Jean-Nicolas Marrigues

His birthplace differs between sources: Versailles for the Wikipedia articles, Paris for the MUSEFREM database of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, which has him born in January 1757 and relies in particular on the Versailles census of 1792, in which he is recorded as born in Paris. His father, Jean-Baptiste-Philippe Marrigues, a master surgeon, became surgeon-major in the king’s household. According to MUSEFREM, the repair of the organ of the collegiate church of Montfort-l’Amaury, where his parents lived, awakened his vocation: he followed the builder’s work assiduously. The authority record of the BnF calls him a pupil of Armand-Louis Couperin and Julien Mathieu; MUSEFREM writes that he “is said to have been” Couperin’s pupil and that he studied composition in Versailles with Julien-Amable Mathieu, and notes that he was influenced by Rameau’s theories of harmony.

On 4 April 1783 he obtained the reversion of Nicolas-Hubert Paulin’s post at the organ of the parish of Saint-Louis in Versailles, now the cathedral, and succeeded him at his death on 29 August 1785. He was still there in 1790, at 500 livres a year, and remained in post until the church was closed in 1793. On 16 November 1789, at Saint-Louis, he married Félicité-Charlotte Huet, daughter of a musician of the Swiss Guards. The BnF also describes him as music master of the Chapelle royale in Versailles, a title no other source consulted mentions.

During the Revolution he probably turned to teaching the piano. On 18 October 1802 he became titular of Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin, whose organ was built by Clicquot, and remained there until his death; on 19 May 1832 he improvised there at the funeral of the prime minister Casimir Perier. In 1808 he succeeded Desprez at Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, which he also held until 1834.

After the death of Gervais-François Couperin on 11 March 1826, his daughter Céleste-Thérèse deputised at Saint-Gervais for a few months before Marrigues was appointed titular. MUSEFREM gives him in post from 1826 to 1834; the article on the church says that he came to the loft “around 1830” and that he trained Alexandre-Pierre-François Boëly there. Finally he taught at the Institution for the Young Blind, where, according to MUSEFREM, he succeeded Guillaume Lasceux as professor of organ in 1831.

Marrigues left some thirty pieces for organ, which the BnF groups under the title of a complete edition and which Nicolas Gorenstein published in 2007 with Éditions Chanvrelin. A gifted improviser, he wrote several fugues, which MUSEFREM describes as inspired by Bach, among them a Fugue on the Kyrie of the Solennels majeurs and a Fugue for the Kyrie of the Solennels mineurs, a series of fugatos, grands chœurs, duos and dialogues, an Offertoire, a Chœur de cromorne, a Cantabile for cromorne or voix humaine with the foundations, récits for hautbois and nasard, and a noël on Or nous dites Marie. IMSLP dates these pieces to around 1790.

He died on 15 March 1834 at his home in the rue Geoffroy-l’Asnier, not far from Saint-Gervais, aged seventy-seven. The death certificate describes him as divorced. He was buried two days later in Montparnasse cemetery.