Francois Couperin and 'the Perfection of Music.'(Book review)

Francois Couperin and 'The Perfection of Music.' By David Tunley. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. [viii, 172 p. ISBN 0-7546-0928-6. $94.95.] Music examples, index, bibliography, appendices.

This useful book, a concise monograph with extensive appendices, is an expansion and updating of the author's BBC Music Guide, Couperin (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1982). It is aimed mainly at the needs of non-specialists, especially those who know basic music theory. In the United States undergraduate music majors will be particularly well served by it.

"The history of European music is essentially the history of changing styles" (p. 1). While not every musicologist will agree with his characterization of that "essence," David Tunley's opening sentence serves his purpose well. His survey of Francois Couperin's music is focused to a considerable degree on the composer's response to the new Italian sounds that flooded French music around the turn of the eighteenth century. The quoted phrase in his title, "la perfection de la musique," comes from Couperin's program for L'Apotheose de Lully (1725): "Apollo persuades Lully and Corelli that the bringing together of French and Italian styles must create musical perfection." (This is Tunley's translation on p. 89, slightly different from the one in the title.) The French synthesis of national styles is a subject that has long interested Tunley, who first began writing on it in The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata (London: Dennis Dobson, 1974; 2d ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

The opening chapter, "Couperin and His Times," begins with the composer's biography, richly contextualized by his family dynasty, cultural life in Paris, and political and cultural developments at the French royal court. A tiny quibble: Jean-Baptiste Lully did not form the Petits violons; he took over the direction of that group. For a recent revision of the usual picture of Lully as an orchestral innovator, see John Spitzer and Neal Zaslaw, The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution, 1650-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), especially chapter 3. Tunley's first chapter concludes with a survey of seventeenth-century French musical genres and practices, as background for the eventual discussion of Couperin's music. Chapters 2 and 3 concern the two national styles, French and Italian, and the latter begins with the history of Italian music in France. The next three chapters, the heart of the book, deal with Couperin's music. Chapter 4 is on sacred music, including very helpful introductions to French organ construction and registration and also to selected French liturgical practices; chapter 5 is on chamber music; and chapter 6 is on the harpsichord works, again with helpful comments on French instruments. For a more nuanced picture of the relationship of passacaille and chaconne than that on pp. 111-12, see Alexander Silbiger, "Passacaglia and Ciaccona: Genre Pairing and Ambiguity from Frescobaldi to Couperin" (Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 2, no. 1 [1996], http://sscm-jscm.press.uiuc.edu/jscm/v2/nol/Silbiger.html [Web site accessed 23 November 2005]). Throughout these chapters on Couperin's music, Tunley is concerned with cultural contexts and transmission as well as stylistic development. While he does not provide sustained analysis of individual pieces, he does give frequent brief music examples to support well-chosen stylistic observations. The tone is engaging, and he introduces sophisticated ideas with a light touch (for instance, the question of extramusical titles and "musical meaning," pp. 109-11).

The appendices begin with a list of Couperin's works. Since the list of motets from the Tenbury collection includes only those unique to that collection, two motets are not mentioned at all: Laudate pueri Dominum and Veni sponsa Christi. The lengthiest appendix follows: all of Couperin's prefaces to his works, transcribed in French and translated into idiomatic English. Remaining appendices include Evrard Titon du Tillet's biographical sketch of Couperin from the 1743 supplement to Le Parnasse francois (Paris: n.p., 1727), again in French and English; an excerpt from the "Paris Ceremonial" (Caeremoniale ...