French Baroque Music of New Orleans: Spiritual Songs from the Ursu -line Convent (1736) ed. by Alfred E. Lemmon (review)

Abstract

THE EARLIEST SURVIVING MUSIC MANUSCRIPT FROM NEW ORLEANSFrench Baroque Music New Orleans: Spiritual Songs from the Ursu - line Convent (1736) = Musique francaise baroque la Nouvelle-Orleans: Recueil d'airs spirituels des Ursulines (1736). Edited by Alfred E. Lemmon, with essays by Jean Duron, Alfred E. Lemmon, Mark McKnight, Jennifer Gipson, and Andrew Justice. New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2014. [Pref. in Eng. with summary in Fre., p. vi-vii; introd. in Fre. with summary in Eng., p. viii-xii; other essays in Eng. with summaries in Fre., p. 1-26; featured composers and contributors, p. 27; color facsim., p. 29-283. Softcover. ISBNs 0-917860- 65-9 & 978-0-917860-65-2; ISMN 979-0-800031-00-7. $110.]The French founded the city New Orleans in 1718, and immediately populated it largely with adventurers, vagabonds, and undesirables from Paris and the rest France. In 1724 the colony had enough young boys sired by the colonials to bring in priests to educate them. Not to be outdone by the boys, in 1727 the girls New Orleans were provided with education, too. A small contingent Ursuline nuns, brought in to offer medical support for the colony, also had the goal to save these young girls from the sins their fathers through religious instruction. A significant tool for such education was the singing songs with proper texts.The Ursuline manuscript, the facsimile which is the subject this review, is collection 294 such songs. It was copied in France in 1736 by an anonymous young woman D. and brought to New Orleans in 1754 as giftfrom Mr Nicollet. As such it is the oldest music any kind that was performed in the city that has survived to the present day. The Ursuline facsimile has been carefully and beautifully edited by Alfred Lemmon, director the Williams Research Center the Historic New Orleans Collection where the manuscript has resided since 1998. The handwriting the original is very clear, including an original one-page avis by C. D., and there are no problems in reading the music or the texts. The intent is to serve performers who wish to sing the songs, but it also provides the scholar with important material for the early history music in what became one the most important centers music in America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (A few the songs were recorded on the compact disc Manuscrit des Ursulines de La Nouvelle Orleans, Le Concert Lorrain, cond. Anne- Catherine Bucher, K617 K617134 [2001].)To understand the significance the Ursuline manuscript, Lemmon has included five essays that place the document in context. All are well annotated. Jean Duron introduces the facsimile with an overview the manuscript as well as the printed edition on which it is based: the Nouvelles poesies spirituelles et morales sur les plus beaux airs de la musique francoise et italienne avec la basse, which was published in Paris in eight recueils (collections) from 1730 to 1737. As the title the printed publication suggests, most the music consists of contrafacta-spiritual texts set to fashionable tunes (p. viii). He surmises that Monsieur Nicollet was Gabriel-Francois Nicollet, who authored a guidebook to practicing the Sacred Heart aspect Catholic adoration (p. viii) at about the same time that he donated the manuscript to New Orleans. Duron then describes all that is known the Ursuline convent during its earliest years. Lemmon's own essay reviews the history colonial music in the city from 1718 to 1804, when New Orleans leftthe realms France and Spain and joined the United States. In the preface, Lemmon also describes the Historic New Orleans Collection and its importance as an archive for historical research into the life and music New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.Mark McKnight describes the Nouvelles poesies in greater detail. This is huge collection more than 450 songs, which were accompanied by fables in the style La Fontaine, but the fables were not copied into the Ursuline manuscript. …