Today we are able to fully appreciate the music of François Le Cocq thanks to the enthusiasm that Jean-Baptiste de Castillion (1680-1753), Provost of St. Pharaïlde in Ghent and vicar-general to the bishop of Ghent, had for the guitar. De Castillion had learnt to play the instrument in his youth and eagerly took it up again twenty years later having heard François Le Cocq play “with such precision and unexpected grace” (1)
The provost of St. Pharaïlde reveals very little information concerning the guitarist: in 1729 he was the jubilee musician of the Chapel Royal in Brussels and it was in the same year that he showed his works to de Castillion who recopied them. We are thus able to presume he was born around 1660 and it is also possible that Le Cocq was one of six members of a family of the same name whose musical services at the Chapel Royal ran from 1641 to 1750.
In the middle of the seventeenth century, the guitar tablature of Francesco Corbetta dedicated to the Archdukes Albert and Isabelle (2) had caused widespread infatuation for the instrument so much so that “all the ‘nobles’ of Brussels took pride in paying it” says de Castillion. At the end of the century and at the beginning of the next, the guitar was still ‘à la mode’ and François Le Cocq was honoured to teach the Electress of Bavaria and to entertain the Archduchess, Governor of Netherlands.
When he presented his composition to Jean-Baptiste de Castillion, François Le Cocq was old enough to have known “all the musical periods”. He undoubtedly belongs to the French school of baroque guitar music whose tuning he takes up, as well as the repertory (allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue, menuet… etc.) and the writing conventions (French tablature with letters, signs markings the ornaments, the fingering…). His tunes, however, “have a new and simple air, a stirring melody with the most harmonious charm and sweetness so that we cannot help but admire writer and instrument”.
From the hundred and seventeen compositions recopied by de Castillion, Rafael Andia, adhering to the customs of the baroque period, has selected twenty-five arranged works so as to form suites of the same tonality.
The majority of dances included in Le Cocq’s manuscript are not particularly significant; there are courantesand sarabandes which are quite old and the menuets, gavottes and bourrées are no more than “repetitions disguised as callipers’ playthings and honest and lively bluffs for catching the dupes who have the means to pay for them”(3). On the other hand, the allemandes, six in the tablature, are notable for their unusual length and for the very elaborate construction proclaiming the sonata allegro. This is typical of this piece as practised at the end of the seventeenth century: “a solemn symphony; usually in two-time, often in four-time” made-up of two repeats which are both played twice”(4). An allemande was no longer a dance but had become a majestic entry, acting as the prelude to the dance suite.
Besides the rather ‘un-conservative’ French aspect of his music, François Le Cocq was original in more ways than one. Several ‘modern’ pieces were included in the dances mentioned above: they were tunes with tempo names in which the writer could express himself much more freely than when he was bound to the rhythmic structures of a dance.
The melodic richness of the adagios in this selection is also outstanding: the cadences and runs together with the tremolos and hammerings give the melody a particularly charming improvised air about it.
More than once in his manuscript, de Castillion insists on the exceptional genius of Le Cocq in the arpeggio technique; he had no wish to reveal this method and the secret disappeared with him. These ‘harpegements’, for the same reasons as the ornaments, give his compositions ‘an incomparable charm’ .
We must pay homage to the zealousness, the care and the precision with which the copier, an enlightened and highly competent amateur strove to disclose such music which cannot be simply interpreted straight off. The Provost’s manuscript ends with valuable directions for the guitarist who is particularly concerned with the expression of the true baroque style; he writes: “… one will learn how to give the works embellishments by different variations as when practising the presto and the arpeggio on the piano; the playing is further enhanced and the melody lighter and more pleasant if one adds a few tremolos, plaintive notes and cadences and runs, gently increasing the first letter of the latter if the bar or note time will allow it. It is also remarkable being able to equalize and un-equalize the tempo as the notes indicate…”.
The art of Rafael Andia highlights the passion, the forcefulness and the energy characteristic of baroque guitar playing, giving it a human dimension and helping us to better understand the extraordinary infatuation that arose, three centuries earlier, for this noble and fascinating instrument.
© Françoise-Emmanuelle Denis
(1) Recueil des pièces de guitare composées par François Le Cocq, préface de J-B de Castillion, 1729
(2) Francesco Corbetta, Varii Scherzi di Sonate per la Chitarra Spagnola, Bruxelles, 1648
(3) Michel de Pure, Idée des spectacles anciens et nouveaux, Paris, Michel Brunet, 1668 .
(4) Sébastien de Brossard, Dictionnaire de musique, Paris, 1703
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.