The Relationship of Original Harpsichord Repertoire to Lute Style

Abstract

The absence of good-quality Parisian harpsichord sources for the first half of the 17th century is particularly disappointing given that there are numerous accounts of illustrious players connected with the court, such as the Champions, the La Barres, La Grotte and others. In the later days of the Valois there were no fewer than three joueurs d’espinette employed by the royal household, and even after the retrenchments of Henri IV in the 1590s a joueur d’espinette invariably figured in the much reduced musique de la chambre du roi. Yet we have not one piece of the quality of the most unpretentious alman in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book which can without reservation be attributed to a French harpsichordist, and this at a time when keyboard music was at a peak in England, the Low Countries and Italy. Keyboard music of French aspect does indeed appear in non-French sources, and it indicates a new style parallel to the lute’s from around 1620. But the few pieces described here are all that is known from the ‘lost’ period of French harpsichord music between Attaingnant’s prints of the 1530s and the publications of Dumont from 1652 onwards.