François Couperin

Charles Couperin died in 1679, when his son was ten. The churchwardens of Saint-Gervais reserved the father’s post for the child, in accordance with the custom of survivance, and entrusted the organ to Michel-Richard de Lalande until François reached the age of eighteen. The sources disagree about his first training: the French Wikipedia article says his father taught him before he could even read, whereas Titon du Tillet, in 1743, thought him too young to have benefited from his father’s lessons.

His teacher was then Jacques-Denis Thomelin, organist of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and one of the King’s organists, who was to him, Titon du Tillet writes, “a second father”. The date on which François actually took over the organ loft is debated. The English article states that the church council paid him a salary from 1685, without a contract; the German article, that he was already deputising for Lalande before then; Charles Bouvet, historian of the Couperins, wrote in 1919 that he was put in possession of the organ in 1689.

The instrument he played is the one still to be seen at Saint-Gervais. Begun in 1601 by the Flemish builder Languedul and altered by the Thierry family between 1649 and 1714, it was rebuilt in the 18th century by Clicquot, who reused parts of it.

In 1689 François Couperin married Marie-Anne Ansault. The following year he obtained a privilege, dated 6 November 1690, for his Pièces d’orgue consistantes en deux messes: one “for the ordinary use of parishes on solemn feasts”, the other “suitable for convents of monks and nuns”. Only the title page and the privilege were printed; the music itself was copied by hand, which implies a limited circulation. Lalande, who had held the organ of Saint-Gervais in his place, approved the collection and judged it worthy of being given to the public.

Each mass follows the Latin Ordinary: five versets for the Kyrie, nine for the Gloria, three for the Sanctus, two for the Agnus, with an offertory and a Deo gratias. The parish mass quotes the plainchant of the Missa Cunctipotens genitor Deus in two Kyrie versets and in the first Sanctus; the convent mass uses none, since each religious house had its own chant. Couperin took up the forms of his elders, Nivers, Lebègue, Raison and Boyvin: pleins jeux, fugues, récits de cromorne, tierces en taille, dialogues. He gave them a new rhythmic rigour and economy of means. The Offertoire sur les grands jeux of the first mass, the longest piece, unfolds in three sections in the manner of a French overture.

The attribution of these masses has changed over time. In the early 20th century Alexandre Guilmant, who published them in the Archives des maîtres de l’orgue, and Charles Bouvet gave them to the composer’s uncle, François Couperin, sieur de Crouilly; present-day reference works restore them all to François le Grand.

Thomelin died at the end of 1693. A competition was held for his post at the Chapelle royale, and on 26 December 1693, at Versailles, Louis XIV chose François Couperin “as the most experienced in this exercise”, to serve the January quarter at a salary of six hundred livres. He thus joined Nivers, Lebègue and Buterne, the three other organists, each of whom served one quarter of the year. Titon du Tillet places this appointment “around the year 1700”; the warrant of 1693, quoted by Bouvet, contradicts him.

The post placed him at the heart of musical life at court. He taught the harpsichord to the Duke of Burgundy and to several princes, composed motets for the Chapelle and played at the concerts to which, as he wrote in the preface to the Concerts royaux, Louis XIV summoned him “almost every Sunday of the year”. In 1717 he was granted the survivance of the post of harpsichordist of the King’s Chamber, held by the d’Anglebert family; the French article claims, on the contrary, that he never obtained it. His fame rests above all on the harpsichord: four books of pieces, from 1713 to 1730, and L’Art de toucher le clavecin, in 1716.

His health declined during the 1720s. By a deed of 12 December 1723 his cousin Nicolas Couperin obtained the survivance of the organ of Saint-Gervais; according to Bouvet, Nicolas stood in for him more and more often, then entirely from about 1730. That year François handed over his post as harpsichordist to his daughter Marguerite-Antoinette, and his place as organist to the King to Marchand, organist of the parish of Versailles.

He died in Paris on 11 September 1733; Titon du Tillet gives the 12th. He was buried at Saint-Joseph, a chapel of ease of the parish of Saint-Eustache. His elder daughter, a nun at the abbey of Maubuisson, may have been its organist; reference works call her Marie-Madeleine, Titon du Tillet Marie-Anne. The organ loft of Saint-Gervais remained in the family: after Nicolas it would pass, in 1748, to his son Armand-Louis.