This is not a piece I would never have thought to much occupy myself with, preferring as I do the unjustifiably little-known to big hits. Preparation for a master class in Hiroshima was the recent occasion for a closer examination.
Understanding the titles of this composer’s pieces is uniquely important for an intelligent interpretation at the harpsichord. He doesn’t make it easy for us; they are often in the nature of elegant salon-game riddles. Case in point: “Les Barricades Mysterieuses” (Book 2, 6th Ordre). Here the mystery is even made explicit in the title itself.
What are these barricades? One widespread explanation says they are women’s skirts which sway as they walk. I think that misses the mark entirely. In the first place skirts held no mystery for Couperin, who according to Daquin fils was something of a roué. Secondly, that image implies a too targeted view, which, frank as were the French were about such matters, isn’t at all congruent with their delicate aesthetic of love as it existed in Paris around 1700.
The indefatigable Jane Clark (“The Mirror of Human Life”) makes a convincing connection between pieces in this Ordre and a theatrical spectacle organized at Sceaux by Couperin’s patroness, the Duchess of Maine. The performers’ faces were hidden behind barriers in the form of masks. The bass line of the rondeau resembles the old Italian Bergamasca quite closely, so that could be a clue. The duchess was also involved with Freemasonry, a cult rich in barriers, and obsessed with the number 3, found here in constant groups of three right-hand notes and the three couplets.*
So how does one apply these lessons to practical performance? We start, as always, looking for the correct tempo. Couperin’s time signatures and verbal indications are remarkably complete for the period, but still liable to misunderstanding. This piece is marked vivement, which is usually misunderstood to mean “fast”. It means “lively”. Now, something or someone who is lively won’t be slow or dull, but undue haste is certainly not implied. Liveliness to me is most closely related to passing on information at certain level of intensity. One can be lively while sitting in a armchair; one doesn’t have to be jogging, or bouncing on a trampoline.
What information is Couperin passing on? His half bars can be divided into two categories: 1) three consonant notes bounce harmlessly off the impulse in the left hand, or 2) a construct of preparation, dissonance and resolution (ofttimes with the resolution becoming the next dissonant) takes place in the space of three eighth-notes, forming a barricade. These occur at varying intervals along the time line, each set-up more ingenious than the last, leading to an increasingly mysterieux atmosphere.
Some of these dissonances are of a boldness not seen again until Stravinsky. That may seem incredible, but let the reader collect some of the wilder “good beat” eighth-note clusters. They will be as astounded as I was during the aforementioned perusal. Actually, for something shocking you need look no farther than the first beat of bar 4 (G / e-flat / a / f’ – and the “f” resolves incorrectly).
I humbly submit that Couperin would not have invented these marvels, only to have them cast away at the tempo of the sixteenth notes in “Le Tic-Toc-Choc”, as they sometimes are. This other hit tune of Couperin’s is, by the way, a lesson in time-signature interpretation. It sounds twice as fast as “Les Barricades”, but is actually about the same tempo. Couperin just never uses this time signature (2) for fast-moving eighth-notes. The old mensural sign for cutting note values in half had, by this time, become a mere juristical fable. And as theorists of the epoch inform us, one of its main functions was to distribute alternating heavy and light harmonies over the first and second halves of each bar.
Here is the big problem: one must allow some time for the dissonances to sink in – only an eighth-note’s worth! – but not enough to destroy the flow of the work or unduly disturb the tolling of the bass-line. Sad to say, your average modern classical musician, brainwashed by Schönberg and Stockhausen, couldn’t tell a consonance from a dissonance if you knocked him over the head with a tritone. And most present-day harpsichordists have lost any sense of how far one can go with tempo rubato before “borrowing time” – the true and original meaning of the term – becomes grand larceny.
I conceive this tempo to be something resembling the old King taking a slow stroll around the Grand Trianon, with his heavy cane and his chaussures à talons rouges, engaged in a conversation galante – vivement – with his favorite, the pretty little Duchess of Bourgogne, before her early death; about MM 54 to the half bar.
There is one detail that puts a definite cap on speed: the right-hand trill in bar 4, on the second note of the figure which transitions to the internal repeat in the refrain. Couperin’s exacting rules and clear notation require that it contain at least four notes, including a repeat of the preceding f’. An elegant rendition of this ornament, even on a “good”, possibly inégale eighth-note, takes a certain amount of time.
The harmonic barriers in the three couplets between the rondeau refrains become thornier as they go along. My Juilliard teacher Albert Fuller liked to say that the homecoming is sweeter after every couplet. The first here is relatively harmless, but the second has a barrier on every “good” beat, and the third initially wanders into the terrifying key of a-flat before commencing a long catabasis**, tenor and discant enchaining sustained dissonances down into the most delicious tenor range of a French harpsichord, without a single consonant moment. The musical traveler eventually, via the most outrageous harmonies and resolutions of the work, finds his way back to the refrain.
April 30, 2024
* The Duchess, being female, could not join the Masons. But she created her own secret society, Les Abeilles. These bees might be mirrored in the flats (bémol) of the key signature.
** Where this downward progression begins there is a cross-relation so severe that it forces Couperin to insert the only eighth-note rest in the right hand’s otherwise unbroken chain of ties.
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