In this program, we present you with the music of acclaimed French baroque composer, Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729). As a young child, the prodigious Jacquet astonished adults — including King Louis XIV — with her ability to compose and improvise at the keyboard. She composed sonatas, songs, cantatas, and even an opera, the first by a woman to be performed in Paris. Our goal this evening is not only to introduce you to Jacquet's music, something of which many of you may, indeed, already know — but to present her work in context rather than in isolation, and to reveal how she was influential to her contemporaries rather than the other way around, which is so often the narrative in discussions of female composers. A very active teacher in Paris, Jacquet wrote music whose influence is seen strongly in works by her contemporaries.
"The Marche pour la Cérémonie Turque was the most delicately phrased – I’m tempted to say the most musical – rendition I’ve heard." Read a review here.
Chaconne, Les Fontaines de Versailles (pub. Versailles, 1683) | Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657–1726)
Symphonie en Re (published 1652) | Henri Dumont (1610–1684)
Sonate pour le Violon et pour le Clavecin, No. 5 in A Minor | Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729) Lent Presto Adagio Courante Aria
Allemanda Gravis (published 1652) | Dumont
Concert pour Quatre Parties de Violes, H.545 (ca. 1680) | Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704) Prélude Allemande Sarabande, Rondeau Gigue anglaise Gigue française Passacaille
Pièces de Clavecin, from Suite No. 1 in D Minor (Paris, 1687) | Jacquet de La Guerre Prélude Chaconne “L’Inconstante"
Trio Sonata, No. 4 in C minor | Jacquet de La Guerre Lentement, Grave Vif Lentement Vif
• PAUSE •
Pavane du Mariage du Roy Louis XIII (1615) | Anonymous (French, 17th century)
Fantasia à 4 | Étienne Moulinie (1599–1676)
Sonate pour le Violon et pour le Clavecin, No. 3 in F | Jacquet de La Guerre Lent Presto-Adagio Presto Aria Adagio
Aria: "Souviens-toi," from La Descente d'Orphée aux Enfers (1686) | Charpentier
Extracts from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, LWV 43 (1670) | Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687) L'Éntrée des Scaramouches Marche pour la Cérémonie Turque Chaconne des Scaramouches
2017–2018 was Women's Voices.
Prompted by a desire to respond to our political climate, each concert of 2017–2018 will be devoted to work by female composers from the early modern period. In so doing, we are performing a quintessential task of feminist musicology: shifting the point of power away from a domineering force and toward a minority voice—letting it sound, and letting it speak.