Works
Marchand was evidently not interested in publishing his music, and so, despite his popularity, comparatively few of his compositions survive. The losses are particularly substantial in his vocal music: only one cantata survives, Alcione, three Cantiques spirituelles, and a few airs, which were published in various French anthologies of the first half of the 18th century. The opera Pyrame et Thisbé, mentioned by Titon du Tillet, is lost. Marchand's harpsichord music was previously known only by two early suites, published in 1702, and La vénitienne, a short work published in a 1707 anthology. These compositions are generally considered worthy examples of the French harpsichord style, but, as early works, lacking depth. A third book of harpsichord pieces, comprising 14 suites (12 in C minor, 2 in C major), most attributed to Marchand, was discovered in France in 2003.
Twelve of Marchand's organ works were published posthumously, but some 40 more survive in manuscript copies. Yet again most of these works seem to date from Marchand's early years (and stylistically look back to the 17th century, rather than the new galante style), but they include some of his most important music: the massive Grand dialogue in C (1696), which is usually placed as highly as offertories by François Couperin and Nicolas de Grigny; the harmonically sophisticated Fond d'orgue in E minor, and the Quatuor—a rarely seen four-part contrapuntal French form. Modern scholar Geoffrey Sharp divided Marchand's organ output into three distinct groups: pieces influenced by vocal genres, pieces influenced by instrumental genres, and vocal-instrumental hybrid works. He singles out Marchand's manualiter trios and non-contrapuntal works as the composer's most successful pieces. A six-voice Plein jeu from the pieces published posthumously is important historically as the first instance of double pedals in French organ literature.
Read more about this topic: Louis Marchand
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjusting our thoughts to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom a new nature and new works of men, and, as it were with increasing confidence, finding nature still habitable, genial, and propitious to us; not following any beaten path, but the windings of the river, as ever the nearest way for us. Fortunately, we had no business in this country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)