Thank you for this, Jean-Marie. Precisely the information I was looking for. I
remember examining the Marcelle Beboit volumes in the Stanford library years
ago. Louis XIV did indeed have some ability on the guitar from contemporary
accounts, and Voltaire is later said to have stated that the only things Louis
XIV learned to do well were to dance and play the guitar.
On French-Spanish relationships, it might be worth pointing out that Louis'
mother, Anne of Austria, in spite of her name, was a Spanish Habsburg, the
daughter of King Philip III. Furthermore, Louis married the Infanta, Maria
Teresa, daughter of Philip IV of Spain. In his biography of Louis XIV, Olivier
Bernier mentions that she arrived in France not knowing a word of French and
throughout her life always spoke it with a heavy Spanish accent (p. 68). She
probably brought Spanish musicians in her retinue.
Peter Danner
On Mar 2, 2014, at 9:13 AM, "Jean-Marie Poirier" <jmpoiri...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
Marcelle Benoit quotes a document of 1695 from the Archives Nationales where
the surviving papers of the royal household are kept. It is from the
"Secrétariat de la Maison du Roi" and on march 14th 1695, f° 38v in the series
O.1 39 there is this allusion to Jourdan :
"Retenüe de joüeur de guitarre du Roy, pour le Sr de la Salle
Ayant egard aux services que feu Bernard Jourdan de la Salle nous a rendu
depuis l'année 1650 que nous le choisismes pour nous enseigner a joüer de la
guitarre, nous avons bien voulu, en cette consideration, conserver lad. charge
a Louis Jourdan de la Salle, son fils, et luy contnuer les gages ordinaires de
1200 livres tournois qui y sont attribuez..."
We learn that Louis XIV started to learn the guitar when he was 12 years old
and that his teacher, who had come to France 10 years before the king's
marriage with his Spanish cousin Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche, was dead by 1695
("feu Bernard Jourdan de la Salle").
Marcelle Benoît in her "Dictionnaire de la musique en France aux XVIIe et
XVIIIe siècles" writes that he was a native a Sanlucar de Barrameda in the
province of Cadiz, as Monica justly quotes. Louis, his son who succeded him in
his functions, was born in 1659 and Louis XIV was his godfather and Anne
d'Autriche - the king's mother - his godmother. Bernard married a certain
Elizabeth Lesueur and had a daughter Elizabeth Laurente in 1660.
That's about the only facts we have about Bernard Jourdan de la Salle, who was
naturalized in 1681, and the act where this is recorded says that he was
"natif de St Luc en Espagne (=Sanluccar) faisant profession de la Religion
catholique, apostolique et romaine" (O.1 25, f° 203 & 242)
In 1684 he was paid 600 lt, like Champion, Ithier, Marais etc... and was
qualified "La SAlle, maître à jouer de la guitarre".
Same thing in 1686.
In 1688 he received 1200 lt, wheres the other musiciens of la Chambre had only
600 lt.
In 1689, he had only 600 lt.
In 1691, he received 1200 lt. againn more than Michel Lambert, the singer and
Lully father-in-law who only got 720 lt...
In 1693, he is called "Sieur de la Salle" and is listed for a sum of 600 lt
with a comment "n'a pas été payé faute de de fonds dans l'estat de
distribution" ( ;-) public money shortage not a new problem it seems...)
Eventually, in 1695 the money (1200 lt.) is delivered to "Louis Jourdand de la
Salle, maistre à jouer de la guitarre du Roy, au lieu de feu Bernard Jourdan de
la Salle son père".
Louis XIV must have been a rather gifted sutdent as, after his death, his
brother's wife Elisabeth-Charlotte de Bavière wrote in a letter : "il ne
connaissait aucune note de musique, mais il avait l'oreile juste et il jouait
de la guitare mieux qu'un maître, arangeant sur cet instrument tout ce qu'il
voulait"...
According to M. Benoit, Francisque Corbett (= Corbetta) seems to have been
Bernard Jourdan's successor in spite of Louis Jourdan, legal heir of his
father's functions.
End of story. No music so far has been unearthed that could be attributed to
one of the two Jourdan de la Salle...
We were more lucky with another Spaniard who had settled inFrance, Luys de
Briceño, but that is another story ;-) !
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