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François Couperin was the finest composer at the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV. In view of the fact that Versailles was the most vainglorious court in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Europe, it is remarkable that Couperin was both personally and artistically discreet and modest. His musical portraits of people and his descriptions of scenes and events were more often intimate, comic and tender than pompously circumstantial. He wrote some extremely beautiful and genuinely spiritual music for ecclesiastical use and produced instrumental music for both strings and woodwind for the delectation of the King and nobility. Much of the latter music submitted to the convention of the trio sonata for two violins, string bass and continuo harpsichord or theorbo: a medium of Italian origin.

François Couperin
(France, 1668–1733)

CHAN 0684

Couperin greatly admired Italian baroque composers such as Corelli, and his sonatas demonstrate his lifelong commitment to uniting, in his music, the best of both French and Italian musical conventions. Les Nations is the title under which Couperin published a collection of large-scale sonatas. Earlier sonatas were not only substantially revised but also given new, more topically relevant names before publication, and this is true also of the sonatas included in this collection.