Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre
Encyclopedia
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
– 27 June 1729, Paris) was a French musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
, harpsichordist
Harpsichordist
A harpsichordist is a person who plays the harpsichord.Many baroque composers played the harpsichord, including Johann Sebastian Bach, Domenico Scarlatti, George Frideric Handel, François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau...
and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
.
Life and works
Elisabeth Jacquet was born into an important family of musicians and masons in the parish of Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile, ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. A childhood prodigy, she played the harpsichord
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
before King Louis XIV to inaugurate her career as a virtuoso performer at the age of five. At the court of Louis XIV she was noticed by Madame de Montespan, and was kept on in her entourage. She later married the organist
Organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...
Marin de La Guerre, son of the late organist at the Sainte-Chapelle
Sainte-Chapelle
La Sainte-Chapelle is the only surviving building of the Capetian royal palace on the Île de la Cité in the heart of Paris, France. It was commissioned by King Louis IX of France to house his collection of Passion Relics, including the Crown of Thorns - one of the most important relics in medieval...
, Michel de La Guerre
Michel de La Guerre
Michel de La Guerre was a French organist and composer. His Triomphe de l'Amour sur les Bergers et les Bergères, with librettist Charles de Beys which was first sung in 1655, and staged in 1657, is one of the earliest French operas. After his death his son Marin de la Guerre succeeded him as...
, in 1684 and left the court. Thereafter she was known as Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre. After her marriage she taught and gave concerts at home and throughout Paris, and gained much acclaim. A quote from Titon du Tillet speaks of her
"marvellous facility for playing preludes and fantasies off the cuff. Sometimes she improvises one or another for a whole half hour with tunes and harmonies of great variety and in quite the best possible taste, quite charming her listeners." (Le Parnasse Français, 1732)
Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre was one of the few well-known women composers of her time. Recently there has been a renewal of interest in her compositions and a number have been recorded.
Her first publication was her Premier livre de pièces de clavessin, printed in 1687. It was one of the few collections of harpsichord pieces printed in France in the 17th-century, along with those of Chambonnières, Lebègue
Nicolas Lebègue
Nicolas Lebègue was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was born in Laon and in 1650s settled in Paris, quickly establishing himself as one of the best organists of the country. He lived and worked in Paris until his death, but frequently made trips to other cities to...
and d'Anglebert. On 15 March 1694, the production of her opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
Céphale et Procris at the Académie Royale de Musique
Académie Royale de Musique
The Salle Le Peletier was the home of the Paris Opera from 1821 until the building was destroyed by fire in 1873. The theatre was designed and constructed by the architect François Debret on the site of the former Hôtel de Choiseul...
was the first written by a woman in France. The next year, 1695, she composed a set of trio sonata
Trio sonata
The trio sonata is a musical form that was popular in the 17th and early 18th centuries.A trio sonata is written for two solo melodic instruments and basso continuo, making three parts in all, hence the name trio sonata...
s which, with those of Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Marc-Antoine Charpentier, , was a French composer of the Baroque era.Exceptionally prolific and versatile, he produced compositions of the highest quality in several genres...
, François Couperin
François Couperin
François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.-Life:Couperin was born in Paris...
, Jean-Féry Rebel
Jean-Féry Rebel
Jean-Féry Rebel was an innovative French Baroque composer and violinist.-Biography:Rebel , a son of the singer Jean Rebel, a tenor in Louis XIV's private chapel, was a child violin prodigy. He became, at the age of eight, one of his father's most famous musical offspring. Later, he was a student...
and Sébastien de Brossard
Sébastien de Brossard
Sébastien de Brossard was a French music theorist.Brossard was born in Dompierre, Orne. After studying philosophy and theology at Caen, he studied music and established himself in Paris in 1678 and remained there until 1687. He briefly was the private tutor of the young son of Nicolas-Joseph...
, are among the earliest French examples of the sonata
Sonata da chiesa
Sonata da chiesa is an instrumental composition dating from the Baroque period, generally consisting of four movements. More than one melody was often used, and the movements were ordered slow–fast–slow–fast with respect to tempo...
.
The next few years heralded the death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
s of almost all of her near relations: her only son, mother, father, husband and brother Nicolas, and were not productive times. 1707 saw the publication of Pièces de Clavecin qui peuvent se jouer sur le Viollon, a new set of harpsichord pieces, followed by six Sonates pour le viollon et pour le clavecin. These works are an early example of the new genre of accompanied harpsichord works, where the instrument is used in an obbligato
Obbligato
In classical music obbligato usually describes a musical line that is in some way indispensable in performance. Its opposite is the marking ad libitum. It can also be used, more specifically, to indicate that a passage of music was to be played exactly as written, or only by the specified...
role with the violin; Rameau's Pieces de clavecin en concerts
Pièces de Clavecin en Concerts
The Pièces de clavecin en concert, published in 1741, constitute the only chamber music by Jean-Philippe Rameau and were composed in full maturity; they came after his music for solo harpsichord, and just before Les Indes galantes....
are somewhat of the same type. The dedication of the 1707 work speaks of the continuing admiration and patronage
Patronage
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...
of Louis XIV:
"Such happiness for me, Sire, if my latest work may receive as glorious a reception from Your Majesty as I have enjoyed almost from the cradle, for, Sire, if I may remind you, you never spurned my youthful offerings. You took pleasure in seeing the birth of the talent that I have devoted to you; and you honoured me even then with your commendations, the value of which I had no understanding at the time. My slender talents have since grown. I have striven even harder, Sire, to deserve your approbation, which has always meant everything to me...."
She returned to vocal composition with the publication of two books of Cantates françoises sur des sujets tirez de l'ecriture in 1708 and 1711. Her last publication, 15 years before her death, was a collection of secular Cantates françoises (c. 1715).
In the inventory of her possessions after her death, there were three harpsichords: a small instrument with white and black keys, one with black keys, and a large double manual Flemish harpsichord
Ruckers
The Ruckers family were Flemish harpsichord and virginal makers based in Antwerp in the 16th and 17th century whose influence stretched well into the 18th and to the harpsichord revival of the 20th.The Ruckers family contributed immeasurably to the harpsichord's technical development,...
.
Stage
- Ballet Les jeux à l’honneur de la victoire (c.1691), lost
- Opera (tragédie lyrique) Céphale et ProcrisCéphale et ProcrisCéphale et Procris is an opera by the French composer Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre. It takes the form of a tragédie en musique in five acts with an allegorical prologue. The libretto, by Joseph-François Duché de Vancy, is loosely based on the myth of Cephalus and Procris as told in Ovid's...
(1694)
Vocal music
- Cantates françoises sur des sujets tirez de l'Ecriture, livre I (1708)
- Cantates françoises, livre II (1711)
- La musette, ou Les bergers de Suresne (1713)
- Cantates françoises (1715)
- Te Deum (1721), lost
- Various songs published in Recueil d'airs sérieux et à boire (1710–24)
Instrumental
- Pièces de clavessin (1687)
- Pièces de clavecin qui peuvent se jouer sur le viollon (1707)
- 6 sonates for violin and basso continuo (1707)
- In manuscript: 4 sonatas for violin, viola da gamba and basso continuo; 4 trio sonatas for 2 violins, viola da gamba and basso continuo