Many others are so purely music, delicate and tender, that the titles seem more to be a gallant tribute to so and so, rather than the names of prototypes in the flesh. La Manon, La Babet, La fleurie, ou la tendre Nanette, L’Enchanteresse, La tendre Fanchon, and many others are in no way program music; nor can they ever be interpreted as such, since no man can say what charming girl, two centuries dead, may have suggested their illusive features.
It is these ‘portraits’ particularly which are Couperin’s own new contribution to the art of music. So individual is the musical life in each one, so special and complete its character, so full of sentiment and poetry, that, small as it is, it may stand alone as a perfect and enduring work of art. It has nothing to do with the suite or with any of the cyclic forms. Here are the first flowers from that branch of music from which later were to grow the nocturnes of Field, the Moments musicals of Schubert, the preludes of Chopin.
Between these and the few pieces which are frankly almost wholly dependent upon a program are a great number of others lightly suggestive of their titles. Sometimes it is only in general character. Les vendangeuses and Les moissoneurs do not seem so particularly related to wine-gathering or harvesting that the titles might not be interchanged; but both have something of a peasant character. In Les abeilles and in Le moucheron the characterization is finer. The pleasant humming of the bees is reproduced in one, the monotonous whirring of the gnat in the other. Les bergeries is simply pastoral, Les matelots Provençales is a lively march, followed by a horn-pipe. Les papillons is not unlike the little piece so named in the Schumann Carnaval, though here it means but butterflies. There are some imitative pieces which are in themselves charming music, such as Les petits moulins à vent, Le réveille-matin, Le carillon de Cythère, and Les ondes, with its undulating figures and fluid ornamentation.
Finally the program music is in various degrees programmistic. A little group of pieces called Les Pèlerines (Pilgrims) begins with a march, to be played gaily. Then comes a little movement to represent the spirit of alms-giving, in a minor key, to be played tenderly; and this is followed by a cheerful little movement of thanks, to which is added a lively coda. The whole is rather an expression of moods than a picture of actions. Les petits ages is in some respects more literal. The first movement, La muse naissante, is written in a syncopated style, the right hand always following the left, which may well express weakness and hesitation. L’adolescente, the third movement, is a lively rondo in vigorous gavotte rhythm.
Two sets are entirely program music. One of these, Les Bacchanales, has a march (pésament, sans lenteur) of the gray-clad ones; then three movements expressive of the delights of wine, the tenderness to which it warms and the madness to which it enflames. The music is not of itself interesting. More remarkable, though devoid of musical worth save a good bit of the comical, is Les fastes de la grande et ancienne Mxnxstrxndxsx. These records or tales are divided into five acts, which represent the notables and judges of the kingdom, the old men and the beggars (over a drone bass), the jugglers, tumblers and mountebanks, with their bears and monkeys, the cripples (those with one arm or leg played by the right hand, those who limp played by the left), and, finally, the confusion and flight of all, brought about by the drunkards and the bears and monkeys.
III
The last of these compositions are in no way representative of Couperin the artist. They might have been written by any one who had a love for nonsense, and they are not meant to be taken seriously. The quality of Couperin’s contribution to music must be tested in such pieces as Le bavolet-flottant, La fleurie, Les moissoneurs, Le carillon de Cythère, and La lugubre. His harmony is delicate, suggesting that of Mozart and even Chopin, to whom he is in many ways akin. He does not, like Scarlatti, wander far in the harmonic field; but in a relatively small compass glides about by semi-tones. There is, of course, a great deal of tonic and dominant, such as will always be associated with a certain clear-cut style of French dance music; but the grace of his melody and his style is too subtle to permit monotony. The harmonies of the sarabande La lugubre are profound.
In form he is precise. His use of the rondo deserves special attention. In this form he cast many of his loveliest pieces, and it is one which never found a place in the suite. It is very simple, yet in his hands full of charm. The groundwork of one main theme recurring regularly after several episodes or contrasting themes was analyzed in the previous chapter. Couperin called his episodes couplets, and his rondos are usually composed of the principal theme and three couplets. He does not invariably repeat the whole theme after each couplet, but sometimes, as in Les bergeries, only a characteristic phrase of it. The couplets are generally closely related to the main theme, from which they differ not in nature, but chiefly in ornamentation and harmony. Much of the charm of his music is due to the neat proportions of this hitherto neglected form. It was native to him as a son of France, where, from the early days of the singers of Provence, the song in stanzas with its dancing refrain had been beloved of the people. Through him it found a place in the great instrumental music of the world.
Couperin’s style is too delicate to be caught in words. To call it the style galant merely catalogues it as a free style, highly adorned with agrémens. The freedom is of course the freedom from all trace of polyphony in the old sense, of strict leading of voices from beginning to end. Couperin adds notes to his harmonic background when and where he will; so that it is impossible to say whether a piece is in two, or three, or four parts, because it is in no fixed number of parts at all.
The countless agrémens are more than an external feature of his music, and of other music of his time. The analogies which have often been drawn between them and the formal superficialities of court life under the great Louis are in the main false. Both Couperin and Emanuel Bach, a man of perhaps less sensitive, certainly of less elegant, taste, regarded them as of vital importance. Even the learned Kuhnau, who can hardly be called a stylist at all, considered them the sugar of his fruit. It would seem as if only by means of these flourishes harpsichord music could take on some grace of line and warmth of color. Whatever subtlety of expression the dry-toned instrument was capable of found life only in the agrémens. We cannot judge of the need of them nor of their peculiar beauties by the sound of them on the modern pianoforte, even under the lightest fingers. It is open to question whether any but a few of them should be retained in the performance of Couperin’s works, now that the instrument, the shortcomings of which they were intended to supplement, has been banished in general from the concert stage.