Extract

I have received a letter from Bruce Gustafson pointing out several factual errors in my recent article, ‘Chambonnières, Jollain, and the first engraving of harpsichord music in France’, Early Music, xxxv/4 (2007), pp.539–53. First, there were, in fact, three publications of harpsichord music that appeared in France between those of Chambonnières (1670) and d'Anglebert (1689): two by Lebègue (1677 and 1687) and one by Jacquet de la Guerre (1687). D'Anglebert's book could not have represented an effort on the composer's part ‘to ingratiate himself with the increasingly powerful Lully’, since Lully had died two years prior to its publication. Furthermore, the two composers had apparently already been close, since Lully was godfather to d'Anglebert's first child. Not every volume of harpsichord music contained a table of ornaments. My distinction between the notation used for unmeasured préludes in manuscript and print was too rigid; furthermore, both Jacquet de la Guerre and Lebègue preceded d’Anglebert in their modification of prélude notation to make it accessible to a wider usership. In my statement that Louis Couperin was a student of Chambonnières I relied on secondary sources; Gustafson writes that he knows of no evidence that Couperin studied with Chambonnières. Denis Herlin and Florence Gétreau have suggested that it was not Jollain but Jean le Pautre who designed the cover page of Chambonnières’s publication (see their article, ‘Portraits de clavecins et de clavecinistes français’, Musique, images, instruments, ii (1996), pp.88–114).

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