Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Composer

Trading law books for Italian sunshine

I was born in or near Paris in 1643 to my father Louis Charpentier, a master scribe, and my mother Anne Toutré, though nobody knows the exact day because the old church records were destroyed. After a solid early education, probably with the Jesuits, I briefly tried studying law in Paris before deciding that legal documents were much drier than a good melody. In the mid-1660s I packed my bags for Rome, and while the story goes that I went there to study painting, I soon ended up studying music with the great Italian master Giacomo Carissimi. Spending several years learning how he brought sacred stories to life gave me an Italian warmth that I carried back home in my suitcase.

Stepping in when two giants fell out

When I returned to Paris around 1670, I moved into the Hôtel de Guise and began nearly twenty years of working as house composer and singer for Marie de Lorraine, the Duchess of Guise. My big public break arrived in 1672 when the famous playwright Molière had a falling-out with his composer Jean-Baptiste Lully and needed someone new. I stepped in to work with Molière and wrote the stage music for his play Le Malade imaginaire in 1673, which put my name right in front of the Parisian public. It felt a bit like being asked to cook the main course at a banquet after the previous chef had stormed out of the kitchen.

Making music for princes and priests

Paris kept me busy in all sorts of grand places, starting in 1679 when I began writing sacred music for the private chapel of Louis, the Grand Dauphin. That job went well enough to earn me a royal pension in 1683, and I even taught composition to Philippe d'Orléans, the Duke of Chartres. By the late 1680s I was working for the Jesuits in Paris, serving as music master first at the Collège Louis-le-Grand and later at the church of Saint-Louis. Whether I was in a noble residence or a busy church, the periodical Mercure galant and the French nobility treated my work with real warmth and respect.

A tune you probably already know

People remember me best for dramas like my chamber opera Actéon, my biblical tragedy David et Jonathas from 1688, and my lyric tragedy Médée from 1693. Still, nothing I wrote traveled further than my grand motet Te Deum from around 1690, and you can listen to the Te Deum Prelude right here on this site. That bright, festive opening has become famous all over the world as the Eurovision signature tune, so you have probably heard me before without realizing we had met. It makes me smile to think that a piece I wrote for seventeenth-century Paris now announces a modern television broadcast to millions of living rooms.

Sick in bed and surrounded by notebooks

Life had its awkward bumps, like in 1683 when I had to pull out of the competition to choose new music masters for the royal chapel. The official reports said I was too ill to continue, though court gossip whispered that my rivals had forced me out of the race. Outside of work I stayed unmarried my whole life and spent my quiet hours carefully copying my own music by hand into twenty-eight big volumes called the Meslanges autographes. Keeping my own notebooks was a lot like tending a neat little garden, making sure none of the plants got lost before someone else could enjoy them.

Moving into the finest chapel in town

In 1698 I received one of the highest honors in French music when I was appointed music master of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Working in that famous building meant writing music for a place that already looked like the inside of a jewel box. I spent my last years right there at the heart of Parisian musical life, surrounded by singers and instruments until the very end. I passed away at the Sainte-Chapelle in February 1704, still doing the job I had spent decades preparing for.

Five hundred pieces and a helpful librarian

Because I took such care to write my music down in those twenty-eight manuscript volumes, a huge amount of my work survived the centuries after I was gone. In 1982, Hugh Wiley Hitchcock organized my music into a thematic catalogue and gave H numbers to more than 550 of my surviving pieces. It turns out my habit of saving every page paid off, because musicians today can open those books and play almost everything I left behind. Knowing that someone centuries later took the time to number over five hundred of my pieces makes all that ink on my fingers worth the trouble.

French elegance with an Italian heart

When you listen to my music, I want you to feel the meeting of two worlds that I loved very dearly. I tried to take the expressive storytelling I learned in Rome and blend it smoothly with the grace and poise of Paris. You do not need to know anything about old rules or dusty history books to enjoy how a lively dance or a gentle chorus unfolds. My only wish is that the music greets you like an old friend at the door and leaves you feeling a little brighter than when you walked in.