PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION (1982/r1989)

It is just fifty years since Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre first published these organ pieces as part of its inaugural publication, the Œuvres Complètes de François Couperin. (Each page still bears the historic plate number O.L. 1.) Until 1932, organists had relied on the old 1903 edition edited from three manuscripts by Alexandre Guilmant in Archives des Maîtres de l’Orgue. Following the misguided opinions of F.-J. Fétis and J.-L. Danjou, Guilmant had attributed the works to the elder François Couperin (c.1631 – c.1710), uncle of François Couperin le Grand; they had thus attracted attention only as interesting works by a petit maître of whom no other music was known.

During the 1920s the situation changed radically, enabling Paul Brunold in the Oiseau-Lyre edition not only to confirm that these masses were indeed the earliest known works of the younger François Couperin, but also to establish a far more authoritative version of the text. This advance, as Brunold acknowledged, was largely due to the research of André Tessier who first published documents strongly supporting the younger François’ authorship. Tessier also rediscovered a fourth manuscript, the important source now in the Bibliothèque Inguimbertine, Carpentras. Bearing a printed title-page and a privilège dated 2 September 1690, the manuscript was evidently a unique survivor from Couperin’s original batch of copies offered for sale. It was immediately accepted as superceding the other three sources (all of uncertain date) and became the copy-text for Brunold’s 1932 edition.

More recently, the masses were edited a third time, by Norbert Dufourcq (Éditions musicales de la Schola Cantorum). In his preface, Dufourcq tried to list the variants in all the existing sources. What need is there, then, of the present revision? Guilmant’s excellent old edition (still in print) was made before the discovery of the important Carpentras source and is thus de facto superceded. Dufourcq’s version is based entirely on the Carpentras manuscript, like Brunold’s; despite the list of variants, the music remains essentially the Carpentras text. However, while Brunold made no bones about his exclusive reliance on the Carpentras source, Dufourcq’s extensive detailing of the variants gives his edition an air of scholarly, even critical, erudition. It is unsettling to find that many variants are inaccurately listed and that—even more frequently—important variants are omitted altogether. Dufourcq also criticized Brunold’s edition for containing misprints, yet reproduced the majority of these misprints exactly as they occur in Brunold’s volume.

Brunold’s Oiseau-Lyre edition was very good within its own terms of reference; it was a faithful version of the newly discovered source, and was left unrevised in subsequent reprints. So important did Brunold consider the Carpentras copy that he treated it as if it had been written by Couperin’s own hand. He and Tessier consistently called it “the original” and in the edition Brunold even made a point of respecting the “graphie originale” of the manuscript. Neither Brunold nor Tessier actually thought that the source might be autograph, yet in all respects they treated it as such. (Dufourcq even went so far as to imply it could be autograph). This Preface will show, however, that the Carpentras copy of the masses can no longer be held to have an authority comparable to a unique autograph manuscript. Despite its incontestable primacy as a source, its authority as the sole source for a critical edition no longer stands. Research undertaken for this revision proves that the status of the other main source, a manuscript now in the Bibliothèque Municipale, Versailles, must be substantially upgraded, resulting in nearly 250 significant changes to Brunold’s text (ornaments, ties, rhythms, slurs, accidentals, new notes, etc.) and many other smaller changes. Our research also incidentally provides new confirmation that the attribution of the pieces to the younger François Couperin can no longer be doubted.