Forqueray: Harpsichord Suites Nos. 2 And 4

Description

Antoine Forqueray (1672-1745)Harpsichord Suites Nos. 2 and 4Antoine Forqueray won a reputation as one of the foremost players of the viola da gamba of his time. The son of the dancing-master and violinist Michel Forqueray, he was heir to a long family musical tradition. By remoter ancestry the Forquerays were allegedly descendants of Scots who had accompanied Mary Queen of Scots to France on her marriage to the Dauphin, the eldest son of Henri II and Catherine de’Medici, in 1548. At the age of five, Antoine Forqueray played the cello for Louis XIV, the beginning of royal patronage that led, in 1689, to his appointment as musicien ordinaire de la chambre du roy, in succession to the composer and viol player Gabriel Expilly, who resigned in that year. He was later appointed chantre de la chambre du roy, retaining this title until 1742. In 1697 he married Henriette-Angélique Houssu, a harpsichordist who accompanied him in performances. Their first son, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine, was born in 1699. The marriage, however, was fraught with divisions and difficulties and ended in separation in 1710. Whether from professional jealousy or for more personal reasons Antoine Forqueray had his son imprisoned at Bicêtre and in 1725 persuaded the Regent to banish him from France, a decree rescinded on the intervention of Jean-Baptiste’s influential friends and supporters. Antoine Forqueray retired from Paris in 1731 and settled at Mantes, where he spent the rest of his life, from 1736 as a court pensioner. At the height of his career he had rivalled the great viol player of an earlier generation, Marin Marais, and had collaborated with the lutenist Robert de Visée, the harpsichordist Jean-Baptiste Buterne and the flautist René-Pignon Descoteaux, leading performers of the time. His pupils included Philippe d’Orléans, Regent after the death of Louis XIV in 1715, and the exiled Prince-Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian II Emanuel. He played at the reception for Maria Lesczinska, on her marriage to the young Louis XV, and was given a pension by the Prince-Elector of Cologne, Joseph Clemens, intermittently in exile in France. Forqueray represented a new school of French viol playing, influenced by the fashionable goût italien. He was described by Hubert Le Blanc in his last-ditch defence of the viola da gamba, Défense de la basse de viole contre les entreprises du violon et les prétentions du violoncel, as quinteux, fantasque et bizarre (crotchety, fantastic and strange), while praised for his reconciliation of French harmony and Italian melody. In 1745, two years after his father’s death, Jean-Baptiste published five suites drawn from some three hundred attributed to Antoine Forqueray. These he published in two versions, one for two viols and the other for harpsichord, under the title Pièces de viole avec la basse continuë composées par Mr. Forqueray le père mises en pi&eg