LBMP–076: Louis Couperin 400 – Pièces de clavecin (Second edition)
From €40.45
Complete modern edition of Louis Couperin’s surviving harpsichord music, newly revised and published in 2026 to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of the composer’s birth, accompanied by an extensive bilingual study of the sources, transmission and performance of the repertory.
ISBN: 978-1917401-40-1 (Collector’s Edition) | 978-1917401-38-8 (Hardback) | 978-1917401-39-5 (Wire)
Edited by Jon Baxendale
- A handsome edition available in hardback and wire-bound volumes
- The first complete edition of Louis Couperin’s harpsichord pieces
- The only commercially available edition
- Full preface and commentary in English and French
- Four available formats
- Collector’s Edition
- Colour hardback cover with a matt finish (choice on checkout)
- Wire-bound with soft colour cover (choice on checkout)
- Tablet (PDF – one download available for 5 days)
Prices vary according to your needs. Please first choose the format you require.
Please note that if you are an EU customer, the prices include the VAT for your area. This is collected for orders under €150. EU customers whose orders exceed €150 will see the VAT until checkout, at which point taxes will be removed.
Published to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of Louis Couperin’s birth in 2026, this newly revised second edition of Lyrebird Music’s critically acclaimed publication presents the only fully complete modern edition of the composer’s surviving harpsichord music.
Substantially expanded and newly revised throughout, the edition now incorporates the celebrated Oldham manuscript pieces withheld from scholars since their discovery in 1957. Their inclusion marks the first time that all surviving harpsichord works attributed to Louis Couperin have appeared together within a single modern critical edition and represents an important development in the study of seventeenth-century French keyboard music. Long discussed yet inaccessible, these works now take their place alongside the repertory transmitted in the principal manuscripts, allowing the surviving corpus finally to be approached in its entirety.
Prepared from all known manuscript sources, the edition reflects many years of editorial and musicological work devoted to the transmission, chronology and performance of Couperin’s music. Particular attention has been given to the often complex relationships between the Bauyn manuscript, the Parville manuscript, the Oldham discoveries and later concordant sources, permitting variant readings, layers of transmission and questions of attribution to be reassessed in the light of the surviving evidence. The volume has been newly corrected and refined throughout, with expanded commentary and revised editorial observations informed by continuing research into seventeenth-century French notation, ornamentation and performance practice.
The greatly enlarged preface, now presented in both English and French, offers an extensive study of Couperin’s artistic and historical world and considerably expands upon the material presented in the first edition. Beyond questions of source transmission, notation, ornamentation and temperament, it situates the music within the broader rhetorical and cultural landscape of mid-seventeenth-century Paris — the Paris of the young Louis XIV, of aristocratic salons, ecclesiastical patronage and the emergence of a distinctly French keyboard idiom. Particular attention is devoted to Couperin’s preludes, their notation and interpretation, together with the relationship between keyboard style, vocal declamation, dance rhythm and the wider aesthetics of French Baroque performance.
Issued as part of the Louis Couperin 400 commemorative publications, this second edition represents the culmination of extensive new research and editorial revision undertaken over many years. Combining scholarly rigour with practical usability, it offers performers, researchers and libraries the most authoritative, comprehensive and up-to-date edition of Louis Couperin’s harpsichord music yet published.
The edition is available in four formats: hardback, wirebound, electronic (PDF) and a Collector’s edition featuring foiled lettering, a placemarker ribbon, head and tail bands, and marbled endpapers. A companion organ volume, edited by Jon Baxendale and David Ponsford, is also available, and both publications may be purchased together as a set.
Publié à l’occasion du quatre-centième anniversaire de la naissance de Louis Couperin en 2026, cette seconde édition entièrement révisée de la publication saluée par la critique de Lyrebird Music présente la seule édition moderne véritablement complète de l’œuvre survivante pour clavecin du compositeur.
Considérablement augmentée et révisée dans son ensemble, cette nouvelle édition intègre désormais les célèbres pièces du manuscrit Oldham, restées inaccessibles aux chercheurs depuis leur découverte en 1957. Leur inclusion marque la première fois que l’intégralité des œuvres survivantes pour clavecin attribuées à Louis Couperin est réunie au sein d’une même édition critique moderne et constitue une avancée importante dans l’étude de la musique française pour clavier du XVIIe siècle. Longtemps évoquées mais demeurées hors de portée des chercheurs, ces pièces trouvent enfin leur place aux côtés du répertoire transmis par les grands manuscrits connus, permettant d’aborder pour la première fois le corpus survivant dans son intégralité.
Établie à partir de toutes les sources manuscrites connues, l’édition est le fruit de nombreuses années de recherches éditoriales et musicologiques consacrées à la transmission, à la chronologie et à l’interprétation de la musique de Couperin. Une attention particulière a été portée aux relations souvent complexes entre le manuscrit Bauyn, le manuscrit Parville, les découvertes du manuscrit Oldham et les sources concordantes postérieures, permettant de réévaluer les variantes, les strates de transmission et certaines questions d’attribution à la lumière des témoignages conservés. Le volume a été entièrement revu et corrigé, avec des commentaires développés et des observations éditoriales enrichies par les recherches récentes sur la notation française du XVIIe siècle, l’ornementation et les pratiques d’exécution.
La préface, considérablement augmentée et désormais présentée en français et en anglais, propose une vaste étude du monde artistique et historique de Couperin et développe largement les perspectives abordées dans la première édition. Au-delà des questions de transmission des sources, de notation, d’ornementation et de tempérament, elle replace cette musique dans le paysage rhétorique et culturel du Paris du milieu du XVIIe siècle — celui du jeune Louis XIV, des salons aristocratiques, du mécénat ecclésiastique et de l’émergence d’un langage spécifiquement français pour le clavier. Une attention particulière est également accordée aux préludes de Couperin, à leur notation et à leur interprétation, ainsi qu’aux rapports entre le style clavieristique, la déclamation vocale, le rythme de danse et l’esthétique plus générale de l’interprétation baroque française.
Publié dans le cadre des publications commémoratives Louis Couperin 400, ce second tirage représente l’aboutissement de nombreuses années de recherches et de révision éditoriale. Alliant rigueur scientifique et praticité musicale, il offre aux interprètes, chercheurs et bibliothèques l’édition la plus complète, la plus fiable et la plus actuelle de la musique pour clavecin de Louis Couperin publiée à ce jour.
L’édition est disponible en quatre formats : relié, spirale, électronique (PDF) et édition Collector avec marquage à chaud, ruban signet, tranchefiles et gardes marbrées. Un volume complémentaire consacré à l’œuvre d’orgue, édité par Jon Baxendale et David Ponsford, est également disponible, et les deux publications peuvent être achetées ensemble sous forme de coffret.
Lyrebird music’s release of Louis Couperin’s Pièces de clavecin last year marks something of a milestone for this key 17th-century repertoire. This impressive publication, incorporating significant departures from earlier editions, offers something truly new to the field.
The two principal sources of Louis Couperin’s harpsichord music are the so-called Bauyn and Parville manuscripts. As detailed in the preface, it is difficult to assess which of these sources is more authoritative, given that both contain errors of repetition and omission. Bauyn has been chosen as the principal source here since, as the editor explains, watermark analysis proves it to be the earlier of the two.
In all of Lyrebird’s editions, there is a mission to present as many visual aspects of the source material as possible. Players will see a significant difference in the appearance and layout of the pieces compared with, for example, Alan Curtis’ edition for Le Pupitre, especially in terms of original beaming and ornamentation. This style of presentation allows readers to be influenced by subtleties such as hand shapes, articulation and gesture. The issue of ornamentation is challenging in these pieces, given that the Bauyn manuscript is nearly bereft of ornaments. None are added here by the editor, but those present in the Parville manuscript have been transferred where sensible. Players using this edition will be confident to add their own, using ideas for guidance in the preface.
Referencing the debates of the past decade, Baxendale’s introduction concisely counters Glen Wilson’s argument (in his Early Keyboard Journal article ‘The Other Mr Couperin’, 2013) that Charles (not Louis) Couperin might be composer of these pieces. Demuring, Baxendale refers to the ‘restricted’ and liturgical style of organ music of this period, believing that ‘organ music was restricted in style because it had to be functional” and that the ‘new, modish and experimental’ nature of the compositional language of the harpsichord goes some way to explain the difference in nature of Louis’ organ works. Fundamentally, he disagrees with Wilson’s argument that the Louis’ missing forename in either principal source points to a different authorship, Louis’ brother Charles (father of François le Grand).
The prefaces of Lyrebird’s edition have earned a strong reputation for their detailed insight into performance practice. Here, Baxendale discusses rhetoric with regards to Couperin’s harpsichord music in a far more detailed way than his forebears, and his comments on the rhetorical language of the preludes is a significant contribution to the pedagogical field on these works. His didactic writing here is inspired, and guides readers/players in areas from harmonic direction, use of tempo/movement, breathing/phrasing and inequality, to figures of speech and rhythmic devices, drawing on examples in a compelling way.
The notation of Couperin’s preludes is notoriously difficult to interpret. Baxendale’s section on these pieces features diagrams with coloured notes to indicate the main progressions. Relating this to the score, he suggests meanings for the curved and vertical lines, helping players interpret groupings appropriately. For Baxendale, it is the placing of the curved lines, not their meaning, which is sometimes ambiguous. He guides his reader into the intricacies of declamation, harmonic working, ornamental shapes and fingering.
This quality release sits well within the rapidly growing Lyrebird Music catalogue, which encompasses a range of keyboard repertoire, ranging from 16th-century collections to César Franck. The print quality is high, with a clear typeface and thoughtful pagination. This well-priced edition reflects a huge amount of original research, care and detailed preparation, with issues of performance practice at its core. I would recommend this publication highly to keyboard players who would like to get closer to the original notation of the sources. This edition, equally suitable for the seasoned player and less experienced, will satisfy every thinking musician.
Thomas Allery
Harpsichord & Fortepiano, Spring 2023
