Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier (1734-1794) - Magnificat du 7ème Ton

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Composer: Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier (1734-1794)
Work: Magnificat du 7ème Ton
Performers: Michel Chapuis (orgue); Ekaterina Fedorova Colin (soprano)

Painting: Anoniem - Gezicht op het Stadhuis en de rivier de Seine te Parijs
Image in high resolution: https://flic.kr/p/2iXNi8P

Further info: https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7994101--guilain-dandrieu-charpentier-chapuis-magnificat
Listen free: https://open.spotify.com/album/0dNlBOWkJHxqQ97qZvRJUC

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Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier
(Abbeville, 28 June 1734 - Paris, 6 May 1794)

French composer and organist. He was one of the most celebrated organists of the late 18th century. His father was Jean-Baptiste Beauvarlet (?-1763), merchant dyer according to the baptismal certificate (Servières) and organist and instrument maker (Vallas). It is not known why he added the name Charpentier, but it was under that name alone that most of his compositions were published. He succeeded his father as organist of the Hospice de la Charité in Lyons and married Marie Birol, a singer who became known in Lyons and Paris under her husband’s name; they had a daughter (1764) and a son, Jacques-Marie. Jean-Jacques was heard on the organ of the Concert Spirituel of Paris as early as 1759 (Pierre), but he continued living in Lyons until 1771, where he played the organ at the Académie des Beaux Arts from 1763, performing two of his own concertos in December 1765. Towards the end of his stay in Lyons the programmes grew increasingly trivial, and Jean-Jacques played chiefly comic-opera tunes and overtures. In 1771, he became organist of the royal abbey of St Victor in Paris, probably on the initiative of Mgr de Montazet, archbishop of Lyons and abbot of St Victor (Fétis). In the same year he made a second appearance at the Concert Spirituel and in the next he succeeded Daquin at St Paul in the Marais, adding later on the posts at the chapel of St Eloi des Orfèvres (by 1777) and Notre Dame (1783; shared by trimesters with three others). Beauvarlet-Charpentier’s strongest music is to be found in his sonatas for harpsichord or piano with violin accompaniment, opp.2, 3 and 4 (1772–5), in which Saint-Foix detected the influence of Schobert. The idiom is early Classical with a tendency, especially in op.3, to imitate orchestral styles and textures. Some of the sonatas of opp.3 and 4, and all of op.8, are ‘dans le goût de simphonie concertante’. Although thematically unimaginative and narrow in their range of expression, these works show that Beauvarlet-Charpentier had a surprising ability (for a French organist of the period) to sustain ample curves of tension by delaying cadences and maintaining rhythmic energy. His organ music is weakened by the failure to reconcile style and medium, by a feeble grasp of counterpoint and by a hasty, improvisatory approach to form. #ClassicalMusic