François Couperin
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
A recent study by Byron Sartain details the locations of some pieces by François Couperin:
Byron Sartain, “The manuscript dissemination of François Couperin’s harpsichord music,” Early Music Vol. XLI, No. 3 (2013): 377-391
In the article, the author traced the current locations of Couperin’s harpsichord music and found 77 manuscripts in the United States and Europe, most from the eighteenth century, including about a quarter of them that are instrumental arrangements. The manuscripts tend to be of Couperin’s character pieces and some of them look like they were transcribed from memory.
Sartain also looks at the pieces that were circulated three or more times. Using a Google Fusion Table that we made at RISM, we can visualize the locations of these popular 62 manuscripts. Not all of the sources found by Sartain are in the RISM catalog, but the RISM database can help place the manuscripts in the context of Couperin’s other works. Linked on the fusion table is the RISM online catalog, first to Couperin sources in the given library. If the RISM catalog does not yet have any sources from a particular institution, a link to all Couperin sources in the database is provided. Use the catalog’s filters to limit by instrumentation or genre.
[Please note: Google discontinued Fusion Tables in 2019.]
Photo credit: Couperin, La Voluptueuse (from Pièces de calvecin), Bibliothèque municipale de Toulouse (F-TLm), Res. Mus. Cons. 943 (1 et 2), f.124. Available online from Rosalis, la bibliothèque numérique de Toulouse
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