Jean-Henri d’Anglebert dedicated his Pièces de clavecin to a member of the Sun King’s family, his beloved illegitimate daughter Maria Anna de Bourbon, known as ‘Mademoiselle de Blois’. Famed for her beauty, she proved highly gifted as a harpsichord player. Three of the four suites in that collection open with unmeasured preludes that draw on the tradition of brief lute improvisations, mainly meant to test the instrument. The preludes, distinctly inspired by Frescobaldi’s and Froberger’s toccatas, introduce the key of each respective suite. They are followed by the main sequence of dance numbers (allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue), some of which return several times (Pièces en sol majeur, for instance, features as many as four courantes, marked by the composer as Courante, Double de la Courante, 2e Courante, and 3e Courante).

Though d’Anglebert himself did not live long enough to enjoy the success of his collection (he died in 1691), in the early eighteenth century it became a veritable bible of keyboard virtuosi and composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach, who learned from it the art of ornamentation. Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin would have been impossible without d’Anglebert’s suites. Copies of the 1689 edition have survived in a surprising number of libraries and private archives. Most importantly for us today, interest in d’Anglebert’s harpsichord masterpieces is steadily growing among context-conscious performers, who conjure up for their audiences the images of the jours d’appartement at Versailles. We can imagine the crowds of courtiers and gaming tables for chess, backgammon, and piquet, covered with green gold-fringed velvet. The king is dancing and having a good time. What Liselotte, Madam Palatine could hardly contain in her letters can still be heard in d’Anglebert’s glorious music.