Francois Couperin
By Paul Brunold
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Francois Couperin - Paul Brunold
D.
I
THE musical talent of the celebrated Couperin family first appeared with the three brothers Louis, François and Charles. Their father, Charles Couperin, son of a village notary, lived in Chaumes, a small town in the district of Brie. He has been variously, and somewhat vaguely, described as a marchand and an aubergiste; he also owned land and vineyards. But whether he kept a shop or an inn or preferred to be considered a landowner is less important than the description of him, in the marriage contract of one of his sons, as an organist.
It is curious to find a musician in a family devoted to small-town commerce. It would be interesting to know who gave Charles Couperin his first music lessons. There have been mentions of an older Couperin who came from distant parts and had a knowledge of music. It may have been he who implanted the taste for music in the family.
This imprecise detail links up with the legend, often brought forward and difficult to confirm or deny, that the Couperins were not of French origin. Their Christian names are French enough, but their family name, with the various spellings found in the old documents of the Château de Beauvoir, Couprin, Coupryns, Coprin, shows that they were not of local origin. Their early history might well be the same as that of another family in Chaumes, the Forquerays, also described, by Théophile Lhuillier, the historian of the musicians of Brie, as marchands-caberetiers, and whose name also became famous in musical history. The first Forqueray, according to the family tradition as recounted by Louis Forqueray in his book Les Forqueray (Paris, 1910), followed Mary Queen of Scots to France about the year 1548. It is not impossible that the Forqueray and Couperin families emigrated to France and settled in Brie together.
Of the three sons of Charles Couperin mentioned above, Louis was the most talented and left an important contribution to the literature of the harpsichord*; François is described in a manuscript note as a great musician and a great drinker; Charles was admired as a composer of harpsichord pieces, none of which are known to have survived. A brief account of Charles Couperin is necessary, however, as he was the father of François Couperin-le-Grand.
The register of baptisms at Chaumes records that Charles Couperin was baptised on the 9th April 1638. Musically gifted and about twelve years younger than his brother Louis, he took part in the serenade organised by a group of young musicians as a birthday surprise for Chambonnières at his country estate near Chaumes. Titon du Tillet tells, in Le Parnasse Français, how