The Rediscovery of the Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à jouer de la harpe by Michel Corrette

Abstract

I am someone who is drawn to missing objects from the past. I try to revive interest in lost books, scores or art works by recirculating their titles and authors, in publications and with colleagues and friends. I suppose my hope is that by giving these items a new breath of life in contemporary scholarship, they might just turn up one day. The Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à jouer de la harpe (1774) by Michel Corrette (1707–1795) was previously known only from descriptions. When a copy came to light and went up for auction in late 2016, I was delighted. I didn’t know what to expect, as this book was merely one of many titles on my list of over one hundred harp methods from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although Corrette himself was not known as a harpist, it turns out that his Nouvelle méthode is a unique resource for the history of harps, harp pedagogy and historical performing practices. This copy of the Nouvelle méthode is a hardbound book consisting of forty-six pages preceded by a frontispiece illustrating a harpist in a plausible playing position with a score open on a table beside her. The engraving is accompanied by a quatrain, the text of which comes from one of the two ariettes for voice and harp included at the end of the volume. The method contains an introductory history of the harp, followed by fourteen chapters, two chansons and over thirty short simple pieces. The Australian historical harpist Hannah Lane wrote an informative post on the method when it was acquired by the library of the University of Melbourne in 2017 (https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/library collections/2017/03/22/a-lost-eighteenth-century-harp-method-rediscovered-michel-correttes-nouvellemethode-pour-apprendre-a-jouer-de-la-harpe-1774-a-new-acquisition-for-rare-music/). The online Catalogue des ouvrages théoriques, manuscrits et imprimés en France entre 1660 et 1800 (http://catalogue.philippe-lescat-asso.fr) by the late Philippe Lescat includes thirty-six publications by Corrette, of which four are currently lost or of unknown whereabouts. The publication of the harp method was advertised in the Mercure de France on 1 January 1775. While this year is often cited as the date of publication, 1774 can now be established as the correct date, as it appears on the title-page. Hence, it can be considered the third harp treatise to be published in the eighteenth century. (The harpist Philippe-Jacques Meyer (1737–1819) published two earlier methods: Essai sur la vraie manière de jouer de la harpe, Op. 1 (Paris: author, 1763), and Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à jouer de la harpe, Op. 9 (Paris: Bouin), in early 1774.) The newly invented harp of the eighteenth century was one with pedals, which Denis Diderot called a ‘harpe organisée’ (Recueil de planches, sur les sciences, les arts libéraux, et les arts méchaniques, avec leur explication, quatrième livraison (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton, 1767), Lutherie, Seconde suite, Planche XIX). For further details about the increasing number of pedals added to harps in the eighteenth century see my PhD dissertation, ‘The “Harpe organisée”, 1720–1840: Rediscovering the Lost Pedal Techniques on Harps with a Single-Action Pedal Mechanism’ (Universiteit Leiden, 2016), 27–34. Players from the Alsace region and Germany brought the new instrument to Paris and harp making began in earnest. Initially, keyboard repertory