Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre - "Judith" (6)

Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre's work Judith. Picked just because it has my name. Short but sweet. Bit dramatic. The harpsichord kind of purrs behind the bell like vocal. I find this type of operatic delivery difficult to get into but I'm trying to embrace the 'Italian style' more fully recently, and not listen to it with the kind of prejudice I had against its formal sound when younger.

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.