Forqueray: Livre de Clavecin de Madame Forqueray.

Although there were many brilliant literary women during Louis XIV's reign, there seems to have been only one woman composer: Elizabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre. Her early career as a child prodigy and the regard in which both the king and the Parisian musical public continued to hold her are described in superlative terms by Titon du Tillet in Le Parnasse francois of 1732, which appeared just three years after her death. She published two books of harpsichord suites in 1687 and 1707. The former was long presumed lost until Carol Henry Bates discovered, just over a decade ago, what seems to be the only surviving copy. She subsequently edited both books for Heugel, and it is her edition which John Metz uses for this recording.

Elizabeth Jacquet is certainly a composer of note, but I have never been quite convinced by some of the extravagant claims made for her, either in her own day or in ours. Her dance movements are rhythmically subtle, clear in texture and generally pleasing in melody and harmony, but she displays some rather odd characteristics from time to time. One is a liking for major/minor ambivalence: in the 1707 D minor sarabande this touch is quite appealing, but elsewhere - as in the 1687 chaconne, which has a refrain in D major and couplets in D minor - it sounds eccentric, almost accidental. Nor can this simply be put down to vestigial modality or whatever; it is obviously a calculated effect. The 1687 unmeasured preludes are good (she was a noted improviser), and that from the fourth suite in F is an interestingly Italianate movement entitled |Tocade'. Not surprisingly, there …