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Volume 19 (2013) No. 1

Published 2017

Music in the Service of the King’s Brother: Philippe I d’Orléans (1640–1701) and Court Music outside Versailles

Don Fader*

Abstract

The court of Louis XIV’s younger brother, Philippe I d’Orléans (called “Monsieur”), offers insights not only into the musical life of the largest French princely establishment outside Versailles, but also into aristocratic negotiation with royal image-making and the changing role of patronage across the reign of the Sun King. Philippe, like many members of the high nobility, used music as a tool of courtly cultivation and self-promotion. For this purpose, he maintained a multi-faceted musical institution that performed a variety of musical functions. He employed at least thirty-seven musicians, both official officers of household musique and additional outside members, including a male vocal ensemble, keyboardists, players of the viol and lute, a violin band, a group of choirboys, and a small chamber ensemble. Because of the young prince’s dependence on his brother in the 1660s, musical events at his court generally followed those of the king’s. Monsieur’s increasing independence allowed his rise as provider of courtly entertainments that reflected his desire to distinguish himself from his brother. This role greatly increased in the 1680s with the completion of his chateau at Saint-Cloud, and with the coming of age of a younger generation of princes whose tastes he cultivated. Monsieur’s court supported various composers who wrote both for court contexts and for the Parisian music scene. The most active of these include Jean Grenouillet de Sablières, Pierre Gillier, François Martin, and Jean Martin. Monsieur and his court valued stylistic variety over purity, and the music of these composers thus reflects a greater degree of freedom than that written for the royal court or the Paris Opéra in the period.

1. Introduction

2. The King’s Brother: Philippe I d’Orléans

2.1 Madame: Henrietta of England and Elisabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate

3. Musicians in the Service of the Orléans

3.1 The Musical Household

3.2 Forces outside the Official Household

3.3 The Function of Musicians in the Maison

3.4 Musician Families in the Service of the Orléans

4. Music chez Monsieur and Madame

4.1 The 1660s

4.2 1671: Monsieur as Ambivalent Patron of Early French Opera

4.3 Monsieur and the Grand Dauphin

4.4 The grandes fêtes of 1681 and 82: Saint-Cloud vs. Versailles

4.5 Sacred Music: An Orléans Musical Chapel?

4.6 Music in the Education of Monsieur’s Children

4.7 Dramatic Vocal Music at Monsieur’s Court

5. Composition by Monsieur’s Musicians

5.1 The 1660s: Sablières

5.2 François Martin père

5.3 Renewal in the 1680s: Jean Martin

5.4 Pierre Gillier

6. Conclusion

Appendices

Examples

Figures

Tables

References

1. Introduction

La Musique et la Symphonie,
Par une excellente harmonie,
Y ravissoient l’Ouye aussi
Et l’on peut enfin dire ici,
A la gloire de ce grande PRINCE,
En qui l’on ne void rien de mince,
Que, comme il prime en DIGNITÉ
Aprés l’auguste MAJESTÉ,
Il prime en la MAGNIFICENCE
Pour être en tout UNIQUE EN FRANCE
Comme UNIQUE FRÉRE du Roy,
Auguste Titre, en bonne foy.^[1]

—Charles Robinet, Lettre en vers à Madame, July 5, 1665

1.0.1 Despite Robinet’s address “to Madame” (Henrietta of England, wife of the “only brother of the king,” Philippe I d’Orléans), the description of Philippe’s gloire (and by extension the contribution of his musique thereto) is almost backhanded in its comparison to Philippe’s elder brother, Louis XIV. One has to feel a little sorry for Robinet, whose task of relating court news in “Letters in Verse” to the Orléans could certainly not have been an easy one. He had to please Madame and her husband (from whom his colleague Jean Loret openly acknowledged having received money for similar services), but he also had to acknowledge Philippe’s secondary status and defer to the cultural “machine” of king, about which so much has been written.^[2]

1.0.2 In part because of the royal mastery of media that Peter Burke so richly documented, much of the early research on the cultural history of Louis XIV’s reign focused on royal patronage and its political usage. These studies, following ample documents, largely overlooked the activities of the nobility, whose importance had been minimized in the glorification of the king. Beginning in the 1980s, however, historians began to question the notion of “absolutism” in politics and in patronage and demonstrated the critical role played by the nobility in the political and cultural life of the period.^[3] In the field of music, Georgia Cowart has recently shown that royal domination was challenged on an allegorical level in a number of theatrical productions, and tensions also occurred in the area of patronage, particularly as Louis aged and his concerns turned increasingly away from theatrical entertainments under the influence of his morganatic wife, Madame de Maintenon, in the 1680s.^[4] This was a period in which other members of the princely nobility began taking an increased role in musical patronage, sometimes coming into conflict with the king. In contrast to the much-studied royal court, the music of these princely houses has until relatively recently remained largely terra incognita.^[5]

1.0.3 Robinet’s difficulty praising Philippe I d’Orléans in 1665 underlines two major problems in understanding the cultural legacy of this period: how to distinguish between the “mythistoire” of royal dominance created by Louis XIV’s image makers and the reality of actual practice, and how to understand the contributions of others to this cultural legacy in relationship to the system of royal image making. Although the court of Philippe I (called “Monsieur”) never approached the artistic influence of the king’s, it offers insights into the musical life of one of the largest French princely establishments, the negotiation with royal patronage on the part of the aristocracy, and the changing modes of patronage across the reign of the Sun King.

1.0.4 Monsieur’s court presents a number of advantages for the study of these issues. First, given the relative importance of the prince and his family, their activities are not infrequently commented on by journalists and memorialists providing a relatively rich fund of sources to draw upon. Second, the Orléans family was heavily involved in the court politics of the era and had a history of being at the forefront of conflicts with royal authority. Finally, the musical activities of Monsieur’s court further explode the royal authoritarian model of the princely mécène as someone who, out of both musical and political interests, acts alone, directly commissioning and approving the composition of musical works and commanding performances.^[6] In fact, the role and activities of the princely mécène—even of the king himself—were not autonomous, as they involved the input, ideas, agendas, and efforts of many individuals.^[7] Music at Monsieur’s court is a perfect example of this principle of shared patronage in that Philippe was not particularly interested in music for its own sake, but nevertheless maintained a complex institution where differing powers and interests provided an umbrella of support to various musicians and musical genres that extended outward to Parisian institutions and cultural life.

1.0.5 The political role of the Orléans stemmed from their position as the cadet branch of the royal family (that of the younger brother of the king), which frequently was in tension with the aîné, the older brother. The split between the Orléans and the crown would haunt French history through the nineteenth century, beginning with Philippe Egalité’s siding with the revolution and culminating in Louis-Philippe’s succession following the revolution of 1830.^[8] The problems in the seventeenth century were no less vexing: the younger brother of Louis XIII, Gaston d’Orléans (1608–1660), along with his daughter, Marie-Louise d’Orléans (1627–93, called “Mademoiselle”)—both of whom were intelligent and vigorous in their political activities and their patronage—openly sided with rebels against the crown during the Fronde.^[9] Thus, one of the most important political aims of the crown under Richelieu, Mazarin, and finally under Louis XIV himself, was to marginalize rebellious members of the royal family by harnessing their interests to royal service.

1.0.6 Philippe I d’Orléans therefore found himself in the difficult position of having to defer to his brother in matters both political and cultural. While needing to assert his own interests within the limits prescribed by his brother, he at times pushed those limits—in almost adolescent fashion—to see how far he could go. In the case of the performing arts, and music in particular, Monsieur seems, at least initially, to have deferred to Louis, who regarded spectacles and the arts as an important part of his gloire as king, and who did not, at least until the latter part of his reign, tolerate competition. Monsieur learned relatively early, through a number of run-ins with his brother, not to challenge him directly, particularly since his own interests lay elsewhere (largely in the safer realms of art collection and finery). Philippe gradually found his niche in the 1670s and ’80s as an organizer of entertainments for the Dauphin and others, and it was in this position that his activities as patron took on an increasingly influential dimension.

1.0.7 The music of the Orléans was particularly important because of its size and because of the family’s relative independence from the crown. Although Monsieur and his spouse (“Madame”) spent a good portion of their days paying court to the king, Philippe’s special position as the king’s brother meant that he and his family had considerably more freedom than other royal courtiers to come and go as they wished. He enjoyed holding his own court at his palaces where he would often sojourn for weeks at a time. On these visits, the prince openly displayed his love for entertainments of all kinds, and his generosity was frequently remarked upon. Philippe I’s interest in fêtes gave him a central place in courtly circles that supported theater and entertainment in the increasingly bigoted environment of the royal court during the 1680s and ’90s. In support of these entertainments, he maintained one of the largest musical forces in France, and his court provided a haven to various composers who wrote music both for Monsieur and for the Parisian music scene. These composers included Jean Grenouillet de Sablières, Pierre Gillier, François Martin, and Jean Martin. Because these composers were not employed at the royal court or the Académie royale de musique, but instead operated largely in the private sphere, they did not acquire the same recognition or connections as other composers. At the same time, their independence allowed them a greater degree of stylistic freedom.

2. The King’s Younger Brother: Philippe I d’Orléans

2.0.1 As Louis XIII’s younger son, Philippe I (Figure 1) was granted his uncle Gaston’s titles (including the right to be called “Monsieur”) on his uncle’s death in 1660, but he inherited Gaston’s legacy in other ways as well.^[10] Cardinal Mazarin, Louis XIV’s regent, was determined not to make another Gaston out of Philippe and did everything he could to make sure that Philippe developed neither the knowledge nor the ambition to challenge his brother.^[11] Philippe was discouraged from pursuing a rigorous education and was showered with presents whenever he rebelled against his secondary status.^[12]

2.0.2 The young prince proved a good foil for his older brother; he was largely uninterested in physical prowess or political power, and he was homosexual, which automatically qualified him as an outsider. According to the Abbé de Choisy, Mazarin cultivated Philippe’s inclinations by encouraging the women of the court to dress him in female clothing.^[13] Monsieur’s second wife, Elisabeth-Charlotte, reports the effects of this upbringing in contrasting the characters of the two brothers:

There have never been two brothers more different than [Louis XIV] and Monsieur; nevertheless, they loved one another very much.… Monsieur had the manners of a woman more than a man; he did not like either horses or hunting; he took pleasure only in gambling, holding court, eating well, dancing, and dressing; in a word, he took pleasure in everything women like. The king liked hunting, music, theater; Monsieur liked only great gatherings and masked balls; the king liked to be gallant with the ladies; I don’t think that Monsieur, in his entire life, was ever amorous.^[14]

The duc de Saint-Simon, whose memoirs are the source of many a tartly phrased portrait, says that Philippe had “more society than wit, no reading, and although [he had] an extensive and accurate knowledge of houses, births, and alliances, he was not capable of anything.”^[15] Indeed, Monsieur seems not to have been personally fond of music for its own sake. Reminiscing about her late husband toward the end of her life, Elisabeth-Charlotte wrote: “Monsieur loved the sound of bells so much that he came expressly to Paris to pass the night of All-Saint’s because all the bells rang during that night. He liked no other music.”^[16] In contrast to his music-loving brother, Monsieur is not recorded as having played an instrument or having participated directly in the creation of ballets or operas.

2.0.3 Louis XIV continued Mazarin’s lead in excluding Philippe from any political role and discouraging his interests in areas that came into conflict with the establishment of royal gloire, not only in military endeavors but as a connoisseur and patron of the arts.^[17] Nevertheless, Monsieur’s ambitions were not entirely crushed, and tensions with his brother occasionally boiled over. When allowed a command in the battle of Kassel in 1677, for example, Monsieur took considerable risks by remaining in the field, leading French forces in the defeat of the Spanish Dutch. Louis publicly commended Monsieur but never again gave him a major military command.^[18] Like Gaston, Philippe had a cabal with whom he enjoyed his pleasures and who, in turn, controlled him (in part at the behest of the king), receiving for their pains a continual round of pensions and presents.

2.0.4 The tensions between Philippe and his brother played out in the arena of artistic patronage as well. Despite being dismissed by Saint-Simon as having “no reading,” Monsieur was nevertheless influential in the early career of Molière. In 1658, the young prince promised protection for Molière’s troupe and a 300-livre-per-year pension for each actor (which was, it seems, never actually paid); the group was named the “Troupe de Monsieur, Frère Unique du Roi.”^[19] The next year, Philippe introduced Molière to the king, and in 1661 the troupe received the rights to play at the theater in Monsieur’s Parisian home, the Palais-Royal. Molière expressed his gratitude to Philippe by dedicating L’Ecole des maris to him in 1662. By 1665, Molière’s fame was such that the king, who evidently preferred to be the patron of such an illustrious group, obliged his brother to relinquish it. After that, the troupe became known as the “Comédiens du Roi” with a yearly stipend of 6,000 livres.^[20] Nevertheless, Molière’s troupe retained its home at the Palais-Royal until being pushed out by Lully, and a number of Monsieur’s musicians maintained contacts with the company long after it came under royal patronage. Philippe also acted as patron to Isaac de Benserade; he provided Benserade lodging in the Palais-Royal, and the poet played a role in the intrigues of his court during the 1660s.^[21]

2.0.5 In the 1680s, Monsieur found a new niche at court by positioning himself as a softer, more welcoming alternative to the king. “It was he who introduced the amusements, the soul, the pleasures, and when he departed everything [at court] seemed without life or action,” says Saint-Simon before he begins to list Monsieur’s bad qualities.^[22] Monsieur’s immense fortune allowed him free range in his entertaining.^[23] In the early part of his life, Monsieur often took refuge in his chateaux, where he could be the center of courtly attention, especially when he lost an argument with his brother. Daniel de Cosnac, Monsieur’s aumonier in the 1660s, wrote that when Monsieur was displeased with his brother:

He preferred to take the path of silence and to content himself in letting the king know that he was not satisfied by the trips to Paris he came to make every week for one or two days. These trips were very much to his taste.… They gave him the joy of having a court of his own because he was overjoyed when he saw at the Palais-Royal a large crowd of high society.… He never forgot to praise everyone, and it was evident that he was more or less happy, depending on whether he had a larger or smaller court. ^[24]

2.0.6 Monsieur’s palaces were the scene of many fêtes, particularly Saint-Cloud (Figure 2), whose large gardens and famous cascade rivaled Versailles. Emile Magne calculated that Monsieur organized over 1,000 entertainments of various sorts during the period between 1680 and 1698 at Saint-Cloud alone, earning the château the reputation as the prince’s “lieu de plaizance.”^[25] The natural beauty of the place made it a perfect location for outdoor celebrations. Even the duc de Saint-Simon said of Saint-Cloud that “the games, the singular beauty of the location, the music, and the good food made it a palace of delights with much grandeur and magnificence.”^[26] In addition, the Palais-Royal had the attraction of the theater (and, eventually, the Opéra), and since Monsieur’s private box could be reached directly from his apartments, the palace became the setting for many entertainments that combined feasts, balls, and theatrical and musical performances by Molière’s troupe or the Académie Royale de Musique. Monsieur was particularly fond of Paris, and the Parisians of him, in contrast to the king who always associated the city with the humiliations he suffered during the Fronde and spent as little time as possible there.^[27]

2.0.7 If Monsieur was not a great patron of music or theater, he was not without artistic interests, expressing them according to his own personality. He learned in his youth to sublimate his secondary status through acquisition, and he became a consummate collector of jewels and objets d’art. He displayed his collection of curiosités in two rooms at Saint-Cloud, along with a third room for his jewels, the Cabinet des bijoux. Monsieur employed a curator to care for his collections, and the inventory after his death records 139 items under jewelry, valued at over 1.6 million livres.^[28] He also collected paintings, owning upon his death more than 400 works, including The Family of Charles II by Van Dyck and canvases by Tintoretto, Titian, Velasquez, alongside native French artists, and a very large number of tapestries, porcelains, silver, and other objets d’art.

2.0.8 Monsieur’s desire to make an impression at times bordered on the obsessive. An example of this concern was described in the journal kept by his intendant, Paul Fréart de Chantelou, during the visit of Gian Lorenzo Bernini to France in 1665. Chantelou reports Monsieur’s concern for what others said about his projects with a certain degree of detached irony:

I went to the lever of Monsieur. His Royal Highness called for me and whispered in my ear, “Is it true that the Cavalier [Bernini] found my cascade at Saint-Cloud too artificial?” I told him yes. Monsieur responded saying, “Boisfranc [another of Monsieur’s intendants] told me that the Cavalier found that for my water spout, it would be possible to do something more beautiful. I would be very happy if you would ask for a design for that, and from yourself as well.” I assured Monsieur that I would do this, and that I had already asked the Cavalier to work on it.^[29]

Nevertheless, the prince ultimately found the “artificial” qualities of his cascade more pleasing than the “rustic” and less ornamented proposal by Bernini, a taste that Monsieur’s courtiers were only too quick to reaffirm:

I had taken the design for the cascade of Saint-Cloud to His Royal Highness, which he had painted by Bourson. He asked me right away, “Where will this go?” I told him, “in place of the grand water jet.” “But my water jet?” said Monsieur. I replied that it would be conserved, and so that it would be possible to better execute the intention of the Cavalier, he had promised me that, as soon as he was in Rome, he would have a model of the cascade made in clay that would be copied in wood in order that it could be brought here. His Royal Highness spoke after this about [Bernini’s] design for the Louvre, and said that to reduce the court—and to remove all the ornaments that are there—displeased him greatly, that one only wanted to do simple things with it. I responded that the things that were to be done would have the ornament that they should have. M. le maréchal de Plessis said that in Italy, it was right to hide the attics because they did not use slate roofs, that their size was meager, but that roofs here had their own beauty. I did not debate this question, and I went instead to the Cavalier.^[30]

This was essentially the end of the matter; Monsieur’s decision was made, and Bernini’s design for the cascade was never executed. Chantelou’s story thus provides a picture of the young Monsieur’s patronage that corroborates other sources regarding his personality: his insecurity about the opinions of others and his dependence on the advice of those around him for his decisions, but also his taste for the decorative.

2.0.9 Monsieur’s approach to artistic patronage was thus quite different from his brother: rather than discussing the project with the artist himself (having been well informed beforehand) as Louis often did, the less educated Monsieur worked through courtiers, Boisfranc and Chantelou, acting as intermediaries.^[31] This continued under Boisfranc’s replacement, Louis de Béchamel, who was not only the gourmand for whom the famous sauce was named, but also a major connoisseur of everything related to decoration. According to Saint-Simon, it was he who was largely responsible for the decoration of Saint-Cloud, and he often advised Louis XIV:

He was an intelligent man … who organized a delicate and well-chosen table, both in its dishes and in its company, and he hosted at his home the best of Paris and the most distinguished of the court. His taste in paintings, jewelry, furniture, buildings, and gardens was extremely exquisite. It was he who created what was most beautiful at Saint-Cloud. The king, who treated him well, often consulted him about his buildings and gardens, and occasionally invited him to Marly.^[32]

2.0.10 Monsieur likewise expressed his passion for the decorative in his main creative endeavor, the transformation of the house and grounds at Saint-Cloud into a massive chateau and gardens. Philippe had acquired the château in 1658, and he extended it considerably by buying up adjacent lands over a number of years. Construction on the new château began in earnest in the 1670s and was completed shortly before Versailles, around 1680. Unlike the Palais-Royal, which the crown owned until 1692, Saint-Cloud was Monsieur’s property, and he had the freedom to do with it as he pleased. Thus he made an artistic statement that was his own, choosing not to employ the Académie-sanctioned artists who worked for the king.^[33] Monsieur’s architect was the young Jules Hardouin de Mansard, whose fame was made by Saint-Cloud. The Italian-trained Pierre Mignard decorated the château’s public rooms with enormous frescoes on subjects drawn from classical mythology:

At first sight can be seen the heavens as Homer describes them; Olympus, where all the gods are assembled, fills the center of the vault, but the arcades, arranged with admirable artifice, separate it into different parts and form five pictures from a single one.^[34]

With its emphasis on color and its sensuous Baroque air, the decoration of the château presented a contrast to the official academic style employed by Le Brun at Versailles.^[35] Monsieur was not, however, above receiving advice from his brother on the decoration of his château, as long as that advice came with funds to execute the king’s ideas.^[36]

2.0.11 Little remains of this artwork but engravings and tapestry copies; Saint-Cloud burned during the German invasion of 1870.^[37] Its destruction, along with that of the “Aeneas gallery” painted by Antoine Coypel at the Palais-Royal in 1704, thus present a significant impediment to our understanding of the Orléans’ contribution to the visual arts, or as Antoine Schnapper put it, the loss of Saint-Cloud “seriously falsifies our judgment of Mignard and of the history of monumental decoration in France.”^[38]

2.1 Madame: Henrietta of England and Elisabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate

2.1.1 Monsieur’s two wives also played important roles as mécènes, although in quite different ways. Monsieur’s first wife, Henriette, was the youngest daughter of Charles I of England and Henriette Marie of France. After Charles’s defeat in 1646 the two Henriettas took refuge in France, and Monsieur’s desire to marry the daughter was supposedly so great that he temporarily put aside his interest in men to woo her.

2.1.2 The portraits of Henriette painted by writers and memorialists of the time describe a young woman of great beauty and pleasing manners who had acquired “a thousand agreeable abilities.” These included not only a taste for literature in three languages, but also the ability to sing and to play harpsichord.^[39] According to Mary Evelyn, Henriette was a particularly talented harpsichordist:

Besides her voice, conducted with such skill and naturally sweet, she touches the harpsicals [sic] to the astonishment of the profoundest masters; who willingly acknowledge, that she gives those relishes and graces to her play that it is impossible for them to reach; when she dances, it is with so much ease and unconcernment as one would imagine in her figures the motion of some goddess descended.… Religion and virtue give the rule to all her actions, yet does not the severity of either lessen the vivacity of her humour, which is so universally charming and agreeable.^[40]

She played throughout her life, and she attracted to the court a number of prominent harpsichordists, including Chambonnières.^[41]

2.1.3 She was likewise an avid singer and guitarist who cultivated major figures in each of these areas. A portrait of her attributed to Jean Nocret presents her holding a book of manuscript music open to the air “J’avois déja passé un jour sans la voir,” by Michel Lambert.^[42] In a letter dated May 29, 1665, Charles II of England indicates that he had sent her compositions for guitar by Francesco Corbetta, who later composed a “Tombeau sur la mort de Madame d’Orléans” that he included in the first volume of La Guitarre royale (1671).^[43] The sarabande that follows in the same key had verses mourning Henriette (“Falloit-il, ô dieux, qui la fîtes si belle, la faire mortelle?”) composed to it by “Mademoiselle des Jardins.” Corbetta set the sarabande melody with the new verses as an air for soprano and bass voices with guitar and continuo.^[44]

2.1.4 Henriette also supported the work of major literary figures, including Molière (with whom she was connected through Monsieur), and Racine, who dedicated Andromaque to her in 1667, declaring that she had “honored [the play] with some tears at my first reading of it.”^[45] Finally, Madame cultivated a lifelong friendship with Marie-Madeleine Pioche, comtesse de La Fayette (1634–1693), author of La Princesse de Clèves and other novels. Henriette convinced her to write a biographical Histoire de Madame Henriette d’Angleterre, which remains one of the primary sources of details on her life. Henriette became close to Louis XIV, and there were whispers of an affair, supposedly covered up by Louis’s dalliance with Louise de La Vallière, one of Madame’s ladies. Whatever the truth of the matter, the early 1660s was a period in which the life of Philippe’s court was most integrated with that of Louis’s: both Madame and Monsieur were frequently at court where they took part in ballets de cour and other entertainments.^[46]

2.1.5 After Henriette’s death in 1670, Monsieur married his second wife, Elisabeth Charlotte, in 1671. The new Madame was a reluctantly converted Lutheran, a German princess who was suspicious of French finery and liked nothing better than to be out hunting in the fresh air. Initially, the marriage was happy, but Monsieur’s favorites began to criticize Madame’s behavior at every turn. Her relationship with the king was damaged when he invaded and laid waste to her homeland, and it deteriorated further when he took Madame de Maintenon, whom Madame despised, as his mistress and then morganatic wife. A perpetual outsider, Madame kept up an extensive correspondence throughout her life, which became an important source of information on the French court.^[47]

2.1.6 Although she was certainly no intellectual, she was well read and curious. Her reputation was such that by the time of her death, the Mercure could declare in eulogy:

True savants and men of letters have suffered a particular loss. This august Princess liked them, considered them, and protected them with discernment through her great knowledge of all aspects of the arts, and above all, those that involved beautiful antiquity. Her particular taste for antiquities made her cabinet one of the richest and most magnificent in the world of learning.^[48]

The “cabinet” contained a large collection of medals, both ancient and modern, which numbered nearly 1,000 pieces by the time of her death.^[49]

2.1.7 Her main artistic interest was the theater, of which she was a discerning connoisseur.^[50] She was both the dedicatee of a number of plays and collections of poetry and one of the theater’s staunchest defenders at court when Louis XIV turned against it under the influence of Madame de Maintenon.^[51] An admirer of Lully, she nevertheless participated in the French trend of regarding opera as an extension of spoken theater, and she admitted that her favorite music was that of the birds and horns she heard while hunting.^[52] Nevertheless, she played guitar and took lessons, following the example of Louis XIV.^[53] When it came to sacred music, she could never accustom herself to the Catholic style that was so different from the Protestant chorales she had sung in her childhood and continued to sing when no one was listening.

3. Musicians in the Service of the Orléans

3.0.1 If neither Monsieur nor Elisabeth Charlotte shared Louis XIV’s fascination with music, they evidently relished fêtes of all kinds in which music played a role, and both avidly participated in and staged court entertainments throughout their lives. From his youth, Monsieur was given to hosting frequent fêtes. The largest of these involved many of the same elements as those organized at the royal court: promenades in the gardens with hidden musicians, elaborate light effects, concerts, plays, divertissements, and (occasionally) operas, ballets, balls, boat trips on the nearby Seine, and a great deal of eating and drinking.

3.1 The Musical Household

3.1.1 Much of the music for these events was provided by musicians employed on a permanent basis, both officers of Monsieur’s maison (official household) and others. The largest intact body of documents describing the musical forces employed by the Orléans are the official listings of the maison, both published registers, such as L’État de la France, and manuscript “États de la maison.” These sources indicate Philippe I’s maison had already been established by the time he was twelve, in 1652, and was expanded some time before 1655, its composition and pay scale being based upon that of Gaston d’Orléans.^[54] Thereafter the basic composition of Monsieur’s household music remained essentially unchanged; one prominent alteration was the disappearance of a teacher of the guitar, Bernard de Jourdan, who had also been Louis XIV’s teacher since 1650. A manuscript état for the household dated 1655 lists him without pay.^[55]

3.1.2 Although the états are important sources of information on the musical forces employed by the Orléans, they present several problems. Not only it is impossible to determine precise dates of service for many of their musicians because of multiple-year gaps between editions of L’État de la France and the scattered manuscript états that survive, but the earliest états also do not provide complete listings of the musicians (see Appendix 1 for a listing of the sources and their contents). In Monsieur’s case, the first extant document listing musicians’ names (rather than just positions) is a manuscript dated 1655, and the first edition of L’État de la France to record names appeared in 1665. The listings in L’État de la France also are not entirely trustworthy; for example, Etienne Richard, who died in 1669, continued to be listed as Monsieur’s player of dessus de viole until 1680.

3.1.3 Lacunae in the états become particularly apparent when comparing their information with the rare surviving documents issued by the Orléans and their musicians. One such document, the brevet (contract) of one of Monsieur’s tailles-basses, not only provides the exact date of his employment but also notes that the position had been opened by the resignation of its previous possessor. The document further informs us that the musicians of Monsieur’s chamber were required to live at his court, and evidently thus spent considerable time there:

Today, the thirtieth day of the month of September 1663, Monseigneur fils de France, only brother of the king, duke of Orléans, Valois, and Chartres, being at Paris, being well informed of the capacity that Damien Le Vert has acquired in music, His Royal Highness has retained and retains him in the position of one of the two tailles-basses of his music (which was heretofore occupied by Jean Gourlin, and is vacant at present by his resignation), to have, hold, and henceforth exercise the said position. The said Le Vert is to enjoy and use the honors, powers, privileges, exemptions, liberties, income [gages], rights, fruits, profits, revenues, and remunerations thereto appertaining. The said Royal Highness wishes and orders that the said Le Vert will in the future be housed and employed in the said quality in the états of his maison, by virtue of the present contract which testifies to his wishes, signed by his hand and countersigned by me, his comptroller and the secretary of his orders, household, and finances.^[56]

We also know that at least some of these offices were purchased: a series of notarial documents records that Jean Henry d’Anglebert borrowed 1,000 livres from Jean Grenouillet de Sablières, the intendant of Monsieur’s Musique de la Chambre, in order to purchase the office of harpsichordist previously held by Henry Du Mont, and subsequently had difficulty paying him back.^[57]

3.1.4 By far the greatest problem presented by the états is that the maison they describe was by nature a largely fixed entity while the reality of practice was quite flexible. This situation was no different from that of the royal Musique de la Chambre, where offices were not infrequently repurposed as needs changed over time.^[58] Philippe also hired a considerable number of extra musicians who turn up in documents as “ordinaire” or simply “musicien du duc d’Orléans.” In some cases, their exact status and function is impossible to determine, but many of these musicians formed relatively stable ensembles outside the official maison.^[59]

3.1.5 The relative lack of information concerning the artistic patronage of the Orléans family is in part due to their position in history. Not only did they have a greater desire for privacy than the king’s court afforded (and thus there were fewer witnesses to report artistic events at their court), but it was their misfortune to have had their seat in Paris. The turbulent history of that city did their memory a disservice: the main archives of the family were destroyed in the chaos of 1848 and, along with it, many sources that might have allowed a more complete picture of their patronage.^[60] The largest remaining body of documents, the “fonds de Dreux” at the Archives Nationales, yields little in the way of evidence about their artistic activities.^[61] A history of the Orléans’ musique must therefore rely on a combination of information gleaned from the états along with scattered pay records and documents that were preserved largely outside of the family’s archives.

3.1.6 These surviving documents indicate that the Orléans household, like those of most of the royal family, was modeled upon that of the king in its basic division into Chapelle [Chapel], Chambre [Chamber], and Écurie [Stable]. In Monsieur’s maison, however, musicians appear only as members of the Écurie and the Chambre, the latter group possibly serving double duty in the Chapel when required (see Table 1). The musical activities of the Chambre were overseen by a maître de la musique (also called intendant). The musicians under his direction consisted of eight singers divided variously between the usual adult male voice types of the period (haute-contre, taille-haute, taille-basse and basse), two viol players (usually subdivided into basse- and dessus de viole), and a joueur de clavecin. L’État de la France refers to this group as the “douze musicians ordinaires.” Monsieur also employed, at least from 1688 onwards, six enfants de chœur to sing in the chapel at Saint-Cloud.^[62]

3.1.7 The Écurie expanded from its initial force of one trumpet and a lute sometime between its founding and 1663. It was modeled upon the royal household’s division between the Swiss and French guards, the Swiss employing players of the fife and kettledrum, and the French two trumpeters and a drummer. The household of Madame, an institutionally separate but functionally connected entity, originally employed a lutenist, but the position was quickly converted to a harpsichordist, designated either as joueur or maître de clavecin. In all, Monsieur employed a total of thirty-seven musicians, making his musique the largest of any noble house in France after that of the king.^[63]

3.1.8 The composition of maisons of the royal family was fixed by the crown according to rank and the king’s “wishes,” as many états describe it.^[64] The musical forces allotted to Philippe’s maison were based on that of Gaston, which had been founded in the 1620s, and designed for the needs of an early seventeenth-century princely household in which singing the part-music of airs de cour and motets would have been its main occupation. This design proved to be insufficient for Monsieur’s entertainment regimen of balls, chamber music, and theatrical pieces. This problem seems to have been solved through at least three different means: 1) assembling two ensembles outside of the maison: a violin band of nine members and a chamber group of three members; 2) employing musicians who either were courtiers or who were employed by courtiers, including an oboe band; 3) engaging musicians who were either quite flexible in their performance abilities or having musicians perform functions different from their positions’ designations.

3.2 Forces outside the Official Household

3.2.1 Like the musiques of the Chambre and Écurie, Monsieur’s violin band and Petite musique were modeled upon the royal Twenty-Four Violins and small ensembles that performed at the Coucher du roi and other occasions. This practice of employing musicians outside of the official household was not limited to Monsieur. An “Abregé des estates de la maison de la reyne” (Maria Theresa of Spain) for 1676 lists a musique consisting of eight singers in pairs (two boys, two hautes-contres, two tailles, and two basses) and two instrumentalists (basse de viole and harpsichord), but continues that

besides the musicians who have brevets, there is a voix concordant, a voix de taille, two dessus de violon, two tailles de violon, and a basse de violon who serve continually and are paid by ordonnances.^[65]

In other words, beyond the ordinaires of the official maison, who were issued brevets, the queen regularly employed two extra singers and a band of five violinists. Thus, it was not unusual for members of the royal family to employ musicians in addition to those assigned to their households, indicating the important place of music in their activities. Even Monsieur, who was not particularly interested in music for its own sake, needed to supplement his forces in order to satisfy the requirements of his position.

3.2.2 Judging from the number of reports of performances, the most active of Monsieur’s ensembles was his violin band, a reflection of the prince’s interest in balls and entertaining. The bande was probably in existence as early as 1660, when the Gazette de France describes “un charmant Concert de Violons” playing during a fête at Saint-Cloud.^[66] Over time, Monsieur’s violins became a well known institution: Laurent, in his Lettres en vers to Monsieur, referred to the group as “tous vos violons la bande” in 1677, and the Mercure describes them as “les violons de Monsieur” in reports of various events in the 1690s.^[67] The only extant pay record, a receipt dated 1694, lists the group as “les neuf violons de Monsieur frère du Roy,” indicating that it was a standing ensemble with a fixed number of members.^[68] The group received 1,800 livres for the second half of that year, meaning that each of the members earned 400 livres per year in Monsieur’s service. The seven musicians who signed the receipt were Jean-Baptiste Anet père, Guillaume Dufresne, Edme Dumont, Jacques Duviver, Pierre Marchand, Jacques Nivelon, and Jean-Baptiste Prieur.^[69] Few biographical details concerning Dufresne, Dumont, Duvivier, Nivelon, and Prieur remain, apart from what can be gleaned from scant archival materials.

3.2.3 Archival records of the band’s members indicate they held positions in the Orléans’ music for some time. Indeed, the musicians employed in the violin band and Petite musique seem in general to have led complex musical lives, leaving behind them a considerable fund of documents that allow partial reconstruction of their ensembles. These documents invariably refer to Monsieur’s violinists as officier rather than ordinaire: bass violinist Jean Converset is listed as “officier de la musique de chambre de Monsieur” in a series of notarial records dating from 1673 through 1687. His son Noël (b. 1674) served Monsieur at an unknown date, but it is not clear whether he was acting as a replacement for his father. Either violinist therefore may have been among the “camarades” not named in the pay receipt of 1694.^[70] Jean-Baptiste Anet père (1650–1710) was serving Monsieur by 1673 according to his marriage contract, and he continued, earning 400 livres per year, until his death in 1710.^[71] Another member of the group, Pierre Marchand (d. ca. 1730), declared himself an officer of the music of Monsieur in notarial documents in 1678, in 1684, and in 1700.^[72]

3.2.4 The group seems to have been well enough regarded to be hired or loaned for special occasions: on June 14, 1679, for example, the bande of Monsieur and the Twenty-Four Violins of the king were combined for a performance of a Te Deum and a motet by Jean Mignon at the church of the Augustinians in Paris.^[73] Monsieur likewise loaned his violins to members of his household for entertainments. They played at Boisfranc’s chateau in July of 1679 for a gathering to welcome the escort for Marie Louise d’Orléans (1662–1689), who would shortly marry Charles II of Spain. According to the report in the Mercure, Monsieur’s violins played “during the meal” and “continued for a kind of a little ball” in which Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle “danced a number of times” along with members of their court. The ball concluded in “Spanish” flavor with “several sarabande entrées” performed “by the best dancers of the Opéra” to “the sound of guitars,” and by “bohemian dances” with “basque drum and castanets.”^[74]

3.2.5 A number of Monsieur’s violinists combined their duties with performances for Molière’s troupe. After concluding a now-lost agreement with Molière, three of Monsieur’s violinists—Duvivier, Pierre Marchand, and Jean Converset—signed an agreement among themselves stipulating that they had to be hired as a group except in cases where musical requirements prevented all three (“tous trois violons de Monsieur frère unique du roi”) from being engaged.^[75] Pay records in the archives of the Comédie Française and scattered indications of performers in Charpentier’s manuscript scores indicate the participation of these violinists in productions of several of the composer’s comedies for Molière’s theater: Le Malade imaginaire (May 1674), Circé (March 1675), L’Inconnu (November 1676), and Les Fous divertissants (May 1681).^[76] It appears, therefore, that a group from Monsieur’s violin band played for the Comédie at least on an irregular basis, a situation that probably began with Molière’s connection to Monsieur and continued under Charpentier. According to the livret for the premiere of La Princesse d’Élide in 1664, the continuo group for the ensemble also consisted of a number of players employed by Monsieur and Louis XIV: d’Anglebert and Etienne Richard (harpsichord), Leonard Itier (lute), and Pierre Antoine Le Moine (viol).^[77]

3.2.6 The second ensemble employed by Monsieur outside the maison was the “Petite musique du cabinet.” Its existence is attested by the 1683 marriage contract of Jean Balthazar Quicler (or Kuicler) in which he and Claude Jacquesson, a lutenist, are listed as ordinaires belonging to the group.^[78] The ensemble also appears in two reports of entertainments given for Monsieur’s court. The latest, an account of a fête staged at Saint-Cloud in 1681, describes the ensemble as consisting of Jacquesson, playing together with “Sr. Balthazar” (presumably Quicler) on harpsichord and a treble viol player named Garnier.^[79] An earlier account from 1668 describes a concert given in the presence of Monsieur and Madame by a similar trio ensemble (consisting of Garnier, a keyboardist, and a lutenist), indicating that the membership of the Petit musique was fairly stable over considerable spans of time:

“Méliton” is probably Pierre Méliton, who would be organist at St.-Jean-en-Grève from about 1670 until 1682; he was thus probably the harpsichordist. “Le Moine” undoubtedly refers to a member of the well-known lute-playing family, perhaps Pierre Le Moine, who sang basse-taille in Monsieur’s chamber from 1655 until some time before 1669 and still appears in the capitation records as Monsieur’s musician in 1695.^[81] The gambist is presumably the Jean Garnier “still among the renowned masters of the viol” living “close to the Palais-Royal” in 1692.^[82] A full listing of the musicians who can be identified as having worked for Monsieur in ensembles both inside and outside of the maison can be found in Table 2.

3.2.7 The augmentation of Philippe I’s forces for large-scale entertainments probably also involved the temporary hiring of musiciens extraordinaires (although no records of such hirings are extant), as well as the use of musicians employed by courtiers. Indeed, the third ensemble that performed in Monsieur’s entertainments, an oboe band, was evidently drawn from such musicians. A report in the Mercure galant on Monsieur’s activities at the château of Montargis in October of 1699 says that during meals, “the trumpets of Monsieur and the oboes of Mr de Rosmadec, his premier gentilhomme de la chambre, could be heard.”^[83] Although no other document mentions this group, its existence may shed light on the composition of musical forces in large noble houses. The musique of Monsieur’s cousin, Mlle de Guise, employed servants who doubled as musicians (or, sometimes, vice versa), but there is little indication that the Orléans did so, and the reason may be that they called upon musicians employed by courtiers like Rosmadec.^[84]

3.3 The Function of Musicians in the Maison

3.3.1 The frequent contradictions between official listings of Monsieur’s maison and other archival documents reflect the particular needs of Philippe I’s court musique. It was nowhere near as large as the king’s, yet it served many of the same functions. There are in fact no records of any performances by singers of the Musique de la Chambre in their named positions. Many were players of the lute, guitar, and/or viol, and they may have been engaged for their abilities as instrumentalists. These musicians include Pierre Lemoine as well as François Martin père, who were employed as singers in Monsieur’s chambre from before 1655 but published a book of Pieces de guitairre, à battre et à pinser (1663) and whose sons played viol and harpsichord. Nicolas Fleury, employed briefly around 1665, was well known for his Méthode pour apprendre facilement à toucher le théorbe sur la basse continüe (1660). He was replaced in 1669 by the lutenist Léonard Itier, who served as haute-contre and taille-basse while also being a member of the royal Musique de la Chambre as theorbist and viol player. His son-in-law, Pierre Henry Lagneau, was almost certainly both a lutenist and a singer because he succeeded Itier in the royal music, served side by side with him in Monsieur’s Chambre from 1694 in the position of haute-contre, and was considered “the best singing master in Paris” in 1722.^[85]

3.3.2 Flexibility was also common among Monsieur’s instrumentalists, especially the players of the viol, who frequently doubled on lute and/or theorbo (which was not uncommon) but also on harpsichord. The position of dessus de viole seems to have been particularly labile. The first extant état in fact lists the position as including theorbo; it was held by the famous gambist and theorbist, Nicolas Hottman (1613–63).^[86] By 1665, the position was filled by the organist Etienne Richard (ca. 1621–1669), who had already been serving as harpsichordist to Henriette from at least 1663.^[87] It is not clear what happened after Richard’s death, since L’État de la France continues to list him in the position, but sometime around 1681 it was filled by François Beaumavielle (d. 1689), famous for his basse-taille roles at the Académie Royale de Musique (see Appendix 1). Although it is possible that Beaumavielle played viol or theorbo, he could have been hired to participate as a singer in the divertissements staged by Monsieur during this period. After Beaumavielle’s death, the position was taken by Jean Balthazar Quicler, who the manuscript états for 1700 and 1701 indicate played instead basse de viole, presumably to provide more continuo players.^[88] Quicler seems also to have been a generalist musician: although all the états list him as a viol player, he played harpsichord in the Petite musique, and a “Balthazar” paid his capitation tax as an organist in the employ of Monsieur in 1694.^[89] If Quicler did indeed double on harpsichord and viol, he was apparently not the first of Monsieur’s musicians to do so. His colleague, Jean Martin, who took the other position as gambist, is listed in his inventaire après décès as “claveciniste ordinaire de la musique de Monsieur, frère du Roi,” and his name appears next to Balthazar’s in the capitation lists as Monsieur’s organist. Martin’s inventaire après décès, in fact, indicates that he owned two harpsichords, including a Flemish double, as well as several gambas.^[90]

3.3.3 Thus, throughout at least the later part of Monsieur’s life, the musicians of his maison seem to have been engaged for maximum flexibility. The result was a musique particularly rich in players of continuo instruments: theorbo, viol, and keyboards. That this body of instrumentalists did in fact play together, at least on occasion, is supported by an unusually detailed report of a fête given by the Orléans at Saint-Cloud on November 26, 1686. Among the events described was a “fort beau Concert composé de Clavessins, Violes, Tuorbes, & Dessus de Violon” that lasted for over an hour.^[91] Nearly twenty years earlier, Robinet described a similar group of instruments playing for a gathering organized for Henriette.^[92] Such events demonstrate that Monsieur combined members of his different ensembles.

3.3.4 In fact, Monsieur never had fewer than three keyboard players (counting the harpsichordist in the Petite musique), a practice that may relate to the nature of the musicians who held the official position of harpsichordist. Unlike the generalist viol players and singers, the harpsichordists of Monsieur’s chamber were usually well-known keyboard specialists. At the same time, these figures often combined service to Monsieur with other positions, both in Paris and at the royal court. Henry Dumont (1610–84), who later achieved fame as sous-maître in the royal chapel, was harpsichordist to Monsieur’s Chamber in 1655, and the title page of his Meslanges (1657) refers to him as “Organiste de son Altesse Royale le duc d’Anjou, Frère unique du Roy.”^[93] His position was purchased in 1660 by Jean-Henry d’Anglebert, who is likewise called “organiste du duc d’Orléans” in the record of his son’s baptism.^[94] Since no official position of “organist” is ever mentioned in records of the maison and because d’Anglebert appears in all other documents as harpsichordist, it is likely that his position required performance on both instruments. D’Anglebert held the post until his death, but (like Etienne Richard) also served the royal court: he was harpsichordist of the king’s chamber from 1662 onward, and from 1680 until 1690 was joueur d’épinette to the Dauphine. D’Anglebert’s successor, Gabriel Garnier (d. ca. 1730), served simultaneously as organist at the chapel of the Invalides in Paris. Like d’Anglebert, Garnier is called “organiste du duc d’Orléans” in a baptismal record of 1693, while L’État de la France for that period lists him as harpsichordist.^[95]

3.3.5 Thus, it would appear that, unlike the other keyboardists in Monsieur’s service, the musicians who held the official position of harpsichordist were hired for their abilities as organists (for their knowledge of liturgy and ability to play service music), as well as harpsichordists. Nevertheless, their duties and musical activities in the service of the Orléans remain largely unknown, as there are very few detailed descriptions of music in the Orléans chapels. There is no indication of how Du Mont, d’Anglebert, and Garnier negotiated the duties of their multiple posts, but the most obvious solution was that one of the other keyboardists in Monsieur’s service replaced them when duties elsewhere called them away.

3.3.6 Monsieur’s organists were not his only musicians who needed to negotiate this problem of multiple and potentially conflicting duties. A few well-known musicians in Monsieur’s Chamber were simultaneously active at the royal court. Most of these joined at the time of the founding of the maison and left sometime in the ten years between the 1655 and 1665 états, including Hottman and Guillaume d’Estival, who served the queen in 1661, then in the royal Chapel and Chamber in 1663.

3.3.7 The complex interactions between the musique of Monsieur and that of the king seem to have declined after the 1660s. The reasons for this were probably several, including the gradual abandonment of ballets de cour (in which Monsieur and Madame frequently participated as dancers) and the dominance of opera, which they often saw at the Palais-Royal (hence not requiring the involvement of their own musicians). The death of Henriette, who shared an interest in music with Louis XIV and who often organized musical events, probably contributed as well. From the 1670s onward, Monsieur seems generally to have avoided engaging musicians who simultaneously served in the royal music.^[96] Indeed, a number of musicians used a post in Monsieur’s musique as a jumping-off point to royal service, particularly the violinists, a number of whom later joined the Twenty-Four Violins.^[97]

3.3.8 The intendants led equally complicated lives. Beginning with the establishment of the household, the position was held by Jean Grenouillet de Sablières (1627–1684). A member of the generation of courtier-musicians who flourished under Louis XIII, Sablières held aristocratic titles along with offices in the royal household.^[98] He composed a number of airs, as well as motets and devotional pieces, which are largely no longer extant. He is perhaps most famous for his role in the early history of the Académie Royale de Musique, for which he wrote Les Amours de Diane et d’Endymion (1671). It is not clear what became of Sablières’s position. In 1676, he succeeded Étienne Moulinié as intendant et maître de musique des États de Languedoc in Montpellier, and lived comfortably in the region until his death in 1684.^[99] The État de la France nevertheless continues to record Sablières as intendant of the musique of Philippe I until 1699, perhaps succeeded by his son (Appendix 1). Editions of L’État de la France from 1692 to 1699 record him as sharing the position with an otherwise unknown “Charle Lalouette” (who may be related to the composer Jean-François Lalouette). According to two manuscript états, Philippe II’s protégé, Charles-Hubert Gervais, took over in 1700.

3.3.9 The position of joueur de clavecin in Madame’s household, although initially occupied by renowned musicians, seems to have been only intermittently held after her death in 1670. Etienne Richard served as harpsichordist to Henriette from 1663, and his playing was the centerpiece of a number of concerts she held in the mid-to-late 1660s.^[100] After Richard’s death, Jacques Hardel (1643–1678) held the position until the end of his life. One of the most famous keyboardists of his day, Hardel also served as harpsichord teacher to Monsieur’s daughter by Henriette, Marie-Louise d’Orléans (1662–1689), and probably also to Anne-Marie d’Orléans (1669–1728).^[101] Charles Couperin (II) seems to have been employed by Madame, as suggested by an archival document issued January 15, 1679, that refers to him as “organiste de St Gervais et officier de Madame la Duchesse d’Orléans,” perhaps replacing Hardel.^[102] After Couperin’s death and Marie-Louise’s marriage in 1679, the position of harpsichordist to Madame seems to have suffered from Elisabeth-Charlotte’s lack of interest in the instrument. No one is listed in the états of her household until François Baron appears in a manuscript état of 1692, perhaps serving as harpsichord teacher to Madame’s daughter, Elisabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans (1676–1744). L’État de la France indicates the position was held by Gabriel Cordier in 1695, then by Gaspard Le Vasseur, who retained it from around 1702 until Elisabeth-Charlotte’s death in 1722. None of these musicians played an important role in the French musical scene, and almost nothing is recorded of their lives.^[103]

3.3.10 The precise roles and duties of the members of the Musique de la Chambre in the musical life of Monsieur’s court remain unclear. Certain members seem to have made considerable careers for themselves outside Monsieur’s court, taking an active part in Parisian musical life. Claude Oudot, for example, served Monsieur in the position of basse from around 1669 and then haute-contre from around 1689 until his death in 1696, but he also simultaneously held positions as maître de chapelle for the Jesuits and maître de musique for the Académie Française, writing numerous pieces for various patrons and institutions. Lagneau, Anet, and Duval all played in the Opéra orchestra, at least in 1704.^[104] Others, such as Sablières, Gillier, and Gervais, seem to have composed for the Orléans when the family called upon them.

3.3.11 The engagement of Monsieur’s musicians in multiple activities beyond their prince’s court may have been a result of their financial situation. A manuscript listing of the maison made sometime around 1689 includes marginal notes indicating that various offices were not paid, and next to the listing of the Musique de la Chambre it notes that “Toute la musique est sans gages,” in other words, that its members did not benefit from the income generated from the purchase of their offices.^[105] A note at the beginning of the listing of Monsieur’s officers explains that:

Sometimes the maisons of the fils de France and other princes, which record their états with the Cour des aydes, have suffered the revocation of their privileges, which have also been reestablished. The maison of Monsieur has never been curtailed since its establishment, but because he has a large number of useless officers who, having neither gages nor function, may not enjoy these privileges, it would be possible to remove them from [the list of] those of this type. They will be marked below.^[106]

Because the Musique de la Chambre had musicians listed as officeholders throughout Monsieur’s lifetime, because some (such as Damien Le Vert) were issued brevets outlining their privileges, and some (such as d’Anglebert) were known to have paid for their offices, and finally, because the états indicate that offices not infrequently changed hands during the period in question, this pronouncement is difficult to understand. Given that this document seems to have been written around 1689 and that records of economic and musical activity of the musicians in the Chambre stem mostly from the 1660s, it may be that they at some point became “useless” and their offices converted to nominal appointments. This might explain why many of its members played active musical roles in other positions in Monsieur’s maison (such as the Petite musique) or in Parisian institutions, and it could shed light on the fate of Sablières, who seems to have left Paris around 1676. Unless other documents surface to clarify the matter, however, this can only be a speculative conclusion.

3.3.12 What became of Monsieur’s musical forces after his death is equally unclear. In his testament, Monsieur asked Philippe II to retain all his officers or to pay them the cost of their office.^[107] Although Louis XIV gave Philippe II the same rights and household as his father, the listings of the future regent’s household in L’Etat de la France include musicians only in the Écurie but not the Chambre, perhaps because its musicians were no longer officially officers. By then Philippe II had formed his own musique, which included Gervais, Anet père, and probably Baltazar Quicler, all of whom he remained in his service after Monsieur’s death.

3.4 Musician Families in the Service of the Orléans