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Noëls
French noëls of the 18th Century on instruments

Jean-François Dandrieu
Michel Corrette
Louis-Claude Daquin
Claude Balbastre

Les Boréades
Francis Colpron
Hélène Plouffe
Susie Napper
Marie Bouchard

Noël For Instruments

According to the definition given by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Dictionnaire de musique, published in 1768, noëls are “types of airs destined to certain hymns sung by the people at Christmas feasts.” Born of, and nourished by, the needs of popular rejoicing, these melodies must have a bucolic, pastoral and essentially simple character. The composers who contributed to the elaboration of a repertoire of noëls drew, then, without constraint from the source most likely to appeal to the needs of a people familiar with this combinaUon of joy and devotion: popular song, whether destined or not to the feasts of the Nativity. These noëls sur timbre (intoned noëls) sometimes crossed the ocean, and continued to be sung on Iyrics that could vary from region to region. For example, Où s'en uont ces gays bergers became, in French-speaking Canada, Ça bergers assemblons-nous. The liturgical repertoire also supplied many simple and easily memorized melodies, in accordance with the spirit of religious fervour inherent to Christmas.

If these French religious songs, mostly secular in origin, spread throughout Europe in the 15th century, it is during the 17th and 18th centuries that instrumental versions of these melodies start turning up, written essentially for the organ. Their structure then becomes very free, calling on virtuosic developments and variations, as exemplified by the title of Claude Balbastre's collection, Recueil de Noëls formant quatre suites avec des variations, published in 1770. Although composed by organists, these noëls also allow certain liberties to the performer, namely that of playing them on a variety of instruments. Thus, Louis-Claude Daquin, a famous composer of noëls for the organ, gives the following precision on the title page of his Nouveau livre de Noëls pour l'orgue et le clavecin: “most of them can be played on the violins, flutes, oboes, etc..” One finds a similar indication in the forward to the original edition of Corrette's Nouveau livre de Noëls (1753): “The violins, flutes, viols, and violoncellos can play these noëls in concert with the harpsichord.”

Jean-François Dandrieu, in his Livre de Noëls (1759), resorts to using pieces composed by his uncle, Pierre, who in 1714 published an important collection in the history of the genre, in which he was the first to introduce musettes, a popular dance with a rustic twist. Of course, the nephew added a few pieces of his own, characterized by their simplicity and picturesque quality. Organist at the Chapelle Royale, Jean-Francois Dandrieu perfommed his own works at Christmas, as did his colleagues, Daquin and Balbastre. Daquin (who succeeded Dandrieu at the Chapelle Royale, and afterwards became organist at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1755) obtained such success as an improviser that the police were sometimes called in to maintain order in the streets of Paris on the nights he perfommed. It is also reported that the improvisations by Balbastre at Christmas attracted so many people, it was feared “disorder would be caused in the church,” to the point where he was twice refused access to the organ loft at Notre-Dame Cathedral during midnight mass, by order of the Archbishop of Paris. At the time when his Nouveau livre de Noëls was published, Michel Corrette, son of the great organist Gaspard Corrette, held the post of organist at the Jesuit church on Saint-Antoine street.

Despite the aura of seriousness surrounding the duties of organists in prestigious churches, these renowned composers did not hesitate to give both the people and western musical tradition, works that aim only at exalting popular faith, in a spirit of rejoicing imbued with a naïvety that Chirstendom has never disavowed.

— Dominique Olivier
translation: Jacques-André Houle