A Case for Charpentier: Treatise on Accompaniment and Composition trans. and ed. by Carla E. Williams

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Case for Charpentier: Treatise on Accompaniment and Composition trans. and ed. by Carla E. Williams Andrew Woolley A Case for Charpentier: Treatise on Accompaniment and Composition. Translated and edited by Carla E. Williams. (Historical Performance.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020. [xxvii, 146 p. ISBN 9780253051615 (hardback), $35; also available as e-book, ISBN and price vary.] Music examples, illustrations, table, bibliography, index. A Case for Charpentier is an edition with English translation of a late seventeenth-century or early eighteenth-century French music theory manuscript. It follows on from published translations of several other important sources that have been long available, including Etienne Loulié's Elements or Principles of Music (ed. Albert Cohen [New York: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1965]), Michel de Saint-Lambert's Principles of the Harpsichord (ed. Rebecca Harris-Warwick [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984]), A New Treatise on Accompaniment: With the Harpsichord, the Organ, and with Other Instruments (ed. John S. Powell [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991]), and Denis Delair's Accompaniment on Theorbo and Harpsichord (ed. Charlotte Mattax [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991]). The study is particularly valuable for placing the source in the context of these and other similar tracts of the period and for providing a lucid translation in parallel with an edition of the original French. The source is headed "Traité de accompagnement" and is part of a miscellany volume acquired by the Lilly Library, Indiana University, in 2000. (The call number is Vault MT530.B73.) Besides the "Traité," the miscellany contains a printed musette treatise by Pierre Borjon de Scellery (1672) and an anonymous satirical play. The title of Carla Williams's edition and translation derives from the six leaves at the end of the "Traité," which are written in the hand of Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704)—one of only two short pieces of music-theoretical writing known to exist in the hand of this major seventeenth-century composer. Identified by Patricia Ranum [End Page 420] as a Charpentier autograph in 2009, these leaves are known as Manuscript "XLI" because of a figure on the first page that Charpentier copied. (Similar roman numerals appear in his "Meslanges autographes"; Charpentier apparently used them to indicate works he had produced for patrons who were not his regular employers.) A scholarly literature already exists concerning Charpentier's manuscript, including an essay by Ranum ("Discovered at the Lilly Library: Manuscript 'XLI,' an Autograph Theoretical Work by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (late 1698)," Panat Times, http://ranumspanat.com/xli_masterpg.html [accessed 9 September 2022]) and a partial translation by John S. Powell ("A French Baroque Primer: Étienne Loulié's Élements, ou Principe de musique (1696)," Early Music Performer, nos. 33–34 (2014): 4–17 and 27–38, freely available online at National Early Music Association: Early Music Performer Archive, http://earlymusic.info/EMperformer.htm [accessed 9 September 2022]). As well as discussing the authenticity of Charpentier's manuscript and its dating, the literature has considered the manuscript's relationship to the "Règles de composition de Monsieur Charpentier" that survive in manuscripts copied by the music theorist Étienne Loulié (1654–1702). Comparatively little attention, however, has been paid to the first twenty-seven leaves of the "Traité" in the hand of the anonymous individual Williams designates as "Writer A." Williams's complete edition of the "Traité" redresses this imbalance. A reference to "several curious essays" under the heading "Second Part" in a table of contents (transcribed complete by Williams) has been taken to mean that Writer A was in possession of Charpentier's manuscript, though it also suggests that the "Traité," as it survives in the miscellany, is incomplete; only Charpentier's is present among the "curious essays." In the introduction to A Case for Charpentier, Williams demonstrates Writer A's considerable familiarity with contemporary French music theory tracts, including the fifth edition of Michel L'Affilard's Principes très faciles pour bien apprendre la musique (Paris, 1705), which suggests that at least one portion of the "Traité" was copied after Charpentier's death. She also points to several instances where Writer A paraphrases or quotes Charpentier's writings, sometimes citing them directly, as in the reference "got from the late Charpentier...