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L'Inconstante

At the age of five (ca. 1670), Élisabeth Jacquet, the daughter of an organist and music teacher, and something of a prodigy, was presented to King Louis XIV for whom she played the harpsichord and sang. She evidently made a favourable impression, as she was thereafter granted Royal patronage, and was in the privileged position of being able to dedicate her first published works, a collection of four suites for harpsichord issued in 1687, to the King. By that time she had married, taking the step (unusual in France at the time) of appending her husband's surname to her maiden name. Three of those four suites make up the bulk of this CD.

Each suite brings together pieces sharing a common key, beginning with an "unmeasured" prelude, that is, one written without bar lines, with the player at liberty to set their own tempo. The subsequent pieces in each suite are all based on a set sequence of dances deemed proper at the time, beginning with an 'Allemande' and ending with a 'Minuet'. It seems a restrictive format, yet, when listening, the music's effervescent inventiveness makes that easy to forget. As well as the complete suites, there's a single piece extracted from a later (1707) publication of Jacquet de la Guerre's entitled 'La Flamande', which is given in two versions, the original and its "double", the latter an ornamented reprise.

The pieces are beautifully played by Marie van Rhijn who also contributes a "double" of her own devising to one of the suites' Minuets. It's a well-presented disc with a 28-page booklet containing notes by Catherine Cessac, van Rhijn herself, Michel Devynck (who writes about the 17th-century "Diem" harpsichord used for the album) and by Geneviève Boussus, that instrument's current owner. All are given in French and English. The recording is also first-rate. I bought this CD during the first Covid lockdown, and have returned to it many times since.

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