banter between voices and seventeenth century, French lutenists began exquisitely delicate ‘Sarabande’. He infuses Corelli was Leclair’s decision to partner passages of sonorous parallel motion, is the tradition of writing musical portraits the final ‘Rondeau’ with plenty of challenges the violin with a fully independent part thoroughly Italian in spirit. But the finale honouring the revered dead. Later taken for the violin, which must negotiate wide for the viol. Italian trio sonatas generally returns flamboyantly to France with its up by harpsichordists and viol players, leaps and rapid string crossings, and bring sported a pair of violins over a figured bass, slow-burn ‘Chaconne’ which, at its climax, Marais erected two of these tombeaux to an almost orchestral sense of drama to the but Leclair follows his French nose for allows the viol (and the left hand of the his former teachers – Sainte-Columbe and final couplet, before dissolving into a slow, richer textures. harpsichord) a final moment in the Jean-Baptiste Lully. The Tombeau pour written-out cadenza which returns us limelight, with a bass line which scampers Monsr. de Lully, from the second volume beautifully to the final statement of the Jean-Philippe Rameau was a mature all the way to the final double bar. of Marais’ Pièces de viole (1701), is insinuatingly memorable rondeau. composer of 58 when he came to write his expressively fluid, moving rapidly between first and only set of chamber music – the From chamber music to opera, variations weeping phrases, chromatic inflections Francoeur may never have dedicated a Pièces de clavecin en concerts. By 1741 over a repeating bass or harmonic sequence and dramatic outbursts which not only sonata to Lully, but long after his death Rameau had already published his solo – chaconnes and passacaglias – were exploit the dark sonorities of the viol, but in 1687, Francoeur’s stage works still harpsichord music and had astonished the fundamental to the French Baroque style. also reach up into the throaty chest-voice proudly preserved Lully’s memory in style Parisian public with three great operas; now In his popular Sonnerie de Ste Geneviève and searing treble registers of the instrument. and form. Musicians were split on the he brought all his accumulated experience du Mont de Paris (1723) Marin Marais hints While the black ink of melancholy suffuses matter: there were those who remained to bear on a fledgling form which was at the chaconne in his use of triple-time the whole, it is nevertheless organised with stubbornly faithful to the pure Frenchness taking France by storm – the accompanied ostinato patterns, but actually the the authority and rhetorical eloquence of of the Lullian model, while others, like sonata. In the preface to the Pièces … en underpinning three-note bass figure is a passionate funeral oration. François Couperin and Jean-Marie Leclair concerts, Rameau clearly aligns himself with really intended to imitate the peeling bells (1697-1764), strove for les goûts réunis this ‘much-appreciated trend’, and without of St Geneviève. But such a repetitious The elevated language of the tombeaux (the ‘reunion of tastes’), a more euro- naming him explicitly, is nevertheless clear that his inspiration is Mondonville’s popular precaution of arranging the part for a of Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie in 1733, or Pieces de clavecin en sonates Op. 3 of 1734. violin. The other melody instrument could possibly her young brother, François, who just as easily be a violin as a flute. As for had a troubled early life. Here Rameau The real novelty of the French ‘accompanied the manner of performance, Rameau exercises some of that ‘penetrating wit’ sonata’ was that it had a fully written-out recommended that the ‘violin and viol must and insight of which Molière’s Marquis harpsichord part, unlike the Italian variety, just lend themselves to the harpsichord’.