Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre

My friend Emma Jane Hyde has recommended to me the music of Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. A quick google shows her to have been a very exciting composer and musician and there's a lovely portrait of her too, holding a sheet of music she was composing. Really love the hair, very high, like a beehive.

Bit of a prodigy she played before Louis XIV at the age of five and carried on. This is a great quote about how she was a real creative type, couldn't help improvising, from her contemporary Titon du Tillot who praises her 'marvellous facility for playing preludes and fantasies off the cuff. Sometimes she improvises one or another for a whole half hour with tunes and harmonies of great variety'. Harpsichord improvisation. Nice.

I will have a listen to her pieces played on Youtube and post something later. Isn't it wonderful finding about this brilliant women of early modern music? I think so anyway.