The unpredictable nature of the muse—occasionally generous, sometimes stubborn—makes inspiration an elusive companion. And yet, when the magic happens, miracles can ensue. Early 18th-century composers regularly channeled myth and allusion for inspiration in all kinds of music. Focusing on visions and reveries of a decidedly Gallic nature, this program features evocative chamber works by three of the most accomplished composers of the ancien régime: François Couperin, Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, and Jean-Philippe Rameau.

L’Impériale is the third ordre or group of pieces from Les Nations (1726), a collection of trios Couperin compiled over a period of many years, as he experimented with various ways of blending the prevailing Italian and French chamber idioms. Like its three sister ordres, L’Impériale comprises an Italianate sonata in multiple sections (labeled Sonade, in the French manner) plus a generous helping of French dances. These large suites also pay homage to the central Catholic powers of the day via their titles: France (la Française), Spain (L’Espagnole) and Savoy (La Piemontaise) complement L’Impériale, whose title alludes to the Austrian Habsburg empire.

Scored for two treble instruments with basso continuo, this music can be performed on violins or wind instruments with a varied continuo, including viola da gamba and almost any kind of plucked instrument, from harpsichord to guitar. The sumptuous Sonade of L’Impériale has six distinct sections in contrasting tempi—rather more than Arcangelo Corelli (Couperin’s inspiration for these pieces) thought to include in his own trio sonatas. Each section features carefully wrought musical ideas that are tossed back and forth between the instruments, in the “fugal style” of Italian and German contemporaries. One prominent German contemporary clearly approved: J. S. Bach transcribed the Rondeau from this Sonade as an organ trio.

In contrast, the dance movements that follow embrace the French tradition, which by the 1720s could encompass everything from a chirpy Bourrée to a tender Sarabande. The Chaconne, freed from its usual role of accompanying a theatrical spectacle, becomes in Couperin’s supple hands something else entirely. The highpoint of this suite, this movement offers numerous surprises, with new melodic ideas at virtually every repetition of the prevailing harmonic pattern and consequential shifts from the major to the minor mode and back again.

Like the Couperin dynasty, the Jacquet family comprised mostly musicians and instrument makers. Its most celebrated progeny, Élisabeth-Claude, made a name for herself as a child at the court of Louis XIV, where her harpsichord playing made such an impression that her subsequent education was supervised by King’s mistress. Following her marriage to organist Michel de la Guerre, she organized and ran one of the most distinguished musical salons in Paris. Her first publication, the Pièces de clavecin of 1687, led to larger compositions in virtually all genres, from sonatas to at least one full-length opera.

From her third and final published volume of Cantates françoises (1715), our program features Jacquet’s setting of a tale adapted from Homer’s Odyssey, which chronicles the adventures of Ulysses, the Greek King of Ithaca, in the decade following the Trojan War. This classic text, which has provided juicy material for everything from operas to Marvel movies, confirms the ultimate worth of love and constancy. Our cantata, set to a libretto by Antoine Houdar de La Motte, picks up the tale as Ulysses’ ships are threatened by Neptune’s powerful storm. Minerva comes to the rescue by putting our hero to sleep, hence the title of this work: Le Sommeil d’Ulysse (Ulysses’ slumber). Like all French vocal writing from this era, Jacquet’s Ulysses alternates between declamatory and lyric passages: récitatif and air, respectively. Its depiction of the storm and sleep scenes demonstrate how thoroughly Jacquet de la Guerre understood the highly pictorial musical language of the Opéra.

Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin en concert, published in 1741, were part of the initial wave of a newly popular kind of chamber music: obbligato (fully realized) harpsichord writing with optional accompanying instruments. These suites (or concerts, as Rameau called them) specify violin and viola da gamba, which amplify the virtuosic keyboard writing in myriad ways while adding their own rich sonority to the sonic resources of a French double-manual harpsichord. Stylistically, these colorful and occasionally theatrical pieces combine Rameau’s longstanding interest in keyboard music with his newfound mastery of opera and ballet. Following the fashion of the day, individual movements depict well-known people, places, or familiar cultural tropes. Some of their titles permit straightforward unpacking, while others require a bit of historical background.

Such is the case with the Cinquième Concert, whose opening movement honors Jean-Baptiste Forqueray, one of the greatest viol players of the age. Its sturdy fugal nature, with successive entries of a theme featuring octave leaps followed by scalar passages, may reflect the high esteem in which Rameau held the entire Forqueray family, which had produced several gifted viol players and composers. The deliciously supple La Cupis, by contrast, is Rameau’s ode to a celebrated dancer, Marie-Anne Cupis, who appeared in at least one of his operas. La Marais, finally, returns us to the ranks of France’s leading viol players—in this case, Marin Marais and his sons—with a decorative and curvaceous dance.

In 1590 the Venetian writer Giovanni Battista Guarini published a pastoral tragicomedy that continues to define his legacy. Translated into multiple languages within a few years, Il pastor fido (The Faithful Shepherd) was read in every corner of Europe; over the next two hundred years, it inspired countless operas and solo cantatas, from Monteverdi through Mozart. Setting this tale to music in 1728, Rameau treats the shepherd Mirtillo and his beloved Amarilli with the care and finesse one might expect at a reunion of old friends. By turns tender and exuberant, Le Berger fidèle demonstrates this composer’s mastery of text setting well before he tried his hand at theatrical music.

In the opening recitative and aria, Mirtillo bewails the fate of Amarilli, who is threatened by Diana, who intends her as a sacrifice to the gods. Mirtillo thus proposes himself in the second recitative for the sacrifice, so that Amarilli might live. The second aria (now in the third person) congratulates Mirtillo for having demonstrated “a love both rare and beautiful.” The narrator calls on Diana to stop Mirtillo’s noble sacrifice, since it has kindled true love in his beloved. Addressed to Cupid himself, the final aria observes that the greatest misfortunes can produce unanticipated rewards.

© Matthew Dirst