I've just got the score for this lovely piece, and am hoping it will be ready(ish) for the Baroque day in May. I fancy having a try of it on the harpsichord, but will probably opt for the piano. I've posted both versions here.

Anybody else play this piece?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avMIRubcGVY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZXzuIsxb64

Ooooh WANT!

*goes looking for Couperin sheet music*

Somehow I had the feeling you would be responding to this!

Enjoy!

Look forward to hearing you play it... it'll have to wait before I have a go... I have about 4 pieces I need to get out of the way first

Did you download the score or buy it?

No, I bought it from our local bookshop. Had to order it, but it only took a few days to come. I'll get you one if you like.

I see it's on IMSLP I'll have a browse in Chappell's next time I'm there.

Some of his music looks plain terrifying on paper...

that's what I thought when I saw this score. There are a lot of suspensions in the left hand, which may (or may not depending on who's opinion you read!) be the 'mysterious barricades' in the title.

I'm looking forward to having a try of it anyway.

ooh pleeeeease play it on the harpsichord...especially if it is the big Goble Solari posted a piccie of...even if not to perform, do try it out. It is a harpsichord piece, par excellence, and despite looking hideous on the page is actually very straightforward to play once you know where it's heading.

It happens to be the piece I'm most likely to ask my husband to play, particularly when demonstrating the utterly ravishingly gorgeous Goermans Taskin instrument here in Edinburgh - he rattles it off by heart (with all the repeats), and it makes the most of the wonderful sonority at the low end of French harpsichords . Oh, and the best place to listen from is standing, right by the cheek of the instrument and next to its bentside, with the lid right up .

Oh gosh... I don't think I'll be doing it much justice by May! But I shall certainly have a try....on the harpsichord!

That's a lovely one in your pic, anacrusis.

Complete Ordres in two volumes. Edited Brahms. Published Dover. Good quality paper. Soft cover. Not expensive.

OOh I love this piece.

DC - yes - the title is interesting and seems to have provoked argument for ages.
The sonorities are magic.

Absolutely lovely. I have to say I prefer the piano version - I'm firmly with Sir Thomas Beecham on the harpsichord.

Saw Angela Hewitt play this in January. Absolutely lovely.

So lovely DC, I am sorry that I wont be at the Baroque day to here you.

ET

Lovely piece indeed - hope you enjoy learning it, Daisy Chain. Does "barricades" perhaps have another meaning in French apart from the obvious?

Depsite the large repertoire I have covered over 50yrs, I never played Couperin on the piano (Though 'Messe pour Les Paroisses' is a favourite of mine on the organ). Now I am inspired to get some.!

It's lovely. How many years before I can attempt it ...?

PatC

nah, it's a harpsichord piece - and Beecham wasn't hearing decent harpsichords, well set up, he was hearing the likes of Wanda Landowska thrashing around on atrocities built by people who thought that the harpsichord needed "improvement": unfortunately it is still the case that many recordings feature such instruments and playing....but get the right player on the right instrument, properly set up, and there is just no comparison.

I heard Angela Hewitt played this at the Wigmore mid last year then rushed out to buy the music, which at the moment still sits somewhere on my to-do pile Looking forward to hearing you play it sometimes, DC

I came to F.Couperin both through the organ 'Messes' and a two-volume Schirmer collection Early Keyboard Music. I haven't played Les Barricades Mysterieuses but have p[layed La Favorite (Chaconne-Rondeau) and La Majesteuse. I used the latter to illustrate the contrast between the florid writing of the French Sarabande and that of the English work of that time. In its single-page Sarabande (followed by a Gavotte) it includes many types of ornamentation: trills, mordents, a turn, appoggiaturas, arpeggiated chord and runs, along with double-dotting.

Incidentally, when I was at University, on Wednesday afternoons one year, I booked the main hall in order to play the harpsichord therein. I would take the aforementioned volumes, together with Handel Suites and a wadge of Bach and enjoy myself.

A local lad (non-musician), following similar mathematics units to myself, joined me on one occasion and said,"Go on then, play some harpsichord music!" I did so. "That's not harpsichord music!" he exclaimed! I presume he was expecting the sort of background music prevalent of '70s TV shows such as Randall & Hopkirk (deceased) or the music written for the Miss marple Films starring margaret Rutherford. I thought I was playing a Bach Toccata! So much for my playing! (Anyway, I know he was wrong because my playing was overheard by the Professor of Statistics, an organist, and he paid me favourable compliments!).

Before anyone asks, the Toccata was from Bach's set of 7 written for harpsichord, BWV 910-916 and not that organ toccata which many claim to know, although they only recognise the first few bars and anyway it may not have been composed for organ in the first place and perhaps not by Bach either!). And the reason I was familiar with the Toccatas is because Trevor Pinnock broadcast on Radio 3 Bach's Toccatas, Partitas and Two- and Three-Part Inventions over a period of Tuesday afternoons and I skived lectures on Special Functions in order to get back to digs to hear them - there was no 'listen again' feature in those days.

I can't/won't/don't dare argue with your assessment of Beecham's opinion, which in any case was probably intended to be more a bon mot than a considered judgment, but I stand by my inviolable and unshakable preference for the piano. I listened to the two YouTube videos posted (one Cziffra? the other Scott Ross) and for me the piano wins, every time. Years ago I used to hang around on alt.music.j-s-bach and there were constant battles between those on the one hand who thought that Baroque music on the pianoforte was the work of the devil, and those on the other who thought it was just music. Guess which side I was on

I don't to think that Bach on the piano is evil, or anything like: but for me Couperin's music is harpsichord music - it exploits the sonority of the French harpsichord of his day superbly well, and what sounds cute but no more on the piano takes on a completely different persona on the harpsichord. We listen to the piano with modern ears and are biased towards its tuning and sound - yes, it has a rich tone which the harpsichord would struggle to match, but that isn't what it is about. Equal temperament for one thing murders a lot of early music, which is written to make the most of the amazing suspensions and resolutions you can get with unequal ones, and added to that the thicker texture of the piano's tone, for all its controllability of volume, muddies up the very clear harmonies. It does take a consummately good player to bring all of that out, with fine articulation and a good understanding of performance practice, but for me, when all that comes together, the piano isn't doing the same job, and the one it does fails to speak to me in the same way. Why does Bach's music survive this treatment when Couperin's doesn't? I don't know, is my short answer - he will have been using a temperament which to our ears would still be unequal, albeit closer to the modern one, but I think also his hallmark, of fantastic counterpoint, in which all the parts are kept moving so much more, may well provide some of the rest of the solution.

Is it really meant to be played with the pulse wavering all over the place like that? Very distracting.

Ah. Now that you put it like that, I can see that I'm misguided at best. However, it's bad enough navigating the minefield of modern pianism (where everything is played on a cookie cutter Steinway - except for the occasional Fazioli or Bosendorfer) but if one has to factor in not only the player but the individual instrument ...

I guess what I'm asking is - where do I start looking for examples of the kind of harpsichord playing to which you refer?

Thanks

Edward

Not Couperin, but you could do worse than have a listen to Trevor Pinnock's recording called "les Cyclopes" - it was done on the instrument whose portrait I'd linked to higher in this thread, and is of music by Rameau - he makes use of the buff stop in one track, for a bit of alternative texture. The instrument was tuned in an unequal temperament by my husband - and no, he doesn't get royalties, so it's not a financially imotivated plug! .

Thanks - I managed to find this on YouTube (or a snippet thereof). I'm afraid I'm not a convert - obviously hearing this through tinny headphones off YouTube is far from ideal, but to my untutored ears it just sounds skittering and clattery. My loss...

Edward

hm
I'd say the quality from YouTube does not match what I know of this recording either. Though I'd still argue that Trevor does not skitter, even on the snippet I found there. And the instrument itself sounds much richer than that. too.

Fortunately you don't have to profess undying allegiance to one instrument or the other. We can listen to them both, and enjoy the different interpretations. It is good enough music to work well on either Harpsichord or Piano.

We are not teenagers whose identity is bound up with the likes and dislikes of the group to which they belong.