Instrument making in Lyon and Paris around 1600

Florence Gétreau (1)

1 IRPMF - Institut de recherche sur le patrimoine musical en France

At the end of the Renaissance, the establishment in Paris of a special guild of instrument makers of all sorts has no equivalent in France, even if some cities were influenced later by it. Constant Pierre, with his famous monograph published in 1893, was the first who focused interest on the early history of instrument making in Paris. But the main work have been done afterwards by François Lesure around 1950 and Madeleine Jurgens, another archivist-palaeographer, one generation later. Other scholars (like Catherine Massip) working on Parisian musicians brought at this occasion some light on unknown makers. Concerning Lyon, the situation is not very different. As an established crossroad, this city attracted a great number of skilled makers because of its prosperity, its international fame, and mainly because of its special status as a free city, opened to the free exercise of trade for natives as well as for foreigners. Henry Coutagne (1893) and Georges Tricou (1903) published the first important sources, constantly quoted since that time, even by Frank Dobbins (1992) in his important work on Music in Renaissance Lyons. Only new work on first hand sources could bring a new appreciation. A part from Claude Raffi's instruments, no instrument labeled or ascribed by tradition to Kaspar Tieffenbrucker can be asserted and no preserved Parisian keyboard or stringed instrument have come to light to give us an idea of specific French characteristics of instrument making in that early time. This paper gives in a systematic presentation the knowledge (list of makers, sources, bibliography) available today for these two cities.

Mots clés: production; circulation; models; wind instruments; string instruments; keyboards; Claude Raffi; Kaspar Tieffenbrucker; archives; Paris; Lyon; musical instruments making; guild; makers; trade; profession

Mots clés: facture instrumentale; corporation; faiseurs d'instruments; commerce; modèles; instruments à vent; instruments à cordes; instruments à clavier; Gaspard Duiffoproucart

Domaines: Musique, musicologie et arts de la scène

Florence Gétreau. Instrument making in Lyon and Paris around 1600. Musikalische Aufführungspraxis in nationalen Dialogen des 16. Jahrhunderts, May 2005, Michaelstein, Germany. pp.179-204. ⟨halshs-00186692⟩