This is not only because the peculiarities of the pianoforte call for a different kind of ornamentation, but also because the playing of harpsichord flourishes is practically a lost art. Couperin and Emanuel Bach left minute directions and explanations in regard to them; but in their treatises we have only the letter of the law, not the spirit which inspired it. Even in their day, in spite of all laws, the agrémens were subject to the caprice of the player; and they remained so down to the time of Chopin.
Neither the freedom from polyphonic strictness nor the profusion of ornaments are the special peculiarities of Couperin’s style. They were more or less common to a great deal of the harpsichord music of his day. But he had a way, all his own at that time, of accompanying his melodies with a sort of singing bass or a melodious inner voice that moved with the melody in thirds or sixths, or in smooth contrary motion. This may be studied in such pieces as La fleurie, Le bavolet-flottant, Les moissoneurs, Les abeilles, and many others. It has little to do with polyphony. The accompanying voices are only suggested. They never claim attention by their own movement. They seem a sort of spirit or tinted shadow of the melody, hardly more than whispering.
This accounts in part for what we may call the tenderness of Couperin’s music, a quality which makes itself felt no matter how elusive it may be. He marked most of his pieces to be played with a special expressiveness, and frequently used the word tendrement. This, he admitted in one of his prefaces, was likely to surprise those who were aware of the limitations of the clavecin. He knew that the ‘clavecin was perfect as regards scope and brilliance, but that one could not increase or diminish the tone on it.’ His thanks would be forthcoming to one who through taste and skill would be able to improve its expression in this respect. He was not above all else a virtuoso. ‛J’ayme beaucoup mieux ce qui me touche que ce qui me surprend,’ he wrote in 1713. There is no doubt that he desired the greatest refinement of touch and shading in the expression of his music, and that he suffered under the limitations of the instrument for which he wrote. For the texture of his music is soft and delicate, its loveliness has a secret quality, hardly more than suggested by the shadowy inner voices. We cannot but be reminded of Chopin, in whose music alone the spirits of music whispered again so softly together.
Among the contemporaries of Couperin, Marchand, Claude Daquin (1694-1772), and J. P. Rameau (1683-1764) are best known, at least by name, today. Marchand is remembered chiefly by reason of the episode with Bach in Dresden. Daquin enjoyed a brilliant reputation as an organist in his day. One of his pieces for clavecin—‘The Cuckoo’—is still heard today. J. B. Weckerlin quoted an amusing bird-story[19] about Daquin, the burden of which is that one Christmas eve Daquin imitated the song of a nightingale so perfectly on the organ in church that the treasurer of the parish dispatched beadles throughout the edifice in search of a live songster.
Rameau is a greater figure in the general history of music than Couperin himself; yet, though his harpsichord pieces are, perhaps therefore, better known than those of the somewhat earlier man, they lack the most unusual charm and perfection of Couperin’s. There are fifty-three of these in all. Ten were published in 1706, of which a gavotte in rondo form in A minor is best known. A second set of twenty-one pieces appeared in 1724, containing the still famous Rappel des oiseaux, the Tambourin, Les niais de Sologne, La poule, the Gavotte with variations, in A minor, and many others. Sixteen more followed, written between 1727 and 1731. In 1747 a single piece—La Dauphine—was published. Besides these, all written originally for harpsichord, he published five arrangements of his Pièces de concert, written in the first place for a group of three or more instruments.
Rameau’s style is less delicate than Couperin’s. It is not only that there are fewer agrémens. The workmanship is more vigorous, more dramatic; the music itself less intimate. The first gavotte in A minor, the doubles in the Rigaudon and in Les niais de Sologne, the variations in the second gavotte in A minor, and La Dauphine, all speak of a technical enlargement. Yet a certain fineness is lacking. It will be noticed that he showed hardly more allegiance to the canon of the suite than Couperin had shown; and there is a large portion of titles such as Les tendres plaintes, Les soupirs, L’entretien des muses, and there are also many portraits: La joyeuse, La triomphante, L’Egyptienne, L’agaçante, and others.
In the preface to the new edition of his works published under the supervision of Camille Saint-Saëns, there is the following quotation from Amadée Mereaux’s Les clavecinistes de 1637-1790, which summarizes his position in the history of harpsichord music. ‘If there is lacking in his melodies the smoothness of Couperin, the distinction, the delicacy, the purity of style which give to the music of that clavecin composer to Louis XIV its so precious quality of charm, Rameau has at least a boldness of spirit, an animation, a power of harmony and a richness of modulation. The reflection of his operatic style, lively, expressive, always precise and strongly rhythmical, is to be found in his instrumental style. In treatment of the keyboard Rameau went far ahead of his predecessors. His technical forms, his instrumental designs, his variety and brilliance in executive resources, and his new runs and figures are all conquests which he won to the domain of the harpsichord.’ Rameau is primarily a dramatic composer. It may be added that several of his harpsichord pieces later found a place in his operas, usually as ballet music.
IV
A glance over the many pieces of Scarlatti and Couperin discovers a vast field of unfamiliar music. If one looks deep enough to perceive the charm, the beauty, the perfection of these forgotten masterpieces, one cannot but wonder what more than a trick of time has condemned them to oblivion. For no astonished enthusiasm of student or amateur whose eye can hear, renders back glory to music that lies year after year silent on dusty shelves. The general ear has not heard it. The general eye cannot hear it as it can scan the ancient picture, the drama, the poetry of a time a thousand or two thousand years ago. Music that is silent is music quite forgotten if not dead.
And, what is more, the few pieces of Couperin which are still heard seem almost to live on sufferance, as if the life they have were not of their own, but lent them by the listener disposed to imagine a courtier’s life long ago washed out in blood. ‘Sweet and delicate,’ one hears of the music of Couperin, as one hears of some bit of old lace or old brocade, that has lain long in a chest of lavender. Yet the music of Couperin is far more than a matter of fashion. It is by all tokens great art. The lack is in the race of musicians and of men who have lost the art of playing it and the simplicity of attentive listening.