La Cheron

Younger than François by two generations, Armand-Louis Couperin (1727-89) carried the family’s musical heritage up to the French revolution. He was raised by his widower father, himself a noted organist, and eventually succeeded to his father’s post at Saint Gervais—the very same job once held by François. In the spirit of his famous predecessor, Armand-Louis maintained a love for the instrumental techniques of harpsichord’s “grand style,” filled with brilliant ornamentation, taste, and characteristic or witty titles. It is worth noting that his lifetime overlapped with those of Haydn and Mozart, yet how different are their musical worlds! Armand-Louis’s La Chéron appears in his first book of Pièces de clavecin (1751). Based on simple rising and falling progressions, this rondeau unfolds without pretensions to anything dramatic, though there is the occasional harmonic non sequitur that even François would not have dared employ. Tastes were changing….

(c) Jason Stell