François Couperin - Les Barricades Mystérieuses, Harpsichord

[@Cayres18]

I liked this channel!

[@oli6909]

Great work, nice interpretation and extraordonary composition ❤

[@fhugheveleigh2]

This extraordinary work of Couperin is one of my favourites and here it is played with feeling and poise. Thank you.

[@RhadMusic]

Thank you for your nice words! I'm glad you enjoy it!

[@historicalpiano]

It is a great work and great performance! This "simple" and "secco" sound picture is a special characteristic here, together with the "tonal wandering" esp. in the last Couplet. This contrast of simple structure and delicate harmonic development gives a great tension. It was among Bartók's favourite Couperin compositions as well. A note about the temperament, Couperin used 1/4 meantone, so playing so is more authentic. He uses the A flat pitch for in-temperament dissonances and the wolf for special effects: worth showing them. :)

[@RhadMusic]

Really? I was playing this in meantone and I thought the A flat (and everything else) sounded very intriguing!! But the combination of the key and Couperin being late Baroque... I thought it might be "safer" with a later temperament. I never heard of a composer using the wolf's interval on purpose. Now I wish I recorded it on meantone!

[@historicalpiano]

@@RhadMusic Give it a try and you'll see. You can try a molled meantone, 1/5 or 1/6 comma or split wolf meantone. When meantone went out of use is a question, but musicologists think that Vivaldi, Couperin and the first half of Scarlatti were actually considered to be played in meantone. Later, Scarlatti started to use all tonalities as major tonality or in modulations, and probably there he changed to some well temperament. The meantone _was_ in significant use when Bach wrote the WTC. In part, against the meantone - which had to be present there actually. I guess it was more of a split wolf meantone (from the WTC I composition patterns, actually). It is quite a good fun to play the earlier pieces of the WTC 1 in meantone as well, e.g. d minor of B flat major. The preludes especially are composed in a way that the "mistemperament" tension builds up, more and more "problems" come; and than, at the tip of the prelude, Bach starts repeatedly hitting key combinations that sound _awful_, just as he would be showing to you that "this is sooo bad on your piano, and, look, try this one, this is even worse, don't you hear it enough?"... or something like this. :) Couperin's "Lully's apotheosis" is e.g. a composition that uses the E flat - A flat dissonances to depict earthquake and the complaining of Lully's untalented contemporaries like "cats". The recordings in well temperaments or ET sound too pretty... the "rumble" and the "cat-sound" effects appear only in some good meantone performences, e.g. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bpupnYOqft5_nJI (you can start with listening to movements IV-V-VI-VII only at first.)

[@RhadMusic]

@historicalpiano Wow... I wasn't aware of a lot of that. I'll check it out! Sadly it's difficult to find texts about specific periods/areas/composers and their proper temperaments. Some articles I 've read supported that meantone survived in some cases well into the romantic era, and that e.g. Chopin used meantone for his piano (which of course sounds weird because he composed so much for keys with many flats).

[@colinbooth2421]

vivement?

[@RhadMusic]

Lively.

[@colinbooth2421]

@@RhadMusic Exactly!