In New York, four airs by Jacquet de La Guerre performed again after three centuries

On November, 19, in New York, Sonnambula and mezzo-soprano Chloe Holgate will give the first known modern performance of four airs by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729) at Columbia University. Published in 1712, the pieces have no known recording from the intervening three centuries. This rediscovery will be followed by a recording and a scholarly publication.

The four pieces appear in Les Amusemens de Monseigneur le Duc de Bretagne, a volume published in 1712 by René Trépagne de Ménerville for the young Duke of Brittany, great-grandson of Louis XIV. They are Le Jeune Amour (“Cédons tous aux tendres ardeurs”), Le Jeune Mars (“Cher favori de la victoire”), Heureux l’instant qui vous vit naître and Pour la gloire des souverains. The catalogue of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles indicates that some of these airs were sung as early as 5 January 1711, during the young prince’s dinner, by Marguerite-Louise Couperin.

A rare copy of the volume, acquired by the Morgan Library & Museum in 2022, caught the attention of Elizabeth Weinfield, Professor of Musicology at the Juilliard School and Artistic Director of Sonnambula. The airs had already appeared in Mary Cyr’s 2005 critical edition of Jacquet de La Guerre’s works, but according to the organisers they had never been the subject of an in-depth dedicated study, nor of any known recording or modern performance. Weinfield is now preparing a publication devoted to these pieces and to what they reveal about the place of a female composer within the educational, aristocratic and musical spheres of early eighteenth-century France.

Entitled Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre: Lost Airs from Versailles, the concert will take place on 19 November at 6 pm at St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University. Sonnambula will be directed by Weinfield from the viola da gamba. Works by Marais, Couperin and Michel-Richard Delalande will complete the programme, alongside a world premiere by Stephen Anthony Weinfield.

Concert: November, 19, 6 pm – St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, New York
Official website: https://www.sonnambula.org