Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon

Portrait of Fr. Brillon from 1769 by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon , née Boyvin d'Hardancourt (born December 13, 1744 in Paris , † December 5, 1824 in Villers-sur-Mer ) was a French harpsichordist , pianist and composer .

Life

Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon was the daughter of the royal treasurer Louis-Claude Boyvin d'Hardancourt (approx. 1710–1756) and his wife Marie-Elizabeth, née Martin (1723–1785), and learned to play the harpsichord as a child.

In October 1763 she married the tax clerk Jacques Brillon de Jouy (1722–1787), who was 22 years her senior, with whom she had two daughters. The salon she held every Wednesday and Saturday was a permanent fixture at her country estate in Passy . In addition to André-Noël Pagin , foreign musicians who were just in Paris performed with her and she herself played the harpsichord and pianoforte. She gained an excellent reputation as a musician, although she did not appear in public concerts and her own compositions were not printed. Several composers such as Johann Schobert , Luigi Boccherini , Ernst Eichner and Henri-Joseph Rigel dedicated sonatas to her.

In 1777 Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon met the American ambassador Benjamin Franklin , who had rented a house on the same street in Passy as the Brillon de Jouys country house. Since then he has been part of the solid circle around the musician and an intensive friendship and lively correspondence developed.

After the death of her husband, she sold the estate in Passy and spent the period of the French Revolution with her daughters and their families in a castle in the Seine-et-Marne department that belonged to one of her sons-in-law. From 1808 she lived partly in Paris and in Villers, where she died at the age of 80.

Importance for musicology

Already at the beginning of the 20th century, the friendship with Benjamin Franklin led to research on Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon as part of the Franklin research, which was funded by the American Philosophical Society . Around 400 works were discovered in the musician's sheet music library, which was started in the 1760s. This library is of particular importance because it is the only coherent French collection of its kind known to date. Some of the works were sold by the descendants to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 1957 , the rest is largely in private hands, and has been filmed, cataloged and evaluated.

The instrumental and vocal compositions by de Jouy Brillon in the music library come from a time when the harpsichord and fortepiano were still used side by side in France , but their musical peculiarities were not yet fully exploited. Six surviving works by the musician are expressly intended for several different keyboard instruments and thus document the transition from harpsichord to fortepiano in France. It is said that Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon owned a harpsichord, a German pianofort and an English pianofort, which Johann Christian Bach had sent her from London , and two of her trios name this instrument combination.

In 1768, when Luigi Boccherini wrote his 6 sonatas for piano and violin, G. 25–30 op. 5, the piano was still a relatively new instrument. Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon encouraged him to write the keyboard part, including the dynamic characters, especially for the new instrument. When the sonatas were published in 1769, for commercial reasons the publisher was forced to replace the reference “pianoforte” with “harpsichord” and to remove many dynamic markings because the harpsichord was still the dominant keyboard instrument.

The most famous composition by de Jouy Brillon is the "Marche des Insurgents" for keyboard instrument, composed in 1777 on the occasion of the American victory over the British armed forces in the Battle of Saratoga , which is now available in an orchestrated version. None of her works were published during her lifetime.

Works (selection)

• 1775–1783 ?: Trio for three harpsichords in C minor (alternatively: English piano, German piano and harpsichord )
• 1775–1783 ?: First collection of works for harpsichord or pianoforte with 15 sonatas for pianoforte and violin
• 1775–1785 ?: Sonata in A minor for fortepiano
• 1775–1785 ?: Trio for piano, violin and violoncello in G minor
• 1775–1785 ?: Quartet for harpsichord, two violins and double bass in E minor
• 1777: "Marche des Insurgents" ("March of the Insurgents"), first edition Hildegard Publishing Company, 1992
• 1779–1785 ?: Duets for harpsichord and fortepiano

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the relationship between Franklin and Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon: → "Benjamin Franklin and" The Stol'n Kiss "" by Dick Hoefnagel on the website of the Dartmouth College Library (English), accessed on August 2, 2014
2. ↑ Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon from the Sophie Drinker Institute website, accessed on August 1, 2014