Composer
Biography
Known to his own century as Couperin le Grand, François Couperin inherited the organ loft of Saint-Gervais from his family and held it for most of his life, adding to it the post of royal organist to Louis XIV and the teaching of the king's children. His four books of harpsichord pieces contain ordres, groups of dances, portraits and riddling character pieces with titles such as Les Barricades mystérieuses. He discussed keyboard technique in L'Art de toucher le clavecin of 1716, a slim treatise on fingering, articulation and inequality of rhythm that period performers still work from. Les Nations, Les Goûts-réunis and the Concerts royaux pursue what he called the reunion of French and Italian taste. The three Leçons de ténèbres for Holy Week, scored for one and two voices with continuo, form part of his sacred music. Saint-Gervais had been his uncle Louis Couperin's and then his father Charles's before it passed to him on Charles's death in 1679, with Delalande holding the loft until he came of age; Delalande also praised the Pièces d'orgue issued in manuscript copies with a printed title page in 1690, and three years later he succeeded Thomelin at the court of Louis XIV. A royal privilege granted in 1713 allowed him to bring out the first of the four harpsichord books, and in 1717 he took the post of ordinaire de la musique de la chambre du roi pour le clavecin. His health failed through the 1720s, his daughter Marguerite-Antoinette replaced him at court in 1730, and he died in 1733.