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Louis Marchand (1669–1732) was a composer of the Versailles school, an organist and a harpsichord player. From 1684 he performed the duties of cathedral organist in Nevers, and from 1698 in Paris. He served as the Court organist from 1708–14.
Marchand was one of the finest French organists of his time. In 1717, Marchand was to face Johann Sebastian Bach in Dresden, but, having heard his rival play, he was stunned by his brilliance and declined to perform.
Louis Marchand wrote the opera Piram et Thisbée, two volumes of pieces for harpsichord and a volume of works for organ.
Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676, Paris – 1749, also Paris) was born in a musical family and at an early age he began to play the violin and harpsichord, while he perfected his organ studies under André Raison. He served as the Court musician of Louis XIV, and throughout his life he held the post of organist at various churches in Paris and was the music director of the Saint-Cyr Pension for girls.
As well as cantatas, of which Clérambault composed over thirty (assembled together in five collections published between 1710 and 1726), his pen produced many Church chants, sonatas for violin and basso continuo and collections for harpsichord and organ.
François Couperin (1668–1733) was a French organist, harpsichordist, composer and heir to the Couperin dynasty, which included several generations of musicians. Contemporaries referred to him as “le Grand”.
He began to study music under the tutelage of his father, Charles Couperin, after whose death in 1685 he occupied the post of organist at the Église Saint-Gervais in Paris. Eight years later, Couperin received an invitation to serve as the organist of the French Court, and from 1703 he also served as the Court harpsichordist.
It was for the harpsichord that Couperin wrote his principal works, which proved amazingly popular not just in France but abroad as well. In addition to his harpsichord pieces, Couperin also composed four Royal Concerti, ten concerti, several sonata trios, organ masses, motettes and three pre-Easter liturgies.
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Michel Corrette (1707, Rouen – 1795, Paris) was a French composer and organist. His father was the composer Gaspard Corrette.
From 1737 to 1780, Michel Corrette served as the organist of the Jesuit college in Paris, and from 1780 he was the Court organist of the Duc d’Angoulême.
He published his first sonatas at the age of twenty.
Corrette left a huge musical legacy behind him. His works include both Church and secular music, such as ballets, divertissements and organ concerti. The composer borrowed much in his music from works by other great contemporaries, in particular, in 1765, he revised Vivaldi’s Spring as the Church chant Laudate Dominum de coelis.
Corrette wrote several manuals for performing musical instruments, including Les Délices de la solitude, one of the first manuals for cello, and L′École d′Orphée, a manual for learning the violin.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750) came from a dynasty of musicians that lived in Turin for over two centuries. His passion for music manifested itself at an early age and he began studying the violin, harpsichord and, later, the organ with the most enormous pleasure.
In Arnstadt, where from 1703–1707 Bach served as the organist of the Neue Kirche, he made a meticulous study of organ works by the composers of Flanders, France and Northern Germany. As an organist at the Church of St Blaise in Mulhouse between 1707 and 1708, Bach became firmly established in the eyes of his contemporaries as an unsurpassed expert in organ music.
From 1708–1717 he held the post of Court Chamber Musician and Organist at the Ducal Kapelle at the Court of Weimar. This was when Bach was introduced to Italian art, perfected his technique as a composer and earned a reputation as an incomparable virtuoso, demanding connoisseur, teacher and qualified composer.
It is the Weimar period to which the vast majority of his works for organ can be linked.
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