New Perspectives on Marc-Antoine Charpentier by Shirley Thompson

Author:Shirley Thompson
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

‘Une source peut en cacher une autre’: Added Preludes and Instrumental Cues in the Mélanges

Cessac Catherine

During the course of his career, Charpentier revised certain of his compositions. The Mélanges autographes includes tell-tale signs of such revisions, the most important of them involving changes of performing forces, notably the addition of concerting instruments to works conceived for voices and continuo alone.1

This practice of revision mainly concerns the sacred works - above all, the grands motets and histoires sacrées (dramatic motets) - and provides evidence of the means at Charpentier’s disposal at a particular moment. Such evidence takes the form of added preludes and/or instrumental accompaniments. Most often, these preludes are located in a different and later cahier than that ofthe work itself. The addition of instruments is indicated by the use of verbal cues.2 Sometimes, but not always, these indications occur in conjunction with added preludes. We also find added preludes without any indication that instrumental accompaniment should be added to the parent work. While this latter group of pieces already raises a question (why are instruments only required for the prelude?), we sometimes find even greater inconsistencies, notably the combination in the same score of fully written-out instrumental parts and verbal cues that mention instruments. The present chapter categorizes the various types of revision made by Charpentier, and attempts to explain how they function and what they teach us about the composer’s working methods.

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