Marc-Antoine Charpentier (; 1643 – 24 February 1704) was a French Baroque composer during the reign of Louis XIV. One of his most famous works is the prelude of his Te Deum H.146, Marche en rondeau, which has been used as the theme song fanfare before television broadcasts of the Eurovision Network since the inception of the European Broadcasting Union in 1954.
Marc-Antoine Charpentier dominated the Baroque musical scene in seventeenth century France because of the quality of his prolific output. He mastered all genres, and his skill in writing sacred vocal music was especially hailed by his contemporaries.
He began his career by going to Italy, where he fell under the influence of Giacomo Carissimi as well as other Italian composers, perhaps Domenico Mazzocchi. He would remain marked by the Italian style and become the only one with Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville in France to approach the oratorio. In 1670, he became a master of music (composer and singer) in the service of the Duchess of Guise. From 1690 Charpentier composed Médée, on a piece by Corneille. It was a determining failure in his career of composer: he henceforth devoted himself to religious music. He became the composer of the Carmelites of the "Rue du Bouloir", Montmartre Abbey, Abbaye-aux-Bois and Port-Royal. In 1698, Charpentier was appointed music master for the children of the Sainte-Chapelle du Palais. After having obtained from the king Louis XIV a softening of Lully's monopoly, Molière turned to Charpentier to compose the music for the intermissions of Circe and Andromeda, as well as sung scenes for the revivals of The Forced Marriage, and finally the musical pieces of The Imaginary invalid.
He composed secular works, stage music, operas, cantatas, sonatas, symphonies, as well as sacred music, motets (large or small), oratorios, masses, psalms, Magnificats, Litanies.
At the time of his death, Charpentier's complete works must have numbered about 800 opus numbers, but today only 28 autograph volumes remain, or more than 500 pieces that he himself took care to classify. This collection, called Mélanges, is one of the most comprehensive sets of musical autograph manuscripts of all time.
Biography Charpentier was born in or near Paris, the son of a master scribe who had very good connections to influential families in the Parlement of Paris.For his family, see Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Baltimore, 2004) pp. 517–23 Marc-Antoine received a very good education, perhaps with the help of the Jesuits, and registered for law school in Paris when he was eighteen. He withdrew after one semester. He spent "two or three years" in Rome, probably between 1667 and 1669,Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp. 525–33; and Jean Lionnet, "Charpentier à Rome, in Catherine Cessac, ed., Marc-Antoine Charpentier, un musicien retrouvé (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2005), pp. 74–84 and studied with Giacomo Carissimi. He is also known to have been in contact with poet-musician Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy, who was composing for the French Embassy in Rome. A legend claims that Charpentier initially traveled to Rome to study painting before he was discovered by Carissimi. This story is undocumented and possibly untrue; at any rate, although his 28 volumes of autograph manuscripts reveal considerable skill at tracing the arabesques used by professional scribes, they contain not a single drawing, not even a rudimentary sketch. Regardless, he acquired a solid knowledge of contemporary Italian musical practice and brought it back to France.
Immediately on his return to France, Charpentier probably began working as house composer to Marie de Lorraine, duchesse de Guise, who was known familiarly as "Mlle de Guise." She gave him an "apartment" in the recently renovated Hôtel de Guise – strong evidence that Charpentier was not a paid domestic who slept in a small room in the vast residence, but was instead a courtier who occupied one of the new apartments in the stable wing.Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp. 533ff; Patricia M. Ranum, "Le mécénat musical de Mademoiselle de Guise (1670–1688), in Yvonne Bellenger, ed., Le Mécénat et l'influence des Guises (Paris: Champion, 1997), pp. 613–38; Patricia M. Ranum, "Mademoiselle de Guise, ou les défis de la quenouille," XVIIe Siècle (1984), pp. 221–32
For the next seventeen years, Charpentier composed a considerable quantity of vocal works for her,Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp. 377–78, 426–54, 536–80 among them Psalm settings, hymns, motets, a Magnificat setting, a mass and a Dies Irae for the funeral of her nephew Louis Joseph, Duke of Guise,Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp. 401–403 and a succession of Italianate oratorios set to non-liturgical Latin texts. (Charpentier preferred the Latin canticum to the Italian term, oratorio). Throughout the 1670s, the bulk of these works were for trios.Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp. 190–201, 552ff. See also Patricia M. Ranum, "Charting Charpentier's 'Worlds' through his Mélanges," in Shirley Thompson, ed., New Perspectives on Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 1–29, especially pp. 13–22, 26–27 The usual trio was two women and a singing bass, plus two treble instruments and continuo; but when performance in the chapel of a male monastic community required male voices, he would write for an haute-contre, a tenor and a bass, plus the same instruments. Then, about 1680, Mlle de Guise increased the size of the ensemble, until it included 13 performers and a singing teacher. In the pieces written from 1684 until late 1687, the names of the Guise musicians appear as marginalia in Charpentier's manuscripts – including "Charp" beside the haute-contre line.Patricia M. Ranum, "A Sweet Servitude: A Musician's life at the Court of Mlle de Guise", Early Music, 15 (1987), pp. 346–60; and Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp. 190–201 Étienne Loulié, the senior instrumentalist who played keyboard, recorder and viol, probably was entrusted with coaching the newer instrumentalists.
Despite what is often asserted, during his seventeen years in the service of Mlle de Guise, Charpentier was not the "director" of the Guise ensemble. The director was a gentleman of Mlle de Guise's court, an amateur musician, Italophile, and Latinist named Philippe Goibaut, familiarly called Monsieur Du Bois. Owing to Mlle de Guise's love for Italian music (a passion she shared with Du Bois), and her frequent entertaining of Italians passing through Paris,Patricia M. Ranum, "Un 'foyer d'italianisme' chez les Guises: Quelques réflexions sur les oratorios de Charpentier," in Catherine Cessac, ed., Marc-Antoine Charpentier, un musicien retrouvé (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2005), pp. 85–109 there was little reason for Charpentier to conceal the Italianisms he had learned in Rome.
During his years of service to Mlle de Guise, Charpentier also composed for "Mme de Guise", Louis XIV's first cousin.Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp. 419–25, 574–80; Patricia M. Ranum, "Lully Plays Deaf: Rereading the evidence on his privilege," in John Hajdu Heyer, ed., Lully Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 15–31 It was in large part owing to Mme de Guise's protection that the Guise musicians were permitted to perform Charpentier's chamber operas in defiance of the monopoly held by Jean Baptiste Lully. Most of the operas and pastorales in French, which date from 1684 to 1687, appear to have been commissioned by Mme de Guise for performance at court entertainments during the winter season; but Mlle de Guise doubtlessly included them in the entertainments she sponsored several times a week in her palatial Parisian residence.
By late 1687, Mlle de Guise was dying. Around that time, Charpentier entered the employ of the Jesuits. Indeed, he is not named in the princess's will of March 1688, nor in the papers of her estate, which is strong evidence that she had already rewarded her loyal servant and approved of his departure.
During his seventeen-odd years at the Hôtel de Guise, Charpentier had written almost as many pages of music for outside commissions as he had for Mlle de Guise. (He routinely copied these outside commissions in notebooks with Roman numerals.) For example, after Molière's falling out with Jean-Baptiste Lully in 1672, Charpentier had begun writing incidental music for the spoken theater of Molière. It probably was owing to pressure on Molière exerted by Mlle de Guise and by young Mme de Guise that the playwright took the commission for incidental music for Le Malade imaginaire away from Dassoucy and gave it to Charpentier. After Molière's death in 1673, Charpentier continued to write for the playwright's successors, Thomas Corneille and Jean Donneau de Visé. Play after play, he would compose pieces that demanded more musicians than the number authorized by Lully's monopoly over theatrical music. By 1685, the troop ceased flouting these restrictions. Their capitulation ended Charpentier's career as a composer for the spoken theater.Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp. 141–49, 170–76, 177–88, 546–48; John S. Powell, "Les conditions de représentation au théâtre Guénégud et à la Comédie-Française d'après les Mélanges," in Catherine Cessac, ed., Les manuscrits autographes de Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Wavre: Mardaga, 2007), pp. 271–86
In 1679, Charpentier had been singled out to compose for Louis XIV's son, the Dauphin.Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp. 300–317 Writing primarily for the prince's private chapel, he composed devotional pieces for a small ensemble composed of royal musicians: the two Pièche sisters singing with a bass named Frizon, and instruments played by the two Pièche brothers. In short, an ensemble that, with Mlle de Guise's permission, could perform works he had earlier composed for the Guises. By early 1683, when he was awarded a royal pension, Charpentier was being commissioned to write for court events such as the annual Corpus Christi procession. In April of that year, he became so ill that he had to withdraw from the competition for the sub-mastership of the royal chapel. Speculations that he withdrew because he knew he would not win seem disproved by his autograph notebooks: he wrote nothing at all from April through mid-August of that year, strong evidence that he was too ill to work.
From late 1687 to early 1698, Charpentier served as maître de musique (music master) to the Jesuits, working first for their collège of Louis-le-Grand (for which he wrote Celse martyr, David et Jonathas and where he was still employed in April 1691)Érik Kocevar, "L'orgue du collège Louis-le-Grand ... à la lumière d'un marché d'orgues inédit," Recherches, 31 (2004–2007), pp. 165–180 and then for the church of Saint-Louis adjacent to the order's professed house on the rue Saint-Antoine.Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp. 227–40; Patricia M. Ranum, "Marc-Antoine Charpentier compositeur pour les Jésuites (1687–1698)," in Catherine Cessac, ed., Marc-Antoine Charpentier, un musicien retrouvé (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2005) pp. 231–46 Once he moved to Saint-Louis, Charpentier virtually ceased writing oratorios and instead primarily wrote musical settings of psalms and other liturgical texts such as the Litanies of Loreto. During his years at Saint-Louis, his works tended to be for large ensembles that included paid singers from the Royal Opera. In addition, during these years Charpentier succeeded Étienne Loulié as music teacher to Philippe, Duke of Chartres.Patricia M. Ranum, Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, pp.324–27