Joseph Bodin de
Boismortier (1689-1755)
Suites for Harpsichord
& Flute
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier was born at Thionville on 23rd December 1689
and died at Roissy-en-Brie on 28th October 1755. Natives of the borders of the
region of Berry, the Bodin family had settled in Thionville where the
composer's father, a former soldier, became a confectioner. Around 1691, the
family moved to Metz, where Boismortier was to have his musical education,
apparently under Joseph Valette de Montigny, an accomplished composer of
motets. In 1713 he followed his teacher to Perpignan, as tax collector for the
Royal Tobacco Company, an occupation remote from music. Seven years later he
married Marie Valette, a relation of his teacher, the daughter of a wealthy
goldsmith. He remained in Perpignan for some ten years, a period that brought
some musical activity, witnessed by two of his airs à boire (drinking-songs),
published in Paris by Ballard in 1721 and 1724.
On the recommendation of influential friends, Boismortier abandoned his
business and settled with his wife and daughter at the court of the Duchess of
Maine at Sceaux and later in Paris, where he was first granted the
privilege to print his compositions on 29th February 1724. This allowed him to
publish his transverse flute duets and French cantatas, composed in Perpignan,
marking the start of a successful and controversial career in the capital.
In his Essay on Ancient and Modern Music of 1780 the celebrated
theoretician Jean-Benjamin de La Borde gave a realistic portrait of the
composer:
"Boismortier appeared at a time when only simple and easy music was
in fashion. This competent musician took only too much advantage of this
tendency and devised, for the many, airs and duets in great numbers which were
performed on the flute, the violins, oboes, bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies…
He so abused the ingenuousness of his numerous buyers that, in the end,
the following was said of him:
“Happy is hes Boismortier, whose fertile quill
Each month, without pain, conceives a new air at will.”
Boismortier, for lack of a better answer to his critics, would always
answer: 'I am earning money'".
Boismortier's achievement, however, is impressive, with 102 pieces, to
which one must add airs and grand motets, as well as a dictionary of harmony.
He also published practical manuals for the flute and the treble viol, while
composing for a wide variety of instruments and experimenting with varied
instrumentation. His sonatas for pardessus (descant viol) have recently
been rediscovered and published, in addition to works for musette and
hurdy-gurdy (vielle à roue), two fashionable pastoral instruments of the
period. The greater part of his compositions, however, were for the flute,
which, with the harpsichord, held an important place at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. At the same time he wrote a quantity of vocal music,
including drinking songs, large and small scale cantatas and motets, and,
naturally, opera-ballets, notably Les Voyages de l'Amour (‘The Travels
of Love’) in 1736, Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse (‘Don Quixote at the
Duchess’) in 1743, Daphnis et Chloé in 1747, Daphné in 1748 and Les
quatre parties du monde (The Four Parts of the World) in 1752. In 1753 he
withdrew from the musical scene, as a result of the Querelle des bouffons, the
dispute between proponents in France of French and Italian musical traditions.
He retired to a small property, La Gâtinellerie, at Roissy-en-Brie, where he
died in 1755.
Although not himself an outstanding keyboard player, Boismortier had a
good understanding of the nature of the French keyboard dance suite and
combined in his four harpsichord suites the specific elements of the genre,
evocative titles and instrumental effects, providing portraits without
necessarily any specific identification of those to whom the pieces are
dedicated. Titles such as L'Impérieuse (‘The Imperious’), La
Flagorneuse (‘The Toady’), La Belliqueuse (‘The Bellicose’), L'Indéterminée
(‘The Undecided’), and La Frénétique (‘The Frenetic’) appear, but
Boismortier also uses other evocative titles less directly associated with
individuals. La Caverneuse (‘The Cavernous’), La Choquanle (The
Shocking) and La Veloutée (The Velvety) seem to have titles suggesting
only their musical character. La Puce (‘The flea’) and La Navette (‘The
Shuttle’) are deliberately descriptive, while La Valétudinaire (‘The
Valetudinarian’), in a melancholy C minor, is a depressing sarabande, followed
by the quicker La Décharnée (‘The Emaciated’), skeletal in its paucity
of harmony, with a melody running from one end of the keyboard to the other and
little notes not answering each other in a jagged pattern La Marguillère (‘The
Churchwarden’) is a dignified patroness, La Rustique (‘The Rustic’) a
merry peasant, while La Brunette (‘The Brunette’) suggests those
sentimental little pastoral songs published in such quantity during the period,
notably by Boismortier. Other allusive titles include references to Venice, La
Transalpine and, very specifically, La Sérénissime.
Boismortier wrote a quantity of music for the flute and an instruction
manual for the transverse flute, now lost. The three suites taken from his Opus
35 are in the tradition of the first composers to write for the instrument
at the beginning of the century, Jacques Hotteterre le Romain, Michel de la
Barre, Pierre Philidor and many others. The fine preludes bear witness to this
tradition, while the short expressive melodies and slow rondeaux point to new
and deliberately pastoral preoccupations, Ramages (Warbling/Foliage) in
the Sixth Suite suggests the rococo, while the following Gaiment demands
a virtuosity inherited from the Italian sonata, prefiguring the future work of
the great French flautist Michel Blavet.
Stéphan Perreau & Jean-Christophe Maillard
English version: Keith Anderson
