Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier

He was baptised on 29 June 1734 at Sainte-Catherine in Abbeville. His father, Jean-Baptiste Beauvarlet known as Charpentier, was a dyer and merchant, but also an organist and organ builder; the exact origin of the nickname, which the son also bore, is unknown. The family settled in Lyon, around 1739 according to the MUSEFREM database of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, around 1748 according to the Wikipedia article. There the father worked as a builder of organs and harpsichords and became organist of the hospice de la Charité; Jean-Jacques probably completed his training there and regularly deputised for him.

On 15 August 1759 he played a concerto of his own at the Concert spirituel in Paris. In 1761 he became organist of the Concert of the Académie des beaux-arts in Lyon, where he also appeared as soloist. When his father died on 7 January 1763 he succeeded him at the Charité, at 120 livres a year. On 20 June 1763 he married the singer Marie Bérol; their son Jacques-Marie was born in Lyon on 3 July 1766. He published a first book of harpsichord pieces and collections of ariettes, and played organ concertos at the Concert, among them a Christmas concerto. An anecdote reported in 1834 has Jean-Jacques Rousseau, hearing him in Lyon in 1771, judging that he had “too much talent” to stay there.

He moved to Paris in 1771, where the Archbishop of Lyon, who was abbot of Saint-Victor, had undertaken to find him a post. The Wikipedia article and Fétis make him organist of the abbey of Saint-Victor from 1771; MUSEFREM dates to June 1772 the competition, judged by Daquin and Balbastre, that gave him this loft. That same year, after another competition, he succeeded Louis-Claude Daquin at the parish of Saint-Paul, which he held until 1793. On 20 October 1783, after the death of Claude-Étienne Luce, he became one of the four quarterly organists of Notre-Dame, until worship was suppressed in 1793. In 1788 his son deputised for him at Saint-Paul.

He was often called upon to examine organs: with Armand-Louis Couperin and Balbastre at the English Benedictines (1773), with Clicquot at Nogent-sur-Marne (1775), with Lasceux at the Mathurins (1775), with Balbastre at Saint-Étienne-du-Mont (1777), with Couperin and Séjan at Saint-Roch (1778). On 15 and 16 May 1781 he was one of the four organists, with Couperin, Balbastre and Nicolas Séjan, who received Clicquot’s great organ at Saint-Sulpice. In 1788 he was among the organists of Notre-Dame charged with examining Clicquot’s work on the cathedral organ.

Alongside a large output for harpsichord and fortepiano, sonatas with violin, concertos and above all varied opera airs, his organ music appeared from 1777: Six fugues pour l’orgue ou le clavecin (Op. 6), reissued around 1784, and Trois Magnificat (Op. 7). In 1782 came the Douze Noëls variés pour l’orgue, avec un Carillon des morts qui se joue le jour de la Toussaint après le Magnificat (Op. 13), dedicated to the Countess of Arundell; the Wikipedia article adds a Mass in G minor (Op. 15), around 1782.

The Journal d’orgue à l’usage des paroisses et communautés religieuses appeared in twelve instalments between June 1784 and March 1785: masses in E minor, D minor and G minor, Du Mont’s Messe royale, six fugues, several Magnificats, two of them with noël variations, hymns and proses for the great feasts, a Carillon des morts for the Gloria Patri of the All Saints’ Magnificat and four Grands Chœurs for the return of processions. Fétis dates this Journal to 1790, published by Le Duc. MUSEFREM reports the view of Jean-Luc Perrot that Beauvarlet-Charpentier gave the organ journal its prestige. Fétis, by contrast, judged that his works did not justify his reputation.

In 1793 he published his version of the Marche des Marseillois in the Feuilles de Terpsichore and signed, with Balbastre, Gervais-François Couperin and Séjan, a testimonial for Claude Hermant de Saint-Benoist’s Nouvel hymnaire parisien. That same year the closing of the churches cost him his posts. According to Choron, quoted in the Wikipedia article, his forced departure from Saint-Paul and Saint-Victor and the destruction of the organs “caused him an extremely deep sorrow; his health declined rapidly”. He died on 6 May 1794 in a flat in the rue Gervais, at nearly sixty. Fétis had him born in 1730; the BnF, MUSEFREM and Wikipedia give 28 June 1734. He was a first cousin of the engraver Jacques-Firmin Beauvarlet.