Jacques Duphly - Evaluation

Evaluation

D'Aquin wrote that 'in general his pieces are sweet and amiable: they take after their father'. Although this represents a curious judgment of his music, which is often flashy and energetic, it may reflect a nature that allowed him to drift gently from view to a point of obscurity where it became necessary to inquire in the Journal general de la France (27 November 1788) 'what has become of M Duphlis, former harpsichord teacher in Paris, where he was in 1767. If he no longer exists, one would like to know his heirs, to whom there is something to communicate.

He apparently never married, and when he died, no heirs appeared; even his sister could not be located. He died on July 15, 1789, the day after the storming of the Bastille, in an apartment in the Hôtel de Juigné, lonely, forgotten, with his library —and without a harpsichord. The mystery could possibly be clarified by this fact: in 1785, Antoine de Sartine, ex-chief of Police, and ex-minister of the Navy, lived at the same address.

Duphly left his possessions to his servant, who was with him for 30 years. But his will and the inventory of his effects show that he had been living in modest comfort in his small apartment. His dedication of his last pieces to the Marchioness of Juigne, 21 years before, did not exempt him from paying 300 livres a year for rent.

Dagincourt may have been Duphly's teacher, but Rameau's harpsichord music served as Duphly's chief model. Rameau's shadow falls on themes (the courante La Boucon in book 1 begins like Rameau's E minor courante, transformed in metre) and on whole pieces (Les colombes in book 2 -- which D'Aquin must have meant when he said of Duphly's music: 'On connait les tourterelles, qui affectent le coeur' -- is almost a condensed paraphrase of La timide from Rameau's Pieces de clavecin en concerts, 1741). Scarlatti's fast 3/8 sonatas have their echo in La De Caze (book 2) and La De la Tour (book 3), and Dagincourt (or Couperin, whom Dagincourt imitated) can be felt in a rondeau in C (book 1) and La De Brissac (book 2), among other pieces.

Book 3 mixes solos and two sonata-like groups with violin accompaniment; the latter are singularly unimaginative in their use of the violin, which seems to have been more a hindrance than a resource. Two solo groups in F minor and D are excellent, however. The first consists of a sombre rondeau in bass-viol range called La Forqueray after the late virtuoso of that instrument, a brilliant chaconne of 285 bars, and a savage tirade entitled Medée and marked 'vivement et fort'. In the 12 years between books 3 and 4 fashion passed Duphly by: book 4 contains but six half-hearted essays in Alberti-bass style.

Only fifty-two works by Duphly are known, most of which were published during his lifetime in the four volumes of harpsichord music mentioned above. The titles of the work refer to well-known protectors of art (e.g. La Victoire, la de Sartine) or other composers (e.g. La Forqueray). His late music contains elements typical of the early classical movement —e.g. the use of Alberti bass, quite dissimilar to Jean-Philippe Rameau or François Couperin.