Until relatively recently, monographs on what we might term ‘middle-ranking’ composers of the French Baroque were in short supply. Over the last two decades, however, the situation has improved considerably with the appearance of a number of biographies of such composers as Michel Lambert, Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, Marin Marais, Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Nicolas Clérambault and Jean-Baptiste Stuck. A significant contributor to this genre has been Jean-Paul C. Montagnier, whose studies of Louis-Claude Daquin, Philippe d'Orléans and Charles-Hubert Gervais are now joined by one on Henry Madin (1698–1748), the focus of this review.
Despite previous research by Bernadette Lespinard (reported in articles in four issues of Recherches sur la musique française classique between 1974 and 1977), the life and work of Madin have remained fairly obscure. Inspired by the success of his own edition of the composer's masses (Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, 2003), Montagnier was thus encouraged to pursue his study of Madin further with the intention of advancing our knowledge of French musical life at the time of the Regency and Louis XV.
The book falls into two distinct parts, followed by three ‘Annexes’ (appendices) of supplementary material, a bibliography and two indices. The first part comprises an ‘Esquisse biographique’, which belies its title in providing a comprehensive and illuminating study of Madin's life and career. The first chapter begins with uncertainties surrounding both the composer's probable Irish lineage and his education, and continues with a discussion of his various cathedral appointments in Meaux, Verdun, Bourges, Tours and Rouen. From the start, the reader is given confidence in the author's scholarly approach by his care to separate fact from hypothesis; moreover, there are copious footnotes to relevant sources and numerous diplomatic transcriptions of archival documents, sometimes quoted in the text but reproduced in full in Annexe 1 (‘Pièces justificatives’), thus enabling the reader to engage directly with the primary source evidence.
A second biographical chapter focuses on the peak of Madin's career, following his appointment in 1737 as soûs-maitre at the royal chapel at Versailles and subsequently (from 1742) succeeding Campra as Master of the Pages (choristers). There is some discussion of the success of the composer's works at the Concert spirituel: records attest to some twenty-six performances of his music over the thirty-year period 1732–1762, most of them following his early death in 1748. Montagnier provides a transcription and facsimile of the composer's will, and an interesting account of how the latter was contested by maternal cousins to whom Madin bequeathed nothing, naming instead his housekeeper and her niece as his legatees. If this adds a human touch to the Madin story, so, too, does the posthumous inventory of the composer's effects (a full transcription appears in Annexe 1). Analysis of the detail here allows Montagnier (as Davitt Moroney puts it in his Preface to the book (3)) ‘to bring the man to life in a touchingly human way’. Thus we learn of Madin's predilections for Burgundy wine, cider, coffee and chocolate.
The second part of the book, ‘L'Œuvre théorique et musicale’, begins with a consideration of Madin's single theoretical work, the Traité du contrepoint simple of 1742. This treatise appeared just three years after Louis-Joseph Marchand's similarly-titled Traité du contrepoint simple, ou chant sur la livre. Both were published in the wake of controversy, sparked off by Rameau, about the long-standing ecclesiastical practice of improvising over a plainchant (‘chant sur la livre’). Particularly revealing in this context are Madin's attempts to oppose the earlier rival publication: there are several instances where he blatantly contradicts or corrects Marchand. Furthermore, Montagnier's analysis leads him to conclude that while Marchand's treatise follows traditional rules, Madin's incorporates more modern harmonic thinking.
Subsequent chapters are concerned with Madin's compositions. The longest is devoted to the motets à grand chœur, the genre in which the composer was especially prolific; most of the forty-nine works of this kind (a significant number of them now lost) were written for the royal chapel. As elsewhere, Montagnier's introduction provides a well-judged amount of background material, usefully orienting the reader. The ensuing discussion takes us systematically through different aspects of Madin's grand motet writing, from his choice of texts and habit of not setting psalm texts in full, to structural and musical features. As in other chapters devoted to the music, useful reference is made to well presented and accurately transcribed music examples. These not only serve the essential function of illustrating the text, but also provide the reader with tantalizing snippets of the composer's musical language. In addition, there are occasional facsimile reproductions, and the discussion of structural matters is enhanced by the presentation of material in tables.
According to the second supplement that Titon du Tillet issued in 1755 to his Le Parnasse François (1732), Madin was ‘one of the best motet composers of the century’ (147). He was not, Montagnier concludes, an innovator in the genre: the composer appropriated the model he inherited from Lalande, sometimes even looking back to the generation of Du Mont, Robert and Lully. However, Madin took his place in the continuum of royal chapel masters, his grands motets forming an essential link between the motets of Gervais and Campra and those of Mondonville. His works are characterized by a particularly sensitive approach to the liturgical text, born out of a devotion to his role as a church musician. The reader wishing to gain an even fuller picture of Madin's grand motet writing will find Annexe 2 of particular interest: a detailed analysis of Diligam te, Domine. This motet, written before the composer's royal chapel appointment, met with the greatest approval in his own time, being performed some twenty times at the Concert spirituel, with publication apparently planned, though never realized.
A further three chapters deal with Madin's remaining works: four a cappella masses written in the stile antico tradition, a single secular work (the Bouquet pour la Fête de S[on] Em[inen]ce Monseigneur le Cardinal de Fleury, effectively a divertissement) and the petits motets of 1740 ‘composés par Mr. H. M.’ and intended for the ‘Cent Filles de la Misericorde’, or more generally for conventual use. While there is reason to believe that this collection was indeed the work of Madin, Montagnier makes it clear that a question mark over the identity of ‘Mr. H. M.’ nevertheless remains.
Discussion of Madin's output is usefully supported by Annexe 3, a catalogue of the composer's oeuvre. Works (all assigned an ‘HM’ number from 1 to 63) are grouped by genre, and individual entries provide useful information, including a diplomatic transcription of the title, source details, relevant dates, scoring, key, length and observations about the source(s). This section of the book will doubtless prove to be a useful tool for anyone wishing to delve deeper into Madin's music and its context, and thus enhances the contribution of the book as a whole.
Montagnier's study leaves us in no doubt that Henry Madin was well regarded in his own day. His continued obscurity in modern times is therefore striking. To date, very little of his music has been recorded, and there is only a single modern edition (the volume of the masses noted above). It is therefore to be hoped that the present book will stimulate a long overdue renaissance. Without doubt, Montagnier is a persuasive advocate for the composer, leaving readers wanting to hear or perform this music for themselves.
