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CD reviews
Jean-François DANDRIEU (c1682 - 1738): Harpsichord and organ works
[I] "Trois Livres de Pièces de Clavecin"
Pieter-Jan Belder, harpsichord
rec: 2019-2021, Mijnsheerenland (NL), NH Kerk
Brilliant Classics - 96125 (© 2023) (4.34'14")
Liner-notes: E
Cover, track-list & booklet
Spotify
Premier livre de Pièces de Clavecin;
Second livre de Pièces de Clavecin;
Troisième livre de Pièces de Clavecin
[II] Premier livre de Pièces d'Orgue
Pieter-Jan Belder, organ
rec: June 1 - 3, 2019, Vézelise, Église Saint-Côme et Saint-Damien
Brilliant Classics - 95137 (© 2015) (2.01'44")
Liner-notes: E
Cover & track-list
Spotify
Première Suite in d minor;
Deuxième Suite in D;
Troisième Suite in g minor;
Quatrième Suite in G;
Cinquième Suite in a minor;
Sixième Suite in A
Scores
Jean-François Dandrieu was one of the main composers of his time in France, but today his music is not very well-known. He is mostly associated with a typical French genre, the Noël, an organ arrangement of a popular Christmas song. It is mainly his Noëls which appear on disc. To date a complete recording does not exist. That may be going to change; the two productions under review here comprise most of the harpsichord works and the first organ book respectively. The early harpsichord works are going to be released in the near future, according to the liner-notes, and it is to be hoped that the Noëls will follow.
Dandrieu was born in Paris and received his first music lessons from his uncle, Pierre, organist of St Barthélemy, and probably also from Jean-Baptiste Moreau. From 1705 until his death he acted as organist of St Merry, a post earlier held by the famous Nicolas Lebègue. In the last years of his life he also succeeded to the position of his uncle at St Barthélemy.
According to the German theorist Marpurg Dandrieu was called "the German organist", probably because of his preference for counterpoint, which was associated with the German style. That comes to the fore in his two collections of trio sonatas, which were printed in 1705 and 1710 respectively. The organ works also show his mastery of counterpoint; he often makes use of fugues. At the same time his organ suites are quite modern in that they include pieces which show the influence of Lully's operas. Some pieces are transcriptions of movements from his trio sonatas.
Dandrieu published five books with harpsichord pieces, but the third and fourth were printed as the first and second book, in 1724 and 1728 respectively. This can be explained by the idiomatic change: whereas in the early books Dandrieu linked up with the tradition of writing suites of dances, the later books reflect the modern fashion of composing character pieces. The most obvious example of this fashion is François Couperin. Whereas in the early books not a single piece has character title, in the third and fourth books all the pieces are titled. The third book of 1734 then shows a return to the past: although all the pieces have titles and there are no references to dances, many of them are in fact dances and a number of pieces are recycled from the early books.
It is a bit of a shame that the track-list is not entirely clear about the way the various suites have been put together. The first book comprises five suites, which are mentioned as such in the track-list. The Première Suite is followed, so it seems, by a cycle of pieces under the title of Les Caractères de la Guerre. However, in fact this cycle is part of the suite. The same goes for the Deuxième Suite, which closes with another cycle, Le Concert des Oiseaux. The Cinquième Suite includes two cycles: first La Fête de Vilage and then La Chasse.
The second book comprises six suites. The Deuxième Suite consists of two cycles: Le Concert des Muses and La Mascarade. The Troisième Suite closes with a sequence of pieces under the title of La Pastorale, and the Sixième Suite closes with four pieces under the title of L'Aubade. The third book has eight suites; it is notable that the first two comprise ten and eight pieces respectively, whereas the remaining six have only three each.
As mentioned above, the first book was not Dandrieu's first collection of harpsichord works. For some reason he seems to have ignored his previous compositions. John Baxendale, in his liner-notes, states: "They look back to an earlier school of composition that is typified in the music of such earlier composers as Jacques Champion de Chambonnières and Louis Couperin and found among some contemporaries such as Louis-Nicolas Clérambault and Gaspard Le Roux. (...) It could be that, after 20 years, the plates were either lost or no longer fit for purpose. But there might also be a degree of obfuscation in play: to be successful in a modern market, an association
with the ‘old school’ might well have worked against the image Dandrieu needed to convey and, even if he still possessed the original engravings, he probably would not have thought them worthy of resurrection."
In the first and second books Dandrieu moves away from the techniques used by his predecessors, which were rooted in the lute repertoire, such as the style brisé. He also ignores the traditional habit of dividing a suite in a fixed sequence of dances, including a allemande-courante pair, and preceded by a prélude. Several composers who published their harpsichord works in the early decades of the 18th century, had turned to the genre of the character piece, among them Gaspard Le Roux, Jean-Philippe Rameau and François Couperin. Baxendale observes that especially the latter's first book had a strong influence on the development of keyboard music in France.
If one looks at the titles of the pieces, one may find many that also appear in other collections of harpsichord works. They usually refer to human characters, rather than specific personalities - although a composer might have been inspired by personalities in his environment. In Couperin's music the titles are often hard to understand. That is easier in Dandrieu's harpsichord books, but that does not mean that it is always easy to see how a particular title is translated into music. Moreover, some titles have more than one meaning.
One of the notable features in Dandrieu's books is the reference to life at the countryside. That was very popular at the time: in many pieces of music one finds the word champêtre, and imitations of what was considered typical of life at the countryside, including instruments as the hurdy-gurdy (vielle) and the musette. Examples are the cycle of four pieces from the Troisième Suite in the second book, called La Pastorale, which ends with Le Bal Champêtre, and the five pieces of La Fête de Vilage from the Cinquième Suite in the first book. One can also connect the cycle of three pieces from the Deuxième Suite in the first book to it: Le Concert des Oiseaux. Hunting was one of the main occupations of the aristocracy in the 18th century, but as this also took place at the countryside, the cycle called La Chasse (Premier Livre, 5e Suite) can be counted among this category as well. Elsewhere individual pieces clearly evoke the atmosphere of the countryside.
Very different is the cycle Les Caractères de la Guerre, comprising ten pieces, which includes a march, two fanfares, a depiction of the attack, laments about the victims and a celebration of the victory. With La Mascarade (Livre II, 2e Suite) we are in the theatre. After the entrée des masques we meet Pulcinella (Le Polichinel), one of the characters in the commedia dell'arte. The Sixième Suite from the same book is inspired by antiquity, as it includes La Sirène and La Bacante.
Dandrieu may have been inspired by Couperin, technically his harpsichord works are less demanding. "While Couperin found a ready audience among more accomplished players, Dandrieu seems to have taken the middle road, which was a clever tactic when publishing for a musical milieu in which the attraction of less sophisticated music was an overriding factor. (...) Dandrieu pitched his books to a less elitist market [than Couperin], which would have delighted in their humour and the occasional brash effects that, in places, go against the very concept of bon goût. [His suites] retain a naïve simplicity that is often lacking elsewhere. Nothing is too complicated: ornamentation is straightforward, textures tend towards two-part writing and figuration always falls comfortably under the hand."
Pieter-Jan Belder plays a copy of a harpsichord by Blanchet of 1733, which turns out to be the ideal instrument for this repertoire. Belder has an excellent technique, as he has proved in his many previous harpsichord recordings. In the case of this kind of repertoire, the challenge is also to interpret the character pieces. They may be easier to grasp as those by Couperin, it is still something one has to think about: what exactly are they meaning? Different interpreters may have different views on some of them. As far as I have understood them, I find Belder's performances completely satisfying and convincing. Some pieces require a rather elegant and intimate way of playing, others need a more powerful approach. In some pieces Belder uses the 4-foot stop to good effect, such as in La Ramage (from Le Concert des Oiseaux), which means "warbling". It is used in the right hand in Les Fifres (Premier Livre, 4e Suite), which refers to little flutes.
This is an impressive account of harpsichord works which for inexplicable reasons don't receive the attention they deserve.
The Premier Livre d'Orgue was printed in 1739, the year after Dandrieu's death. It comprises six suites in three keys: D, G and A, the first in minor, the second in major. Each suite opens with an Ofertoire (sic), followed by two to five further pieces, and closing with a Magnificat. The first suite is exceptional, in that the Ofertoire is preceded by another one, the Ofertoire pour le Jour de Pâques, O filii et filiae. In France, organ music was exclusively associated with the liturgy. There were no such things as organ recitals. However, only the Ofertoire just mentioned and the Magnificat pieces specifically refer to their place in the liturgy. Other pieces may have been used at random for the alternatim practice.
This practice was based on the Caeremoniale episcoporum (Rome, 1600), which included instructions with regard to the use of the organ in services throughout the Roman Catholic Church. "It tells us that alternatim playing was expected for the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei of the Mass Ordinary, as well as for the hymns and canticles at various daily offices. It also stipulated that the missing portion of the texts should be sung when the cantus firmus was played in a verset or, if that was not possible, recited in an audible voice instead" (booklet). It did not work very well, at least not in France. Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers wrote: "People recite (or rather shout with all their might) the text of the verset the organ plays." That may well be the reason that some organists reduced the organ versets to only a few bars. In many versets the chant melodies are completely omitted. This also allowed for their use at various moments in the liturgy.
Jon Baxendale discusses the authenticity of these pieces - that is to say: to what extent are these original compositions by Jean-François, and which may have been reworkings of pieces by his uncle Pierre? The Noëls certainly are. The Ofertoire pour le Jour de Pâques was also originally written by Pierre. He observes a kind of dichotomy in these suites. "Some of the genres the suites contain are standard fare for organ books published in the previous half-century, and approaches to texture, counterpoint, registration, and the use of the instrument are so reminiscent of the Grand siècle practices that one would be forgiven for thinking they were the work of a composer active at that time." However, like the harpsichord books, the organ book includes several pieces which refer to the countryside, which was fashionable in Jean-François's days. Examples are two pieces with the title of muzète, referring to the instrument associated with the countryside. In both pieces the two hands play variations over a pedal point. Another characteristic rustic piece is the Duo, en Cors de chasse sur la Trompette in the Deuxième Suite. Baxendale concludes that Dandrieu was a composer at a turning point in the history of organ music in France. "A shift towards more popular genres, coupled with new developments in organ building, took sacred instrumental music in new, often startling directions that needed to survive not only ever-changing vogues in secular music but also ultimately shifting political climates that, for some years, saw a secular republic and a demise in French organ composition that was not to be revived until the latter portion of the nineteenth century. Given this, we might regard Dandrieu as one who took and assimilated the best the French Classical organ school had to offer and
manipulated it to coexist alongside new and often fluctuating musical and liturgical tastes."
For the organ works Pieter-Jan Belder opted for an instrument built in 1779 by Georges Küttinger which has three manuals and pedal. It is a very fine instrument which is perfectly suited to Dandrie's organ works. The recording took place under difficult circumstances: the temperature in the church was almost 30° C, "a nightmare for organ tuning", as Belder mentions on the reverse of the booklet. That makes the result all the more impressive. There are quite some pretty strong dissonances and harmonic tensions, but those are due to the tuning of the organ, which the booklet does not specify. The playing by Belder is majestic and differentiated; he uses the various stops of the organ to good effect. In a number of pieces these are indicated, such as basse de cromorne or recit de nazard. In other cases, such as the fugues, it is left to the performer.
This recording is a worthy monument for Dandrieu the organ composer.
Johan van Veen (© 2024)
Relevant links:
Pieter-Jan Belder