Unmeasured or non-measured prelude is a prelude in which the duration of each note is left to the performer. Typically the term is used for 17th century harpsichord compositions that are written without rhythm or metre indications, although various composers of the Classical music era were composing small preludes for woodwind instruments using non-measured notation well into the 19th century. The form resurfaced in the aleatory music of the 20th century, where various other aspects of performance are also left to free interpretation.
The first unmeasured preludes appeared during the Renaissance era. They were short improvised compositions for lute, usually performed as an introduction to another piece of music or to test the instrument. Later unmeasured lute preludes retained the improvisatory character of the genre but became more complex and lengthy. Unmeasured preludes flourished into full-fledged compositions by the middle of the 17th century. However the development of lute music had already stopped by that time and the last surviving unmeasured lute preludes date from the end of the same century.
A sample of Louis Couperin's unique notation for unmeasured preludes.
Unmeasured preludes for harpsichord started appearing around 1650. Louis Couperin is usually credited as the first composer to embrace the genre. Couperin wrote unmeasured preludes using long groups of whole notes, and these groups were connected by long curves. This kind of notation is found in Couperin's unmeasured preludes and was also done by Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Another important contribution to the development of the genre was made by Nicolas Lebègue, who used diverse note values in his unmeasured preludes. The first ever published unmeasured preludes appeared in Lebègue's Le pieces de clavessin in 1677.
François Couperin's didactic L'art de toucher le clavecin (1716) contained eight preludes that, while unmeasured and improvisatory in nature, were measured for teaching purposes. These pieces, along with several preludes from Nicolas Siret's Second Livre de Pieces de Clavecin (1719), were among the last unmeasured harpsichord preludes written.
Jean-Philippe Rameau was a French composer and music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer of his time for the harpsichord, alongside François Couperin.
A prelude is a short piece of music, the form of which may vary from piece to piece. While, during the Baroque era, for example, it may have served as an introduction to succeeding movements of a work that were usually longer and more complex, it may also have been a stand-alone piece of work during the Romantic era. It generally features a small number of rhythmic and melodic motifs that recur through the piece. Stylistically, the prelude is improvisatory in nature. The term may also refer to an overture, particularly to those seen in an opera or an oratorio.
François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.
The Couperin family was a musical dynasty of professional composers and performers. They were the most prolific family in French musical history, active during the Baroque era. Louis Couperin and his nephew, François Couperin le grand, are the best known members of the family.
Louis Couperin was a French Baroque composer and performer. He was born in Chaumes-en-Brie and moved to Paris in 1650–1651 with the help of Jacques Champion de Chambonnières. Couperin worked as organist of the Church of St. Gervais in Paris and as musician at the court. He quickly became one of the most prominent Parisian musicians, establishing himself as a harpsichordist, organist, and violist, but his career was cut short by his early death at the age of thirty-five.
Johann Jakob Froberger was a German Baroque composer, keyboard virtuoso, and organist. Among the most famous composers of the era, he was influential in developing the musical form of the suite of dances in his keyboard works. His harpsichord pieces are highly idiomatic and programmatic.
Nicolas Siret was a French baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was born and died in Troyes, France, where he worked as organist in the Church of Saint Jean and the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Both his grandfather and his father were organists in Troyes.
Jacques Champion de Chambonnières was a French harpsichordist, dancer and composer. Born into a musical family, Chambonnières made an illustrious career as court harpsichordist in Paris and was considered by many of his contemporaries to be one of the greatest musicians in Europe. However, late in life Chambonnières gradually fell out of favor at the court and lost his position. He died in poverty, but at an advanced age, and not before publishing a number of his works. Today Chambonnières is considered one of the greatest representatives of the early French harpsichord school.
François d'Agincourt was a French harpsichordist, organist, and composer. He spent most of his life in Rouen, his native city, where he worked as organist of the Rouen Cathedral and of three smaller churches. Highly regarded during his lifetime, d'Agincourt was one of the organists of the royal chapel. The single surviving book of harpsichord music by him contains masterful pieces inspired by François Couperin; also extant are some 40 organ works that survive in manuscript copies.
Jean-Henri d'Anglebert was a French composer, harpsichordist and organist. He was one of the foremost keyboard composers of his day.
Nicolas-Antoine Lebègue was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was born in Laon and in the 1650s settled in Paris, quickly establishing himself as one of the best organists of the country. He lived and worked in Paris until his death, but frequently made trips to other cities to consult on organ building and maintenance matters. Lebègue's reputation today rests on his keyboard music. He made particularly important contributions to the development of the French organ school by devising pieces with independent pedal parts and developing the Tierce en taille genre. His oeuvre also includes the earliest published unmeasured preludes, as well as some of the earliest known noëls.
Élisabeth Claude Jacquet de La Guerre was a French musician, harpsichordist and composer.
The Bauyn manuscript is a manuscript currently in possession of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. It is, along with several printed collections and the Parville manuscript, one of the most important sources for French harpsichord music of the 17th century.
Christophe Rousset is a French harpsichordist and conductor, who specializes in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. He is also a musicologist, particularly of opera and European music of the 17th and 18th centuries and is the founder of the French music ensemble Les Talens Lyriques.
Style brisé is a general term for irregular arpeggiated texture in instrumental music of the Baroque period. It is commonly used in discussion of music for lute, keyboard instruments, or the viol.
The Prelude in C Minor, BWV 999, is, according to its only extant 18th-century manuscript, a composition for lute by Johann Sebastian Bach. In the manuscript, conserved as Fascicle 19 of Mus.ms. Bach P 804 at the Berlin State Library, Johann Peter Kellner wrote the piece down in keyboard notation. The time of origin of the work is not known: possibly Bach composed it in his Köthen period, that is, between 1717 and 1723, or the early years of his ensuing Leipzig period. Kellner's copy was produced after 1727, but before Bach's death in 1750.
L'art de toucher le clavecin is a didactic treatise by the French composer François Couperin. It was first published in 1716, and was followed by a revised edition in 1717.
Blandine Verlet was a French harpsichordist and a harpsichord teacher, who is known internationally for her recordings of works by François Couperin.
Les Barricades Mystérieuses is a piece of music that François Couperin composed for harpsichord in 1717. It is the fifth piece in his Ordre 6ème de clavecin in B-flat major, from his second book of collected harpsichord pieces. It is emblematic of the style brisé characteristic of French Baroque keyboard music.
Johann Sebastian Bach's music has been performed by musicians of his own time, and in the second half of the eighteenth century by his sons and students, and by the next generations of musicians and composers such as the young Beethoven. Felix Mendelssohn renewed the attention for Bach's music by his performances in the 19th century. In the 20th century Bach's music was performed and recorded by artists specializing in the music of the composer, such as Albert Schweitzer, Helmut Walcha and Karl Richter. With the advent of the historically informed performance practice Bach's music was prominently featured by artists such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav Leonhardt and Sigiswald Kuijken.
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