Misplaced Pages

#300699

46-563: The Fonthill Vase , also called the Gaignières-Fonthill Vase after François Roger de Gaignières and William Beckford 's Fonthill Abbey , is a bluish-white Qingbai Chinese porcelain vase dated to 1300–1340 AD. It is famous as the earliest documented Chinese porcelain object to have reached Europe. The vase is an early piece of Jingdezhen porcelain , and comes from the final years of Qingbai ware in Jingdezhen before it

92-463: A ewer and transferred as a gift to his Angevin kinsman Charles III of Naples in 1381. Various subsequent owners are known, such as the duc de Berry and the Grand Dauphin (son of Louis XIV ). By the end of the 17th century, the vase was in the possession of François Lefebvre de Caumartin , who let it be represented in a watercolour painting by François Roger de Gaignières in 1713. The vase

138-569: A blank page of the Augmentations , Loulié in addition listed some of the points that Charpentier made in a treatise that Loulié called Règles de l'accompagnement de Mr Charpentier . Three theoretical works long known to scholars exist, but did not reveal much about Charpentier's evolution as a theoretician. Then, in November 2009, a fourth treatise, this time in Charpentier's own hand, was identified in

184-643: A collection of original materials for history generally, and, in particular, for that of the French church and court. He soon was at the center of a group of art connoisseurs and historians that stretched from Paris to the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in Florence. Among the connoisseur-visitors to his apartment was Louis Courcillon (" abbé Dangeau"), and Coulanges, Mme de Sévigné 's cousin. Dr. Martin Lister visited him at

230-553: A decade, he exerted his right to remain in his apartment at the Hôtel de Guise, but in 1698 he moved himself and his collection into a house he had built on the rue de Sèvres in the outskirts of the city. Germain Brice not only extolled the beauty of the house and its gardens, he also told how "the master to whom this house belongs lives in the finest apartment, which he has decorated with very beautiful furniture, gold cloth, and rare paintings. For

276-451: A long time he has been amassing an incomparable cabinet ." Over the decades, Gaignières brought together a large collection of original letters and other documents, together with portraits and prints, and had copies made of a great number of the most curious antiquarian objects, such as seals, tombstones, stained glass, miniatures and tapestry. Many of the documents were copied by his valet, Barthélemy Remy , an excellent paleographer, while

322-506: A lost era of exchanges between China and Europe during Medieval times , which can also be seen in pictorial arts with the adoption of some Chinese stylistic conventions in Western painting, such as in the works of Giotto and his followers. Fran%C3%A7ois Roger de Gaigni%C3%A8res He was the grandson of a merchant at Lyon and the son of Aimé de Gaignières, secretary to the Count of Harcourt,

368-556: A member of the Elbeuf branch of the House of Guise . In the late 1660s, he was named écuyer (equerry) to Louis Joseph, duke of Guise . Residing in a fine new apartment just over the stables of the magnificently renovated Hôtel de Guise, François Roger supervised the duke's riding and oversaw his stables, carriages, and footmen. His immediate neighbors in the stable wing were the respected neo-Latinist and translator Philippe Goibaut , who directed

414-482: A small room in the vast residence, but was instead a courtier who occupied one of the new apartments in the stable wing. For the next seventeen years, Charpentier composed a considerable quantity of vocal works for her, among them Psalm settings, hymns , motets, a Magnificat setting, a mass and a Dies Irae for the funeral of her nephew Louis Joseph, Duke of Guise , and a succession of Italianate oratorios set to non-liturgical Latin texts. (Charpentier preferred

460-410: A solid knowledge of contemporary Italian musical practice and brought it back to France. Immediately on his return to France, Charpentier probably began working as house composer to Marie de Lorraine, duchesse de Guise , who was known familiarly as "Mlle de Guise." She gave him an "apartment" in the recently renovated Hôtel de Guise – strong evidence that Charpentier was not a paid domestic who slept in

506-506: Is often asserted, during his seventeen years in the service of Mlle de Guise, Charpentier was not the "director" of the Guise ensemble. The director was a gentleman of Mlle de Guise's court, an amateur musician, Italophile, and Latinist named Philippe Goibaut , familiarly called Monsieur Du Bois. Owing to Mlle de Guise's love for Italian music (a passion she shared with Du Bois), and her frequent entertaining of Italians passing through Paris, there

SECTION 10

#1733085222301

552-653: The Bodleian Library at Oxford. Two hundred years later, the drawings of François Roger de Gaignières were especially instrumental in Viollet-le-Duc 's restoration effort for the Saint-Denis Abbey in the 19th century, following the destruction of the French Revolution . Marc-Antoine Charpentier Marc-Antoine Charpentier ( French: [maʁk ɑ̃twan ʃaʁpɑ̃tje] ; 1643 – 24 February 1704 )

598-698: The Louvre and the Royal Library (now the Bibliothèque nationale de France); many of the 27,000 portraits went to the royal Estampes (today part of the Bibliothèque nationale ); the printed material went to the archives of the Affaires Étrangères; and documents that took Clairambault's fancy were kept by him and merged with his own collection (today in the manuscript department of the Bibliothèque nationale). Some items are in

644-603: The Parlement of Paris . Marc-Antoine received a very good education, perhaps with the help of the Jesuits, and registered for law school in Paris when he was eighteen. He withdrew after one semester. He spent "two or three years" in Rome, probably between 1667 and 1669, and studied with Giacomo Carissimi . He is also known to have been in contact with poet-musician Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy , who

690-400: The Guise musical ensemble, and composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier , who wrote for the Guise chapel and salon. After the young duke's death in 1671, François Roger served as écuyer to Louis Joseph's aunt, Marie de Lorraine , who in 1679 appointed him governor of her principality of Joinville and obtained for him a royal pension of 500 écus . At an early age, François Roger began to make

736-628: The Hôtel de Guise in 1698 and admired his collection. In the early 1690s, Gaignières was made an "Instructor to the Children of France," that is, he showed his genealogical collection to several royal princes who were being educated. Among this princes was Philippe Duke of Chartres , to whom former Guise musicians Étienne Loulié and Marc-Antoine Charpentier were teaching musical theory and practice. As Marie de Lorraine lay dying in 1688, François Roger de Gaignières had preserved many Guise papers from destruction and incorporated them into his collection. For

782-565: The Italian cantata of the time, and share most features except for the name: Charpentier calls them airs sérieux or airs à boire if they are in French, but cantata if they are in Italian. Not only did Charpentier compose during that "transitory period" so important to the "evolution of musical language, where the modality of the ancients and the emerging tonal harmony coexisted and mutually enriched one another" ( Catherine Cessac , Marc-Antoine Charpentier , 2004 edition, p. 464), but he also

828-469: The Latin canticum to the Italian term, oratorio ). Throughout the 1670s, the bulk of these works were for trios. The usual trio was two women and a singing bass, plus two treble instruments and continuo; but when performance in the chapel of a male monastic community required male voices, he would write for an haute-contre , a tenor and a bass, plus the same instruments. Then, about 1680, Mlle de Guise increased

874-591: The Royal Opera. In addition, during these years Charpentier succeeded Étienne Loulié as music teacher to Philippe, Duke of Chartres . Charpentier was appointed maître de musique for the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris in 1698, a royal post he held until his death in 1704. One of his most famous compositions during his tenure was the Mass Assumpta Est Maria (H.11). That this work survived suggests that it

920-621: The ceramics curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, reconnected the vase with its earlier history. Jean, duc de Berry is known to have had a similar Chinese porcelain vase in his collection when he died in 1416, although it is unknown how he acquired it. This indicates that "the Gaignieres-Fonthill vase was not the only specimen of its kind [in Europe at the time]". These vases testify to

966-456: The collection of the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S.A. Written during the final months of 1698 and numbered "XLI," this treatise appears to have been the forty-first in a series hitherto not imagined by Charpentier scholars, a series of theoretical treatises that spans almost two decades, from the early 1680s to 1698. The prelude to his Te Deum , H.146, a rondo , is

SECTION 20

#1733085222301

1012-509: The competition for the sub-mastership of the royal chapel. Speculations that he withdrew because he knew he would not win seem disproved by his autograph notebooks: he wrote nothing at all from April through mid-August of that year, strong evidence that he was too ill to work. From late 1687 to early 1698, Charpentier served as maître de musique (music master) to the Jesuits, working first for their collège of Louis-le-Grand (for which he wrote Celse martyr , David et Jonathas and where he

1058-479: The contract negotiated by Pierre de Clairambault , the royal genealogist, than Gaignières found himself relegated to the top floor of his house, and the rooms containing his treasures padlocked. His health declined rapidly. He wrote his last will in December 1714, and died the following March. Clairambault soon removed the collection from the rue de Sèvres and began to break it up. The manuscripts were divided between

1104-651: The employ of the Jesuits . Indeed, he is not named in the princess's will of March 1688, nor in the papers of her estate, which is strong evidence that she had already rewarded her loyal servant and approved of his departure. During his seventeen-odd years at the Hôtel de Guise, Charpentier had written almost as many pages of music for outside commissions as he had for Mlle de Guise. (He routinely copied these outside commissions in notebooks with Roman numerals.) For example, after Molière 's falling out with Jean-Baptiste Lully in 1672, Charpentier had begun writing incidental music for

1150-480: The illustrations were made by Louis Boudan , a painter-engraver whom he sent into the provinces to draw tombs. In 1703, he offered his collection to Louis XIV , as the nucleus of a royal center that would produce certified copies of documents. The project was stillborn, so in 1711 he sold his entire collection to the king for 26,000 écus plus an annual pension of 4,000 livres . ( William III of England , had offered 50,000 pounds, in vain.) No sooner had he signed

1196-476: The number authorized by Lully's monopoly over theatrical music. By 1685, the troop ceased flouting these restrictions. Their capitulation ended Charpentier's career as a composer for the spoken theater. In 1679, Charpentier had been singled out to compose for Louis XIV's son, the Dauphin . Writing primarily for the prince's private chapel, he composed devotional pieces for a small ensemble composed of royal musicians:

1242-399: The operas and pastorales in French, which date from 1684 to 1687, appear to have been commissioned by Mme de Guise for performance at court entertainments during the winter season; but Mlle de Guise doubtlessly included them in the entertainments she sponsored several times a week in her palatial Parisian residence. By late 1687, Mlle de Guise was dying. Around that time, Charpentier entered

1288-541: The oratorio. In 1670, he became a master of music (composer and singer) in the service of the Duchess of Guise .  From 1690 Charpentier composed Médée , on a piece by Corneille . It was a determining failure in his career of composer: he henceforth devoted himself to religious music. He became the composer of the Carmelites of the "Rue du Bouloir", Montmartre Abbey , Abbaye-aux-Bois and Port-Royal . In 1698, Charpentier

1334-471: The other Roman numbers, and each notebook numbered chronologically. These manuscripts (and their watermarks) have permitted scholars not only to date his compositions but also to determine the events for which many of these works were written. His compositions include oratorios , masses , operas , leçons de ténèbres , motets and numerous smaller pieces that are difficult to categorize. Many of his smaller works for one or two voices and instruments resemble

1380-495: The quality of his prolific output. He mastered all genres, and his skill in writing sacred vocal music was especially hailed by his contemporaries. He began his career by going to Italy, where he fell under the influence of Giacomo Carissimi as well as other Italian composers, perhaps Domenico Mazzocchi . He would remain marked by the Italian style and become the only one with Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville in France to approach

1426-539: The signature tune for the European Broadcasting Union , heard in the opening credits of Eurovision events. This theme was also the introductory music to The Olympiad films of Bud Greenspan . Charpentier's compositions were catalogued by Hugh Wiley Hitchcock in his Les œuvres de Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Catalogue Raisonné, (Paris: Picard, 1982); references to works are often accompanied by their H (for Hitchcock) number. The following lists (554 H) show

Fonthill Vase - Misplaced Pages Continue

1472-429: The size of the ensemble, until it included 13 performers and a singing teacher. In the pieces written from 1684 until late 1687, the names of the Guise musicians appear as marginalia in Charpentier's manuscripts – including "Charp" beside the haute-contre line. Étienne Loulié , the senior instrumentalist who played keyboard, recorder and viole, probably was entrusted with coaching the newer instrumentalists. Despite what

1518-484: The spoken theater of Molière. It probably was owing to pressure on Molière exerted by Mlle de Guise and by young Mme de Guise that the playwright took the commission for incidental music for Le Malade imaginaire away from Dassoucy and gave it to Charpentier. After Molière's death in 1673, Charpentier continued to write for the playwright's successors, Thomas Corneille and Jean Donneau de Visé . Play after play, he would compose pieces that demanded more musicians than

1564-448: The time of his death, Charpentier's complete works must have numbered about 800 opus numbers, but today only 28 autograph volumes remain, or more than 500 pieces that he himself took care to classify. This collection, called Mélanges , is one of the most comprehensive sets of musical autograph manuscripts of all time. Charpentier was born in or near Paris, the son of a master scribe who had very good connections to influential families in

1610-507: The two Pièche sisters singing with a bass named Frizon, and instruments played by the two Pièche brothers. In short, an ensemble that, with Mlle de Guise's permission, could perform works he had earlier composed for the Guises. By early 1683, when he was awarded a royal pension, Charpentier was being commissioned to write for court events such as the annual Corpus Christi procession. In April of that year, he became so ill that he had to withdraw from

1656-523: Was a French Baroque composer during the reign of Louis XIV . One of his most famous works is the main theme from the prelude of his Te Deum , Marche en rondeau . This theme is still used today as a fanfare during television broadcasts of the Eurovision Network and the European Broadcasting Union . Marc-Antoine Charpentier dominated the Baroque musical scene in seventeenth century France because of

1702-695: Was a respected theoretician. In the early 1680s he was analyzing the harmony in a polychoral mass by the Roman composer Francesco Beretta (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. Réserve VM1 260, fol. 55–56). About 1691 he wrote a manual to be used for the musical training of Philippe d'Orléans, duke of Chartres; and about 1693 he expanded this manual. The two versions survive as copies in the hand of Étienne Loulié, Charpentier's colleague, who called them Règles de Composition par Monsieur Charpentier and Augmentations tirées de l'original de Mr le duc de Chartres (Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. n.a. fr. 6355, fols. 1–16). On

1748-596: Was appointed music master for the children of the Sainte-Chapelle du Palais . After having obtained from the king Louis XIV a softening of Lully 's monopoly, Molière turned to Charpentier to compose the music for the intermissions of Circe and Andromeda , as well as sung scenes for the revivals of The Forced Marriage , and finally the musical pieces of The Imaginary invalid . He composed secular works, stage music, operas , cantatas , sonatas , symphonies , as well as sacred music, motets (large or small), oratorios , masses, psalms, Magnificats , Litanies . At

1794-595: Was buried in the little walled-in cemetery just behind the choir of the chapel. (The cemetery no longer exists.) In 1727, Charpentier's heirs sold his autograph manuscripts (28 folio volumes) to the Royal Library, today the Bibliothèque nationale de France . Commonly known as the Mélanges , or Meslanges , and now available as facsimiles published by Minkoff-France, these manuscripts were divided by Charpentier himself into two series of notebooks – one bearing Arabic numbers and

1840-501: Was composing for the French Embassy in Rome. A legend claims that Charpentier initially traveled to Rome to study painting before he was discovered by Carissimi. This story is undocumented and possibly untrue; at any rate, although his 28 volumes of autograph manuscripts reveal considerable skill at tracing the arabesques used by professional scribes, they contain not a single drawing, not even a rudimentary sketch. Regardless, he acquired

1886-479: Was later in the possession of William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey , and was then sold to John Farquhar in 1822. Its silver mounts were removed in the 19th century, and the vase reappeared in 1882 at a sale of Beckford's heirs at Hamilton Palace without its mount, "and its history had somehow been forgotten". It was bought by the National Museum of Ireland for about £28. It was only in 1959 that Arthur Lane,

Fonthill Vase - Misplaced Pages Continue

1932-466: Was little reason for Charpentier to conceal the Italianisms he had learned in Rome. During his years of service to Mlle de Guise, Charpentier also composed for "Mme de Guise" , Louis XIV 's first cousin. It was in large part owing to Mme de Guise's protection that the Guise musicians were permitted to perform Charpentier's chamber operas in defiance of the monopoly held by Jean Baptiste Lully . Most of

1978-517: Was on display in the "Curator's Choice" permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts and History ( Collins Barracks, Dublin ). The vase was first part of a collection of Louis the Great of Hungary , who seems to have received it from a Chinese embassy on its way to visiting Pope Benedict XII in 1338. The vase was then mounted with a silver handle and base, transforming it into

2024-411: Was replaced by the new blue and white porcelain , which started in earnest after 1320. It is an unusual "experimental" vase with applied relief decoration in the medallions, in the usual monochrome blueish-white Qingbai glaze. After probably arriving in Europe when nearly new, the history of the vase can mostly be documented. Eventually it reached the National Museum of Ireland in 1882, and in 2018

2070-542: Was still employed in April 1691) and then for the church of Saint-Louis adjacent to the order's professed house on the rue Saint-Antoine. Once he moved to Saint-Louis, Charpentier virtually ceased writing oratorios and instead primarily wrote musical settings of psalms and other liturgical texts such as the Litanies of Loreto. During his years at Saint-Louis, his works tended to be for large ensembles that included paid singers from

2116-452: Was written for another entity, an entity that was entitled to call upon the musicians of the Chapel and reward them for their efforts. Indeed, virtually none of Charpentier's compositions from 1690 to 1704 have survived, because when the maître de musique died, the royal administration routinely confiscated everything he had written for the Chapel. Charpentier died at Sainte-Chapelle , Paris, and

#300699