The Curious Life of Louis Marchand

By Jon Baxendale

While misinformation, half-truths and scandals are often regarded as drawbacks of fame, they appear to be phenomena of today’s society and not something immediately associated with musicians of the Grand siècle. Yet it cannot be denied that a good deal of Louis Marchand’s life centred on a string of intrigues that almost became his defining feature. His stature, which was elevated by his position as Organiste du roy from 1708 until his sojourn in Germany some five years later was well-deserved. More than once, though, his difficult character led to behaviour that included attempts not only to defame Pierre Dandrieu (Dandrieu, 2/1727; ed. Baxendale, 2/2019, i-iv) but also to claim authorship of François Couperin’s Les Bergeries (d’Aquin de Chateau-Lyon, 1752, 106­-107). He also beat his wife (Gustafson, New Grove Online). Yet Marchand is best known for having shirked a contest in Dresden with J S Bach, a story that is told in various forms, most often in German sources that seem eager to identify Bach as an underdog in a battle against the controversial Frenchman. One source tells us that two contests were to take place and that, before the second, Marchand got cold feet and left; another has Bach behind a curtain listening while Marchand performed; a third tells us that Marchand did not show up, having departed early that morning, leaving Bach to exhibit alone. The reality is probably different. It was rumoured that Marchand, who had been in Dresden to perform before the king, was to be offered a position as organist at the Royal Chapel, much to the chagrin of its musicians. It is probable that the court Konzertmeister, Jean-Baptiste Volumier, invited Bach to compete against Marchand on behalf of colleagues annoyed by the latter’s arrogance and erratic behaviour (Wolff, 2000, 181) and it was possibly sensing the political hornet’s nest he would be getting into if he were to accept a position at the chapel that caused Marchand to abruptly flee the scene.

By all accounts, Marchand was an extraordinary musician whose reputation remained strong for many years after his death. Writing in 1789, Charles Burney (p. 622) reported:

Marchand was one of the greatest organ players in Europe, during the early part of the present century. Rameau, his friend and most formidable rival, frequently declared that the greatest pleasure of his life was hearing Marchand perform; that no one could be compared to him in the management of a fugue; and he believed that no musician ever equalled him in extempore playing.

Predictably, Burney adds a footnote:

The Germans relate a story, which no French writer has confirmed: that Marchand, being at Dresden, challenged to a trial of skill all the organists of Germany, which none but Sebastian Bach ventured to accept. It was an honour, says M. Marpurg, for Pompey to be defeated by Caesar, and for Marchand to have no superior but Bach.

Marchand’s early life is shrouded in contradiction and mystery and what is known often comes in the form of anecdotal accounts that were published after his death on 17 February 1732. He was born in Lyon on 2 February 1669, the ‘son of Jean Marchand, master of music and Lucresse Ruelle, his wife’.¹ According to Jean-Marc Baffert (1985, 14), Marchand was the eldest of three children but the only one to survive childhood. His grandfather, Pierre (d. 1676), was a schoolmaster and music teacher at Saint-Jean-de-Losne in the province of Côte-d’Or from 1639 to 1643, and then at Auxonne, where he remained until 1664 (Baffert, 1985, 12). He married three times and had a total of nine children: Jean, Louis’s father, was born to Pierre’s first wife on 30 May 1644 (it is unknown when he died) and became an organist, as did two sons from his third marriage, Louis (1651–1694) and Pierre (1653-1684).² From the baptismal record of Louis’s cousin, we know that Jean’s younger stepbrother, Pierre (1653-1684), was organist at Auxonne in the late 1670s.³ The remaining brother, Louis (1651-1694), is recorded as curé at the church of Saint-Maurice Pontailler-sur-Saône, some 15 kilometres from Auxonne, from 1 January 1676⁴ until his arrest and prosecution in March 1694 for ‘spiritual incest, public adultery, rapture by force and violence on some of his female parishioners’.⁵ His initial sentence of death at the stake was commuted to servitude on the galleys and he died three months later (Baffert, 1985, 320).

In c 1678, the Marchand family moved to Clermont Ferrand, where Jean served for a period as cathedral organist (Baffert, 296). On 1 January 1684, Jean began duties as organist at the church of Saint-Martin de Nevers. Louis Marchand’s earliest biographer, Évrard Titon du Tillet, records that Louis quickly surpassed his father’s skills and displayed such prodigious talents that he was appointed organist at Nevers cathedral when he was fourteen (Titon du Tillet, 1732, 658). He goes on to tell us that Marchand remained at Nevers until the age of 24, when he assumed the position of organist at the cathedral of Auxerre. We must be circumspect about this, however, since there is no documentary evidence concerning Marchand’s time at Nevers other than a contract he countersigned with his father in 1684 when the organ builder Pierre Bridard was engaged to undertake a ‘Revelement’ [sic] of his 1675 instrument at Saint-Martin (Baffert, 297-298). This suggests that Marchand might have been acting in some sort of professional capacity from the age of 15, possibly as an apprentice to Jean, whom Titon du Tillet maligns as ‘un Organiste mediocre’. However, we should also be cautious of this description since the biography makes it clear that Titon du Tillet was not acquainted with either Louis or his family. It is but one short entry in an extensive two-volume set of some 900 pages, and a brief examination of other biographies indicates that Titon du Tillet was not averse to a degree of agrandissement when it came to those he admired. In Marchand’s case, this probably resulted in a dismissal of Jean’s abilities in order to highlight the prodigious aspect of Louis’s early life.⁶ As far as assuming the role at Auxerre is concerned, Titon du Tillet was mistaken since we know that, by 1689, Marchand was firmly established in Paris where, on 5 February, he married Marie Angélique Denis, granddaughter of Jean Denis, the harpsichord builder and author of Traité de l’accord de l’espinette (Paris, 1643 and 1650).⁷  According to the marriage contract, Marchand was organist at the Jesuit church on rue Saint Jacques on Paris’s south bank, where he also resided.⁸ It is possibly his early association with the Jesuits that gave rise to l’Abbé Fontenay’s fanciful account of Marchand’s arrival in Paris when he was literally taken off the streets and educated by the order’s members (1776, 79):

The desire to learn his art led him at a very young age to the capital; but without recommendations or friends, he was soon destitute of all kinds of assistance. He entered by chance into the chapel of the College of Louis le Grand at the moment when the organist was expected to begin the divine office. He asked to play the organ, which was granted to him only after repeated requests because they mistrusted his abilities. But scarcely had he put his hands on the keyboard than he astonished all the listeners. The Jesuits showed him great affection; they retained him in their college and contributed to his education by furnishing him with what was necessary to perfect his happy dispositions.⁹

By the time that the first impression of Pieces de Clavecin was published, Marchand had been appointed organist at ‘Saint Benoit des Pères Jesuites’ and the ‘Grand Couvent des Cordeliers’ (Mercure galant, August 1699, 188). This was followed in 1703 by a tenure at Église Saint-Honoré, where he remained until 1707. In October 1708, Marchand entered into royal service, a year after Gabriel-Guillaume Nivers withdrew from his position as one of the four organistes du roy. Writing of Marchand’s appointment in 1752, Pierre Louis d’Aquin de Chateau Lyon (1752, 115) suggested that his reputation was such that he was appointed without competition. Yet this is not as extraordinary as he would have us believe since Marchand had acted as a locum for the ageing Nivers during the summer of 1706, for which he was paid a stipend of 600 livres.¹⁰ The letter of appointment was signed by the king on 28 June 1708  and Marchand’s duties were to play at Versailles for the July to September quarter of each year (Baffert, 345–347). It is unknown why Marchand left this position and went into a three-year self-imposed exile in Germany in 1713. This was to include performances for various electors and the emperor, which resulted in the famed competition with Bach. Higginbottom (New Grove Online) proposes that his sojourn might have been precipitated by his failed marriage, which led to such a dogged pursuit through the courts that he may have left France simply for some respite. Marpurg (1754, 452) mentions that he was forced to leave the country for impertinence toward the king. This cannot be verified in French sources, and while Higginbottom plausibly suggests that Marchand put around the story himself to maintain a level of prestige in Germany, it is worth noting that Marchand did not return to France until after Louis XV’s ascent to the throne in September 1715.

The chaos of Marchand’s personal life is documented well enough to suggest a fiery, temperamental character that made him prone to scandals that often bordered on criminality. His marriage, which resulted in several children, was dissolved by the courts in March 1701 on the grounds of violent behaviour towards his wife, with a judgement that he paid Marie Angelique a settlement of 2,000 livres ‘which he received as part of her dowry with interest following the order of the day’, as well as an additional annual payment of 100 livres to be paid quarterly.¹¹ On a professional level, things did not fare much better. Soon after his arrival in Paris, he became embroiled in a plot hatched by the organ builder [Henry] Lesclop to unseat the newly-appointed organist-priest of Saint-Barthélemy, Pierre Dandrieu.¹² Lesclop coerced Maxime Texier, a pregnant sixteen-year-old girl, to complain to the Barthélemy parish wardens (among which was Jean-Philippe Rameau’s uncle) that Dandrieu was the father of the child. Dandrieu filed a complaint and during the ensuing investigation the girl withdrew her accusation. Why Marchand was involved in the affair becomes clear when considering the manner in which Dandrieu obtained his position at Saint-Barthélemy, which Marchand also coveted. This included a personal payment by Dandrieu of 450 livres to the church and a suggested misuse of his clerical status to gain the advantage.¹³ This was not the only war of succession in which Marchand became embroiled. In 1702, on the death of Nicolas Lebègue, Marchand’s candidacy for the position of organist at Saint-Merri failed in preference to Henri Mahieux. The position was to be awarded by contest, but despite Marchand’s winning the first and third rounds, Mahieux, organist of Saint-Landry, was appointed. As a cousin of Lebègue, he had been promised the position under the practice of survivance, which allowed departing organists to name their successors. The leader of the church’s council was, however, in favour of Marchand, whom he attempted to install. The affair required the intervention of the Archbishop of Paris, solicited by the Princesse de Conti, for Mahieux to prevail (Pirro, 1903, 550).¹⁴

Little is known of Marchand’s life after his return to Paris in 1716. A number of sources indicate that he went back to the Cordeliers, where he remained until his death in 1732. During that time, he was in much demand as a teacher and had several students of renown, including Louis-Claude Daquin and Pierre Dumage.

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Bibliography

Aquin de Chateau-Lyon, Pierre-Louis d’, Lettres sur les hommes celebres, dans les sciences, la littérature & les beaux arts, sous le regne de Louis XV – Premiere partie (Amsterdam, 1752).

Baffert, Jean-Marc, La vie et l’oeuvre de Louis Marchand (1699–1732) (Paris, PhD diss., Université de Paris IV, 1985).

Burney, Charles, A General History of Music II (London, 1789).

Dandrieu, Pierre, Noëls, O Filii, Chansons de Saint Jacques, Stabat Mater, et Carillons (Paris: l’Auteur, 2/1727); ed. J Baxendale (Tynset, Lyrebird Music, 2020).

Gustafson, Bruce and Fuller, David R., A Catalogue of French Harpsichord Music, 1699–1780 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990).

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