A list of his works show that he wrote 26 operas, 2 cantatas, 5 books on theory, and 4 volumes of harpsichord music.
His death occurred in 1764, and all France mourned their “greatest composer” and for years held memorial services in his honor.
Piron, a French writer, said of him: “All his mind and all his soul were in his harpsichord and when he had closed that, the house was empty, there was no one at home.”
French Composers for Clavecin and Harpsichord
In every collection of French instrumental music of the 17th and 18th centuries, besides the names of Lully and Rameau, we find Jacques Champion de Chambonnières (1600–1670), Jean Baptiste Loeilly, or Loeillet (?–1728?), François Couperin (1668–1733), Jean François Dandrieu (1684–1740), Jean Louis Marchand (1669–1733), Louis Claude Daquin (1694–1772) and Schobert (1720–1768).
These writers for clavecin and harpsichord of the French school were the first to write music for instruments to which they gave names describing the nature of the compositions. So, now, in addition to the names of dances which formed the suites, we find The Coucou, Butterflies, Tambourine, The Windmill, The Turtle-Doves, and so on. This was an important step for it led directly to the kind of titles given to piano pieces in the 19th century by the German romantic school.
The most important of this group was François Couperin, called “the great,” as he was the most gifted member of a family, who supplied France with musicians for two centuries. From 1665 to 1826, there were eight Couperins who were organists of St. Gervais’ Church in Paris.
We can compare the Couperin family to the Bachs who flourished at the same time in Germany. François (1668–1733), was only a year old when his father died, but a friend, who was an organist, taught him and in time he, too, became organist at St. Gervais. He was harpsichord player to the King, and was a favorite in court circles. No fashionable affair was complete without Couperin at the harpsichord, and every Sunday evening he played chamber music for Louis XIV, the royal patron of Lully. One of the books of pieces for the clavecin was published under the title of Royal Concerts, and in the preface, Couperin told that they were written for “les petits concerts du roi” (the little concerts of the king), and he also said that he hoped the public would like the pieces as much as the King did. For twenty years Couperin played in the King’s household, and taught several princes and princesses.
You know the old proverb, “All roads lead to Rome.” We would change it, and say that all roads lead to Bach! And Couperin is one of the main highways, for without knowing that he was doing so, he prepared the way for Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Everything he wrote, and most of his pieces were in the dance form of the suite, was exquisite in refinement and taste. The French musicians of today look upon him as one of their composers, most truly French, and they try to follow in the way he led, so as to be able to write music that will express the French people, in heart and character. Later in the story of music, the German classic school and then the romantic school had a very strong influence on the music of every country in the world, and in France there was the desire to brush aside the outside influences, and to find the road that the early French composers of the 17th and 18th centuries had traveled. Paul Landormy, a French writer on musical history has summed up Couperin as “one of the miracles of the French spirit in music, and across the gulf of time he clasps hands on one side with Jannequin and Costeley (p. [437]), on the other with Fauré and Debussy” (p. [416]).
All the important music outside of opera written in France at this time was for the clavecin and harpsichord, and if the flute or the viol was invited to take part in a concert, it was only to double the melody played by the harpsichord, and did not have a part especially created for it.