Jean Rondeau’s Pavane by Louis Couperin

I’ve listened to Jean Rondeau’s complete Louis Couperin works several times since their release, and one of the pieces he particularly cherishes is “Pavane (G.120)”. The CDs include two performances for harpsichord, one for organ, and one for a viol consort. The first performance for harpsichord is on the original Ruckers harpsichord from 1624, while the second is on a copy of Jacques Thibaut’s harpsichord by David Ley. Initially, I assumed the organ performance was transposed to G minor, but this appears to be incorrect. It turns out that the Notre-Dame de Juvigny organ’s pitch is apparently 440 Hz, about a semitone higher than the harpsichord. This means that Rondeau is playing this piece in the original key of F-sharp minor. You can confirm this in a YouTube video. However, the Pavane’s F-sharp minor key was considered quite daring and “unresonable” for the time. It appears that the organ at Notre-Dame de Juvigny was tuned not in mean tone but in one of the “well-tempered” tunings used in France at the time. Rondeau also seems to have adopted “well-tempered” tuning for the harpsichords, and there are no significant chord breakdowns. I recall a recording of this piece by Blandine Verley (Rondeau’s teacher). She plays the piece in the standard C-G-D-A-E mean tone (Aron’s mean tone), and Wolf appears frequently throughout the piece. I personally think this is a tasteful performance in its own right. However, Rondeau, not satisfied with that, had the piece performed by a viol quartet. Needless to say, the harmonic quality is impeccably pure. This performance shows the cases of Rondeau’s dedication. #louiscouperin #jeanrondeau #clavecin #organ #viol