French Baroque Lute Duets in the 17th Century

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French baroque lute duets in the seventeenth-century

A very vague title indeed ! In my presentation, I will try to define and develop each of the

elements constituting this title.

1/ Lute duets :

Lute duets in the second half of the 17th century were not really duets, but most of the time

they were solo pieces to which a "contrepartie" was added, often composed by another

musician. If we refer to Furetière's dictionary (1690) we read this definition of contrepartie :

s.f. Terme de Musique, qui se dit de deux parties opposées. Le dessus et la basse sont deux

contreparties.

The practice consisting in writing a second part for a pre-existing piece is not new in the

period we are interested in. As early as the sixteenth century it was common practice to do so

and a few examples even found their way to the printer's : Johannes Matelart's second lute

parts for a few of Francesco da Milano's Fantasies or Ricercars are nothing but "contreparties",

with the advantage that we do know the names of both musicians, the original composer and

the one who composed a complementary part, which is far from being the rule for later duets.

Another early example of this type of composition is Dowland's My Lord Willoughby's

Welcome Home. The original solo piece is found in the Folger Dowland Ms (US-Ws, Ms.

V.b.280; c.1590) and the additional part to make up a duet is in the ‘Sampson’ (formerly

‘Tollemache’) lute book (GB-Lam, MS 602; c.1609). Was the contrepartie composed by

Dowland himself or not, it is impossible to say. Anyway, contrary to renaissance duets, not a

single baroque duet reached the printer's shop and all are preserved in manuscript form.

In a very small number of duets, both parts seem to have been composed and written by the

same person, but it is far from being the rule as will be shown later on. For example the duets

by Johann Gumprecht and Mercure, kept in the Jagiellonska Library in Krakow, Mus. ms.

40637, form an entire but small - 9 pages - volume of pieces written in the same hand and

presented on facing pages, exactly like the duets copied in Rome by Julien Blovin in volume

V of the Goëss collection from Schloss Ebenthal in Austria, among which we find the C

minor suite by François Dufaut. There are also 7 duets copied by a single scribe on

consecutive pages in the Swedish manuscript, Kalmar 21072.

Another interesting contributor to this particular form is Thomas Mace. As you all know, his

treatise Musick's Monument, published in 1676, is a precious source, and we must keep in

mind that Mace was indeed trying to convey information about much older practices in

general. On pages 121 and 125 we read the following information :

I was desired by some of My Scholars, to make another Part, to Play at the same time with

That my Mistress upon another Lute : Whereupon I Set This next Lesson : and It is so made,

that It is both a Consort Lesson, (to the former, upon another Equal Lute) and does pass also

for a Lone-Lesson, and call'd often the 2d. Part, or Part of My Mistress. (p. 125)

In the use of This Lesson, you must Note Two Things especially. The first is, That if at anytime

you Play it in Consort, (with that other) Those Two last Notes of the Fourth Barr, and the

Three First of the Fifth Barr, may be left unplayed, (which thing we call Resting) because

They are the very same Notes, in that place, of the foregoing lesson; so that although It will

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be no Discord, (if Played) yet It is not accounted Handsom to Play the same Thing upon 2

several Instruments, Consort-wise, at the same time.

But when It is Played as a Lone-Lesson, Those Notes are very Proper, and Fit Aire, to come

in, in That Place, in Reference to the Retort in the next Two Barrs following.

But when It is Played, as a Part-Lesson to the other Lute, It is more Ample and Modish, to

Rest Them 5 Notes, (The other Lute then Playing Them) for that the 2 Lutes will Retort, and

Answer one the other much more compleatly, in the same Kind, or Humour. (p. 125)

This passage shows two things : it was then considered a normal thing and it was a common

practice to add an extra part to an existing solo and it also sheds light on a more technical

point regarding voice leading and the possibility of "resting" one of the two lutes to avoid

doubling. One may wonder if this advice - which I did not find elsewhere - was relevant to a

larger repertoire...

Most of the time, it is a sort of "hide and seek" game to find corresponding parts in different

manuscripts. There is a noticeable occurrence of a whole manuscript devoted to second lute

parts or "contreparties". Formerly Danzig Stadtbibliothek MS 4230, now in the possession of

the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, in Berlin, this huge manuscript

includes 93 pieces spreading on 97 folios (i.e. 194 pages) including a few parts for what

clearly seems to be unequal lutes. The manuscript is accessible online. A link to that effect

can be found on the incredibly useful site put up by Peter Steur and Markus Lutz and thanks

to the concordances they give on their site more than 60 duets can be identified and

reconstructed from this source !

Now is certainly the moment to acknowledge the fantastic work done by Peter Steur (who

compiled a data base of most available baroque lute manuscripts and concordances) and

Markus Lutz (responsible for the web presentation and also for a lot of concordances). Their

site (http://mss.slweiss.de) is a real mine and was the basis of our research in building up this

programme.

Other people, who have contributed manuscripts, concordances, incipits, ideas, editions, etc.

must be thanked here too (in alphabetical order) : Richard Civiol, Tim Crawford, Christoph

Dalitz, François-Pierre Goy, Peter Rauscher, Andreas Schlegel, Arto Wikla and they all

greatly deserve to be thanked here for their various and rich contributions.

With the help of this internet site and the growing number of sources available online we can

now get a fairly precise picture of the repertoire for two lutes in the baroque period.

As the different parts making up duets are usually preserved in very distant sources, it seems

it could be a good idea to give a selected list of the sources from which lute duets can be

directly reconstructed. Such a list, although not a comprehensive one, will be presented as the

final appendix to this talk.

2/ French baroque lute duets :

The concept of "French" lute duets needs a bit of clarification. Actually the vast majority of

contreparties are not to be found in French sources and yet the duets resulting from this

combination do qualify as French lute duets.

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The earliest examples of lute duets with a contrepartie comes from England ! William Lawes

composed such a second part to complete an allemande by René Mésangeau. This

"Alemande", was published in Paris by Ballard in 1638, and it appears in a number of Bristish

manuscript sources as well. Mésangeau, who visited England in 1631, seems to have been

quite well-known and appreciated there and in Scotland too, judging by the number of

Scottish sources. There are several Bristish manuscripts preserving pieces by him and some of

them are written in his own hand. Mésangeau died in 1638, so Lawes's contrepartie can be

dated about that time, no later than 1640. There are also two corants after the alman, forming

a short suite, but the corants seem to have been composed by him entirely. At least no

cognates have been found so far. These pieces are written for two twelve-course lutes, the so-

called "French lute", and are written in one of the transitional tunings flourishing about that

time, before the D minor tuning imposed itself.

French sources containing duets or contreparties are very scarce indeed. I can only name

three manuscripts including some pieces for two baroque lutes :

The very famous and important manuscript Vaudry de Saizenay, presently kept in the public

library in Besançon includes only 3 duets (partie and contrepartie) and some 14 pieces with a

known contrepartie in other manuscripts.

Another manuscript in Aix-en-Provence, known as Aix/m17 includes 3 duets and 4 parts with

known contreparties elsewhere.

Finally, Ms. 675 in Paris includes 1 duet on the Folies d'Espagne.

That is a really modest contribution to the repertoire of so-called French baroque lute duets !

This practice of adding a contrepartie to an existing piece was much more popular, it seems,

in the Germanic lands, namely Northern and Northeastern Europe. The bulk of manuscripts

including contreparties or duets comes from Germany, Austria, Poland, Sweden and what is

now the Czech Republic.

These countries cover the area where, in the seventeenth-century, French culture was

dominant and the elite of these countries were taught and spoke French. Some of them were

French immigrants or religious refugees, like, for instance, Philipp Franz Lesage de Richée,

who was quite probably a student of Charles Mouton and who quoted Dufaut in some of his

pieces.

A study by Tim Crawford published as one of the contributions to the symposium "Luth et

Luthistes en Occident", held in Paris in 1998, was entitled "The historical importance of

François Dufaut and his influence outside France". It demonstrates very clearly the French

influence in all the German speaking countries and beyond in the 17th century.

People like Johann Anton Losy, in Prague, adopted the French style but contributed to its

evolution from the broken texture (style brisé) typical of the French manner towards a more

distinct treble - bass structure which became the brand mark of the German style in the 18th

century and led Ernst Gottlieb Baron to a very partisan conclusion when he wrote about the

lute in France :

With regard to the characteristics of the French, they too often change voices, so that one

cannot even recognize the melody, and, as already mentioned, there is little cantabile to be

found, particularly because they regard it as very fashionable to brush back chords on the

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lute with the right hand, just as on the guitar; a constant hopping around is required to give

spirit and life to the pieces. I have also observed that they consider it delicate to use the deep

basses very little, preferring instead the middle range. This is to say nothing of the simple

melodies I often hear. But one does find a few pieces that are rather well composed...

(Study of the Lute / Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten, 1727 - transl. Douglas Alton

Smith; Instrumenta Antiqua Publications : Redondo Beach, California, 1976; p. 77 (p.87 in

the original)

So, it is fairly evident that there was a chasm separating the French supremacy up to 1680 and

the gradually stronger influence of the German composers in the first decades of the 18th

century. The French influence is quite obvious in the 1695 publication of Lesage de Richée's

Cabinet der Lauten, where the frontispiece of the printed volume showed angels lifting a

curtain, behind which appeared four books with the names Mouton, Dufaut, Gaultier; Losy,

the Bohemian composer was particularly distinguished by having his name appear on the

volume placed at the top. Thus the filiation is made clear !

Emil Vogl, probably the best specialist on Losy, wrote that [his] precise knowledge of the

broken Parisian style testifies to intimate acquaintance with the art of this center of the at-

that-time new lutenistic art. Whether his model was Charles Mouton, Dufaut, or another

student of Gaultier cannot be determined. (JLSA, vol. XIII, 1980)

Anyway, in 1727, Baron - again - with a despising remark, brushes the French lute school

aside with this unambiguous declaration that In regard to the lute, the French have not

accomplished much in particular. Their most famous masters are Gaultier (we do not know

which one) who is considered to be one of the earliest, although he wrote his pieces for our

present-day lute. Mouton and Dufaut followed their own genius and neglected the cantabile

element...(Untersuchung, p. 85/ transl. DAS, p. 75).

It seems reasonable to say that the so-called French style, or style brisé, died away about that

time, in the first quarter of the 18th century, to be supplanted by the emerging German

cantabile lute school, but that is another story !

3/ 17th century :

In fact, the period concerned by the development of this particular contrepartie technique

covers about 60 years, from c. 1640 to c.1700. I did not take into account the duets of the

early 17th century composed in Renaissance tuning or vieil ton. This includes the handful of

printed duets by Jean-Baptiste Besard from 1603 and 1617.

To my knowledge there is no other duet published or copied before the short suite, Alman and

2 Corants, written by William Lawes in the Mesangeau tuning (Oxford, Bodleian Library,

Mus. Sch. B 2, p. 86, with the mention For 2 Lutes at the top of the piece) and the Allemande

in Flat French tuning at the end of the Sturt Lute Book (also known as The M.L. lute book, c.

London, British Library, Additional MS 38539, f° 33v. These duets are for two 12 course

lutes, the emblematic instrument of Great Britain which was often called the French lute

because it was supposedly initiated by the French Jacques Gaultier who had fled France to

England after killing a man. Although this type of lute crossed the Channel it was never really

adopted on the Continent, except in the Netherlands.

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The earliest examples of baroque lute duets in French style and found in a French source,

using the standard D-minor tuning, are to be found in the Reynaud manuscript, from the

Méjanes library at Aix-en-Provence, known as Livre des vers au luth. This manuscript can be

consulted online at : http://www.e-corpus.org/notices/88279/gallery/ . The solo pieces and the

three duets included start on view 103, i.e. f° 97. According to François-Pierre Goy, it was

copied between 1665 and 1670.

The latest example probably comes from manuscript L79 from Kremsmünster Abbey in

Austria. Among the 346 pieces in this huge manuscript, by Reusner, Dufaut, Mouton, Gallot

and others, are to be found 2 complete suites in G major for 2 lutes. The style is already

clearly drifting away from the French style brisé, otherwise well represented in the manuscript,

to adopt a much more cantabile attitude, as Baron would put it... Although these 2 suites are

anonymous, they might have been composed by Logy or one of his followers, at least they

present some musical affinity with the transitional style emerging in Germanic countries at the

opening of the 18th century.

4/ A few significant pages...

1. Raynaud manuscript (F-AIXm Ms. Rés. 17, Aix-en-Provence, Bibliothèque

Municipale (Bibliothèque Méjane) : three parties and their contreparties in the same

manuscript but several pages apart. It is impossible to play the duets directly from the source...

2. Three Pieces by Niewerth - Allemande, Courante, Sarabande : contreparties

included in ms. Sloane 2923, 34, 35 and 36 (London, The British Library) where the opposite

pages are left blank, - except f° 33v - as if the compiler had intended to copy the part later and

never did it.

The same contreparties for Niewerth's pieces are in Danzig 4230, 41v, 42v and 43v, with

different titles. The allemande is called Contrepartie de l'Allemande de Nievert sur le grand

connestable Mon. Le Comte Wrangel.

First parts to these contreparties by Niewerth are found in several other manuscripts, which is

by far, the most common practice for baroque duets, making reconstruction more difficult :

- F-Pn Rés. Vmc ms. 61 (olim: Bibl. Mad. Thibault), 46v (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale)

which bears the indication In Venetiis, 7 7br 1712. This allemande is called here : Le

Parnasse Allemande de Nivert...

- GB-Ob ms. G.616, 2, 4 and 6 (Bodleian Libray, Oxford).

- D-Bsa4060, 128v, 2 versions of the courante, 99v and 125 but no sarabande. (Berlin,

Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz).

- Last, D-SWl 640, 15 and 16 [for Angélique] (Schwerin, Landesbibliothek Mecklenburg-

Vorpommern, Musikaliensammlung).

3. Movements of suites in g minor and C major by Gumprecht and Mercure in PL-Kj

ms. mus. 40637 (Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska) in a very short manuscript (8 pages of

tablature) consisting only of complete duets. The first parts and second parts are written on

consecutive pages and can the be played at the same time by two players.

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4. Two manuscripts with duets written on consecutive reversed pages, following the

examples of Elizabethan sources, and Besard, and making performance by two players still

easier.

- A-ET Goëss Ms. V, 57v to 79 (Ebenthal, Graf Goëss'sche Primogenitur-

Fideikommiss-Bibliothek, published by Tree Editions (Ed. T.Crawford). This section of the

manuscript contains 12 duets (parties and contrepartie on consecutive pages, reversed like

table books from the early 17th century. They were copied by Julien Blovin, a French lute

teacher active in Rome between 1675 and his death in 1715. Tim Crawford in his article

mentioned earlier remarks that Maria Anna von Sinzendorff-Erstbrunn (1670 - 1709) married

Johann Peter, first Count Goëss in Rome in 1693, bringing with her many of the manuscripts.

Goëss MS V was begun by Julien Blovin who wrote in 16 solos and 12 duets (...) probably

around this time. The duets are by Dufaut, Dupré and Mercure. All these lutenists were at a

time connected with England.

After 1652, Dufaut moved to England where the Civil War (1642–9) had caused French

musicians at the English court to return to France, but where there was still a demand for

French music; he may even have died there around 1670.

One Dupré, maybe Charles, was labelled "d'Angleterre" in two French manuscripts (Vaudry

and Milleran).

Mercure was known as "John" Mercure and, after a career at the English court he came back

to Paris at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642; he had English students there, among them

John Evelyn who, when he was in Paris, noted in his Diary : 1647, March 3, Monsieur

Mercure began to teach me on the lute, tho' to small perfection...

- A-KR ms. L 79, 114 to 117 (Kremsmünster, Benediktiner-Stift Kremsmünster,

Regenterei oder Musikarchiv). Two anonymous suites in G major composed in the new

cantabile style, probably dating from the early 18th century, much more reminiscent of Logy

than Gaultier... The same manuscript contains solo pieces by Reusner, Mouton, Gallot, Dufaut,

the Gaultiers and other lutenists of the style brisé generation.

5/ How to make a contrepartie ?

Looking closely at existing duets it is possible to understand how lutenists proceeded to make

up a contrepartie. The only source mentioning this practice has been quoted above. It is

Mace's Musick's Monument, published in 1676 which records older practices going back to

the 1640s, before the Civil War changed things drastically for musicians.

A recent, very positive, review in the magazine "Early Music Today" of the CD Courante by

American lute-players Edward Martin and Thomas Walker, says very justly that a weakness

of the lute, its detractors might say, is its thinness of texture, for it can barely sustain four

voices - and commonly just three, with a big chord or two at cadences. This fault (if it is a

fault) is remedied in the instrument’s duet repertoire.

This gives me the opportunity to congratulate our two colleagues for their excellent work and

it is also a good indication of what duets are all about : transforming the lute into a more

complete instrument by reinforcing the musical texture of a given piece.

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If we take a look at a duet, we observe that the base is almost exactly duplicated in the two

parts, with very few and unimportant exceptions. It clearly shows that the whole structure of

the duet is based on the relationship between this bass part and the other parts. We also notice

that there is no, or very little, doubling of voices (remember what Mace says about that...). So

the "game" consists in filling the supposedly thin texture of the solo piece, more or less

respecting the rules of harmony and counterpoint to make a more resonant and attractive piece.

The basic idea is not to have one instrument playing the tune and the other accompanying it

(treble and ground) but both instruments are superimposed to obtain one bigger, louder lute !

We also notice by the way some of the problems arising when reconstructing a duet from two

different sources. Obviously the solo piece was quite well known to all lutenists of the period,

but there might be, and there were, some variants from one version to the other so that when

you superimpose the two parts you notice some discrepancies and sometimes more than that

when a complete bar is missing in the contrepartie. Editing is an absolute necessity in most

cases.

Is this restitution process editing or simply appropriating the music to make it coherent and

satisfactory ? I like the idea presented by Victor Coelho in his paper Authority, Autonomy and

Interpretation in Seventeenth-Century Italian Lute Music in the book Performance on Lute

Guitar and Vihuela, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 108 - 141.

Although his remarks are originally aimed at Italian music, they are in fact universal. He

opposes two concepts : authority and autonomy.

Authority refers primarily to the performer's use of an established text and the choice of an

appropriate instrument (...) and deference to an established tradition in matters regarding

style.

Autonomy deals in the options that are (and were) available in varying the authoritative score.

It is what the player can do with the music within acceptable stylistic and historical

boundaries (p.110).

The lack of autonomy in reconstructing baroque lute duets in a satisfactory way is simply not

possible ! In order to make a rendition of these duets acceptable, it is necessary to take into

account a lot of uncertain information.

I have a strong feeling that the masters of the lute were so familiar with the repertoire and the

compositional techniques that they must have been able to improvise contreparties and there

is an anecdote I would like to quote which, in my opinion, points in that direction :

Le vieux Gaultier, excellent joüeur de luth, s'estant retiré en une maison qu'il avoit acquise

auprès de Vienne, en Dauphiné, l'Enclos y alla exprès pour le voir. "Eh bien, comment te

portes-tu ? - A ton service." Voylà bien des embrassades ; ils disnent et puis se vont promener.

"Tu ne joües plus du luth ?" luy dit l'Enclos ; "pour moy, j'ay quitté tretoute cette vilainie. - Je

n'en joüerois pas pour tous les biens du monde," respond Gaultier. Au retour, l'Enclos voit

des luths. "C'est pour ces enfans," dit Gaultier, "ils s'y amusent ; et il n'y pas une corde qui

vaille ; tout cela est en pitoyable estat." L'Enclos ne put s'empecher de les prendre ; il trouve

deux luths fort bien d'accord. "Hé," dit il, "telle piece, la trouves-tu belle ?" Il la joüe.

Gaultier luy dit : "Et celle-cy, que t'en semble ?" Ils joüerent trente-six heures, sans boire ny

manger.

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Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, "Extravagans, visionnaires, fantasques, bizarres, etc.", coll

de la Pleiade, éd. A. Adam, t. 2 p. 726 Paris : Gallimard, 1961.

(Which may roughly be translated as : Old Gautier, an excellent lute player, retired in a

house he had bought near Vienne in Dauphiné; L'Enclos went there on purpose to see him.

"Well, how are you ? At your service". They embraced and then dined together and went for a

walk. "You don't play the lute anymore?" said L'Enclos ; "Personally I have ceased all this

nastiness". - "I would not play it for all the goods in the world," anwsers Gaultier. Back

home, L'Enclos sees lutes. "They are for the children" Gaultier says, " they have fun with

them ; not a single string is in order ; all that is in a pitiful condition." L'Enclos could not

refrain from taking them ; he finds two lutes quite well tuned. "Hey" he says "this piece, do

you find it beautiful ?" He plays it. Gaultier tells him : " And this one, what do you think ?".

They played for thirty-six hours, without drinking or eating.)

It is difficult to imagine they only alternated solos for 36 hours, is it not ! Either they could

play duets by heart, which is quite probable, or, more probably in my opinion, they could

improvise a contrepartie... Improvisation was part of the musical training for musicians at that

time.

As a conclusion, I would like to present a short example of how I added a contrepartie to a

Gigue by Dufaut. Starting from the bass line, I tried to fill up the texture of the original solo,

respecting the style and the harmony rules, just as they did at the time. Actually it is a natural

autonomous way to follow and keep alive the tradition of our predecessors.

6/ Iconography, the missing link...

It would have been much easier to introduce this talk on baroque lute duets with a wide range

of iconography. Although I searched for such documents all over the internet and called to the

rescue competent people of goodwill, eventually I did not find much to illustrate my talk...

Here are the very scant findings I can show to make all these spoken things a bit more alive :

1 - A bit early in the period but interesting all the same : Louis de Caullery, A couple playing

the lute in an elegant interior, ca. 1620. Oil on copper. 22.4 x 17.1 cm. Private collection.

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2 - A bit later but still early for French baroque lutes : Jan Wildens (Antwerpen, 1586 - 1653),

Maggio - Passeggiata nel viale, Musei di Strada Nuova - Galleria di Palazzo Bianco, Genoa.

One player is already at work and another one is taking his lute out of its case. We can

imagine that they are going to play together at some point.

The next and last three pictures are the only examples I could find representing two musicians

in the same place that were done during the period we are dealing with today :

3 - Willem Cornelisz Duyster, Music making couple, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, ca.1650.

Here again we have to let our imagination take the lead. There are two lutes and two

musicians in the picture, so...

4 - Anonymous, Musical party in a garden, 1647 (detail), canvas worked with silk thread; tent

stitch. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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5 - Gerard Ter Borch, The Concert, 1675 - Toledo, Ohio, The Toledo Museum of Art.

7/ A short list of sources with contreparties

As a conclusion to this talk, I would like to give a short list of sources including

contreparties :

S-Klm21072 Kalmar 13 pieces with contreparties or just contreparties : 3 in D minor and 10

Bflat major with a special tuning...

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S-Ssmf ms. (1) Library: Stockholm, Stiftelsen Musikkulturens främjande : 6 contreparties

some of them different from D4230

D - Danzig 4230 : formerly Danzig Stadtbibliothek MS 4230 now in the possession of the

Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Pressicher Kulturbesitz, Berlin. "North-German, possibly Swedish

origin" according to Tim Crawford (Colloque Luth et Luthistes en Occident)

Pl Krakow Kj40637 : Mercure and Gumprecht - only duets

Pl Krakow Kj40626 : Gaultier (2 pièces with contrepartie)

A-Goëss V : f 5v : Courante Du But / Vaudry, p. 50

f 16v : courante D. Gaultier / 6 sources

f 40v : courante Gaultier / B4230

Suite C minor : Dufaut : 4 pièces (+1Menuet probably not by Dufaut ?)

G minor : Dupré

suite Bflat major : Mercure

Kremsmünster L 79 : 8 pieces in 2 suites in G major.

F-AIXm Ms. Rés. 17 (3 duos)

F-B ms. 279152, ms. Vaudry de Saizenay (3 pieces for 2 luths et 14 parties)

B-Bc Ms. Littera S. N° 5616 (F.A. VI 10), Bruxelles, Bibliothèque Conservatoire Royal de

Musique

17 pieces with contreparties in other manuscripts

GB Lbl Ms. Sloane 2923 (3 contreparties for Niewerth)

Oxford G 617 : 2 parts

Oxford G 618 : 2 parts

Oxford MS Mus Sch B2, p.86 Lawes/Mesangeau

Sturt Lute Book : 1 [Almain]