Les Nátions: La françoise in E Minor

The opening work from Couperin’s 1726 collection Les Nations combines an Italian-style trio sonata (or “sonade”, as Couperin calls his) with a French-style dance suite. The Italian trio sonata took Europe by storm in the early 18th century. Consisting of three musical lines, trio sonatas can be played on a variety of instruments: usually, two violins and a harpsichord or organ make up the core group, to which other instruments can add colour and texture. This one—in the “amorous and plaintive” key of E Minor—alternates slow and fast movements in a fluid sequence, all infused with a tender melancholy. The “sonade” is followed by a gracious dance suite in which lithe, balletic dances give way to slow, sedate, exquisitely ornamented ones. To the standard Baroque sequence—“Allemande”, “Courante”, “Sarabande”, “Gigue”—Couperin adds an operatic “Chaconne” built over a hypnotically repeating bassline, and a “Gavotte” and “Menuet” (Minuet) in a fashionably gallant style. About François Couperin’s Les Nations François Couperin, one of the most honoured musicians at the court of Versailles, believed that “the union of French and Italian styles would result in the perfection of music.” To that end, in 1726, he published four of his chamber sonatas written with a distinctly Italian accent (he even invented a new word to describe them, “Sonade”, fusing French and Italian). He then he paired each one with a French-style dance suite, so forming the bilingual collection “Les Nations” (“The Nations”). The “Sonades” were inspired by the fashionable Italian trio sonatas of Arcangelo Corelli, while the dance suites epitomise the graceful elegance of French court music.