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Elisabeth’s father, Claude Jacquet, who died in 1702, was a harpsichord maker; one of her brothers was organist at Saint-Louis-en-l’Île; her mother, Anne de la Touche, was connected by marriage to the Daquin family: perhaps the destiny of the child is not so surprising. She arrived at the court just at the point that it was in full effervescence due to the construction of Versailles (Louis XIV, in his forties, was at the height of his glory). The child was educated at the court, probably by Madame de Montespan, then by Madame de Maintenon when the latter replaced the former. In 1684 Elisabeth Jacquet married Marin de la Guerre, son of the composer and organist Pierre de La Guerre, who died five years earlier, and author in 1655 of the first piece of French theatre which was entirely sung. Marin, born in 1658, was also an organist, but at the Jesuit church in the Rue Saint-Antoine, then at Saint-Severin, before taking up again the prestigious post at the Saint Chapelle left by his brother Jerome in 1698. Two lineages of musicians are thus united, but little is known about their issue; Titon du Tillet speaks of a son, very gifted in music, but dead by the age of ten. Elisabeth de La Guerre then settled in Paris, without following the court to Versailles, probably to be closer to her spouse, and also to keep herself at a distance from the intrigues of those close to the king and the demands of etiquette. This did not prevent her visiting there: in 1685 her first pastoral was presented in the apartment of the Dauphin. In 1687 she published her first volume of pieces for the harpsichord, dedicated to the King, and lost in the meanderings of history. In 1691, Elisabeth de La Guerre was charged with conceiving Les Jeux in honour of the King’s victory at Mons.
The music is unfortunately lost. In the dedication Elisabeth addresses the King : “Presented at your court at the most tender age (this memory will be eternally precious to me), where I had the honor of staying for several years, I have learned, Sire, to consecrate to you all my waking hours. You deigned to appreciate the first fruits of my genius, and you have been pleased to receive more of its productions as well. But these particular signs of my zeal have not been enough for me, and I longed for the happy occasion in which I could bring them before the public. This is what has brought me to make this ballet for the theatre. Women before today have produced excellent works of poetry for the theatre, which have had great success. But until now no woman has tried to set an entire opera to music; and I gain this advantage from my enterprise, that the more it is extraordinary, the more worthy it is of you, Sire...” Elisabeth thus seemed quite conscious of her talent and of the originality, in her era, of being a woman composer.
The first notable work of Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre is her pastoral opera Céphale et Procris, on a libretto by Joseph-François Duché de Vancy, performed in 1694, and published by Ballard. After a prologue, traditionally dedicated to the King, the work is comprised of five long acts with ten characters, stuffed with numerous ballets, including a grand passecaille. Very close to Lully in manner, the style of Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre possesses a great harmonic mastery and a great freedom in the treatment of recitative, fluid and colorful, which influences the various arias of the work as well.
Elisabeth, at about the age of 40, lost one after another her father (1702), her son, and her husband. These sorrows were the point of departure for a period of intense activity, both as composer and performer, probably a distraction as well as indispensable to her livelihood. Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre gave an impressive number of public concerts between 1704 and 1717, at her home in Rue Regrattière, where the focus seems to have been on improvisation. At the same time she published many works for the harpsichord (including sonatas which were among the first in France), for violin or harpsichord, and French cantatas on subjects taken from the Scriptures (two volumes between 1708 and 1711). In 1707, Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre had, moreover, obtained a royal privilege to publish any vocal or instrumental works which she might compose: during the same year two volumes of pieces for harpsichord and sonatas in four to nine movements for violin appeared. But the originality of her writing appears also in her cantatas for soprano solo, Semele, L’Isle de Delos, Le Sommeil d’Ulisse, all dedicated to the Elector of Bavaria, and in her lighter works for the Théâtre de la Foire: popular songs, comic scenes (The Reconciliation of Pierrot and Nicole, included in The Girdle of Venus by Le Sage), drinking songs.... After 1717, her activity decreased notably, although her fame continued to spread. She composed a Te Deum celebrating the reinstatement of the young Louis XV in 1721. She then definitively retired from the public eye and died on June 27, 1729. She was interred in the Church of Saint-Eustache, the parish church of her last home in the Rue de Prouvaires. A medal with her likeness pays homage to her, showing her profile on the recto, and seated at the harpsichord on the verso, with the legend “I contended for the prize with the great musicians.” Who are these great musicians, contemporaries of Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre? The Daquins, already mentioned, Leclair, Couperin, Clérambault, Marchand, Lalande, Dandrieu, D’Anglebert, and certainly Lully. Titon du Tillet reproduced this medal on the same page as that of Campra, in the 1732 edition of his celebrated publication, The French Parnassus, accompanied by a laudatory biographical notice: there is no doubt that at that time Mademoiselle de La Guerre was considered as the equal of the greatest.
Mademoiselle de La Guerre’s will has been preserved: in the long lists of objects great and small which she bequeaths to her relatives, a single sentence mentions that which had been her life : “You will sell my large and small harpsichords from Paris along with that from Argentueil.”
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