Couperin: Dancing in the Aisles?

[Roger Rayner]

Call me mad, but I have a theory that François Couperin had a certain sympathy for the ladies who were forced to take the veil simply because their families could not afford to marry them off.

So much of Couperin’s Messe pour les Couvents is so cheerful. Even at the Offertoire, a part of the Mass taken most seriously by the organist-composers, the music skips along with abandon, especially following the plangent minor-key section.

In the final movement of the Kyrie, I remember my teacher (when this music was completely new to me) saying that it was “Cherubino marching off to the wars”. Some of the movements do, indeed appear to dance. At what price the final couplet of the Gloria? And what about the graceful minuet of the Dialogue sur la Voix humaine (6^th Couplet)? The famous Basse de Trompette bubbles over with joy, and makes anyone wish to laugh, hearing the imaginary trumpeter reaching for his deepest notes!

The two Masses were, of course, early works. Yet the contrast between the deep seriousness of the Mass for the Parishes and that for the Convents is extraordinary. There are, indeed, joyful movements in the former, but the face, as it were, is not smiling. Naturally, Baroque music is very much allied to dance. While one might say the theatre seems close in the Convents, it is – strange to remark - far distant from the Parishes.

There are other French Classical composers whose sacred organ works have their theatrical elements, such as Clérambault’s Suites. One wonders what he was thinking when he wrote the famous Dialogue sur la Trompette, and even the marvellous Flûtes, which can be heard played in many different ways,
one recording from the 1970s finding extraordinary emotional depths.

Couperin, above all, had such wonderful command of mood and musical images. One would love to know his thoughts. I once had the pleasure of playing the Messe pour les Paroisses as an accompaniment to a performance relating to the maryrdom of St. Sebastian. The solo actor and I, performing in church, alternated exactly as occurs in the more normal context. It was remarkable to me how apposite each piece turned out to be, with no need for more than subtle colouring of one’s interpretation.

[DrBen]

Couperin's masses are of a type called "alternatim mass". They are intended to be used in a liturgical celebration where the couplets (versets) alternate with the required plainsong elements of the mass. The first papal document to refer to alternatim practice in detail was the Caeremoniale episcoporum of Pope Clement VIII (1600). Alternatim had been in use in one form or another for about 200 years before. The practice was banned by Pius X in his Motu proprio of 1903. Since, it has been restored. (Actually, under the current rule, just about anything musical is tolerated, much to the dismay of traditionalists.)

According to David Andrew, who wrote a master's thesis on alternatim organ in France between mid-1600 to 1700, Marilyn Mason of the University of Michigan affectionately calls the Couperin works, "The Mass for the boys and the Mass for the girls," In French practice, and according to liturgical documents for the Parisian churches from the time of Couperin, certain versets had to contain the plainchant melody, typically played in the pedals on a strong reed stop. Others were of various styles, fugues, duos, and lyric aria-like forms taken from the opera.

Couperin expected the Messe pour les paroisses to be performed by a choir of men and boys. He expected the Messe pour les couvents to be performed by a choir of women and girls. I suspect the musical styles of the two masses has a lot to do with matching the organ parts with the voices that sang the various parts of the mass.