Music from the Decadent French Clavecin School

Jacques Duphly must have been a good man, because a good man is hard to find. Grove's 5th seems not to mention him; neither does the 1971 edition of Baker's, nor does that old reliable for forgotten musicians, Rupert Hughes' Music Lover's Encyclopedia. He does not appear in Bukofzer's Music in the Baroque Era, nor in Isherwood's Music in the Service of the King (not surprising, since Duphly apparently never made it to the top), nor ever in the Larousse La Musique des origines a nos jours, which is inclined to mention spoon-players and composers for the musical saw if they are French. Duphly wrote at least one sonata, but William S. Newman does not mention it in his alarmingly thorough survey of composers writing in that form. F. E. Kirby gives him a line in his Short History of Keyboard Music. The longest account of Duphly on my shelves (which presently support most of the University Library's books on the era) is in James R. Anthony's 1974 French Baroque Music. It gives him three paragraphs at the tail-end of the chapter on harpsichord music, and I am grateful for the information they provide on his place in the sequence of French baroque keyboard composers.

Duphly is no stranger to the MHS lists. Four or five years ago, harpsichordist Edward Smith devoted a record to him (MHS 1967), though Mr. Smith's insistence that we are dealing with a fellow named "du Phly" may have momentarily untracked some of you. In fact. Duphly has been available (though not in quantity) on records since the shellac days. for WERM tells me that P. Aubert and Marguerite Roesgen-Champion once waxed Les Colombes and La Victoire respectively. At any rate I am indebted to Mr. Smith for his sketch of Duphly's career.

He was born in the historic city of Rouen (near Racque--see the proverbial expression "going to Racque and Rouen") on the 12th of January 1715. There he studied with the organist Pierre d' Agincourt. who officiated at several important Rouen churches and held a court post in Paris under Louis XV, and who himself published a volume of pieces for harpsichord. In 1732, the teen-age Duphly was named organist of the Cathedral at nearby Evreux. (Ah-ha1 Evreux was where the composer Guillaume Costeley hung out in an earlier time, right? And people keep trying to prove him really an Irishman named William Costello, right? Well then, to heck with Duphly and du Phly! How about James Duffy, eh?)

In 1734, Duffy, as I shall now call him, went back to Rouen to take over at the church of his native parish, Saint-Eloi. (Remember Chaucer's Prioress who used no oath more shocking than "by Saint Loy?"). Six years later he was given additional duties at another local church, Notre-Dame-de-laRonde. Occasionally his sister Marie Anne Agathe spelled him. Since female organists were not a common phenomenon at that time. it seems likely that he taught her. Anyhow. by 1742 Jacques had yielded to the lure of the capital, and Sis was full-time organist at Saint-Eloi (at a salary befitting her sex, you may be sure). Jacques seems to have been taken up by various patrons, and between 1744 and 1768 he published the four Livres du clavecin on which his acclaim, such as it is, rests. In 1785 he was given a third floor room overlooking the garden in the mansion of his patron the Marquis de Juigne. He never married, and by this time he seems to have already fallen into the obscurity that has plagued him since. He died on July 15, 1789--the day after the Bastille fell' He represents the last hurrah of the great French keyboard school that had started with Chambonnieres more than a century earlier, and that had included Francois Couperin and Rameau.

By French standards, Duffy's music is contaminated: it dwells less on the fidgety "graces" that were the hallmark of the great clavecinists and more on the Italian melodiousness that the French had fought off for so long. Moreover, Duffy was of an age with Emanuel Bach, the promoter of "sentiment" in music, and so there is an emotional coloration here that one does not find in the more abstract stuff of the French Baroque. All in all. I find Duffy immensely likable. particularly when played as beautifully as he is here. My choice is the big, inventive chaconne that ends side one, but I was also particularly fetched by Medee, a dark portrait of the witch-lady of Greek legend, Medea (here called Mendee on the record label), and La Victoire, named after a royal princess who patronized the composer, but obviously playing on victorious rejoicing,

Review of Jacques Duphly Harpsichord Music pg 55

Jacques Duphly must have been a good man, because a good man is hard to find. Grove's 5th seems not to mention him; neither does the 1971 edition of Baker's, nor does that old reliable for forgotten musicians, Rupert Hughes' Music Lover's Encyclopedia. He does not appear in Bukofzer's Music in the Baroque Era, nor in Isherwood's Music in the Service of the King (not surprising, since Duphly apparently never made it to the top), nor ever in the Larousse La Musique des origines a nos jours, which is inclined to mention spoon-players and composers for the musical saw if they are French. Duphly wrote at least one sonata, but William S. Newman does not mention it in his alarmingly thorough survey of composers writing in that form. F. E. Kirby gives him a line in his Short History of Keyboard Music. The longest account of Duphly on my shelves (which presently support most of the University Library's books on the era) is in James R. Anthony's 1974 French Baroque Music. It gives him three paragraphs at the tail-end of the chapter on harpsichord music, and I am grateful for the information they provide on his place in the sequence of French baroque keyboard composers.

Duphly is no stranger to the MHS lists. Four or five years ago, harpsichordist Edward Smith devoted a record to him (MHS 1967), though Mr. Smith's insistence that we are dealing with a fellow named "du Phly" may have momentarily untracked some of you. In fact. Duphly has been available (though not in quantity) on records since the shellac days. for WERM tells me that P. Aubert and Marguerite Roesgen-Champion once waxed Les Colombes and La Victoire respectively. At any rate I am indebted to Mr. Smith for his sketch of Duphly's career.

He was born in the historic city of Rouen (near Racque--see the proverbial expression "going to Racque and Rouen") on the 12th of January 1715. There he studied with the organist Pierre d' Agincourt. who officiated at several important Rouen churches and held a court post in Paris under Louis XV, and who himself published a volume of pieces for harpsichord. In 1732, the teen-age Duphly was named organist of the Cathedral at nearby Evreux. (Ah-ha1 Evreux was where the composer Guillaume Costeley hung out in an earlier time, right? And people keep trying to prove him really an Irishman named William Costello, right? Well then, to heck with Duphly and du Phly! How about James Duffy, eh?)

In 1734, Duffy, as I shall now call him, went back to Rouen to take over at the church of his native parish, Saint-Eloi. (Remember Chaucer's Prioress who used no oath more shocking than "by Saint Loy?"). Six years later he was given additional duties at another local church, Notre-Dame-de-laRonde. Occasionally his sister Marie Anne Agathe spelled him. Since female organists were not a common phenomenon at that time. it seems likely that he taught her. Anyhow. by 1742 Jacques had yielded to the lure of the capital, and Sis was full-time organist at Saint-Eloi (at a salary befitting her sex, you may be sure). Jacques seems to have been taken up by various patrons, and between 1744 and 1768 he published the four Livres du clavecin on which his acclaim, such as it is, rests. In 1785 he was given a third floor room overlooking the garden in the mansion of his patron the Marquis de Juigne. He never married, and by this time he seems to have already fallen into the obscurity that has plagued him since. He died on July 15, 1789--the day after the Bastille fell' He represents the last hurrah of the great French keyboard school that had started with Chambonnieres more than a century earlier, and that had included Francois Couperin and Rameau.

By French standards, Duffy's music is contaminated: it dwells less on the fidgety "graces" that were the hallmark of the great clavecinists and more on the Italian melodiousness that the French had fought off for so long. Moreover, Duffy was of an age with Emanuel Bach, the promoter of "sentiment" in music, and so there is an emotional coloration here that one does not find in the more abstract stuff of the French Baroque. All in all. I find Duffy immensely likable. particularly when played as beautifully as he is here. My choice is the big, inventive chaconne that ends side one, but I was also particularly fetched by Medee, a dark portrait of the witch-lady of Greek legend, Medea (here called Mendee on the record label), and La Victoire, named after a royal princess who patronized the composer, but obviously playing on victorious rejoicing,

Review of Jacques Duphly Harpsichord Music pg 55