Marc-Antoine Charpentier (French: [maʁk ɑ̃twan ʃaʁpɑ̃tje]; 1643–24 February 1704) was a French Baroque composer who lived during the time of King Louis XIV. One of his most famous works is the main theme from the prelude of his Te Deum H.146, Marche en rondeau. This theme is still used today as a fanfare during television broadcasts of the Eurovision Network and the European Broadcasting Union.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier was very important in the Baroque music scene in 17th-century France because he created many high-quality works. He wrote music in all styles, and his skill in composing sacred vocal music was especially praised by people of his time.

He began his career by traveling to Italy, where he was influenced by Giacomo Carissimi and other Italian composers, possibly Domenico Mazzocchi. He was deeply affected by the Italian style and became one of the few people in France, along with Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, to write oratorios. In 1670, he became a master of music (a composer and singer) in the service of the Duchess of Guise. From 1690, Charpentier composed Médée, based on a play by Corneille. This work was a major failure, and after that, he focused only on religious music. He became the composer for the Carmelites at the "Rue du Bouloir," Montmartre Abbey, Abbaye-aux-Bois, and Port-Royal. In 1698, Charpentier was given the job of music teacher for the children of the Sainte-Chapelle du Palais. After King Louis XIV allowed a relaxation of Lully’s monopoly on music, Molière asked Charpentier to compose music for the intermissions of Circe and Andromeda, as well as for sung scenes in revivals of The Forced Marriage and for the musical pieces in The Imaginary Invalid.

Charpentier wrote both secular and sacred music, including stage music, operas, cantatas, sonatas, symphonies, motets (large or small), oratorios, masses, psalms, Magnificats, and Litanies.

At the time of his death, Charpentier’s complete works likely included about 800 pieces. Today, only 28 original manuscripts remain, or more than 500 pieces that he himself organized. This collection, called Mélanges, is one of the most complete sets of musical manuscripts ever created.

Biography

Marc-Antoine Charpentier was born in or near Paris. His father was a master scribe with strong connections to influential families in the Parlement of Paris. Marc-Antoine received a good education, possibly from the Jesuits, and began studying law in Paris at age eighteen. He left after one semester. He spent two or three years in Rome, likely between 1667 and 1669, and studied with Giacomo Carissimi. He also worked with Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy, a poet and musician who composed for the French Embassy in Rome. A story claims Charpentier first went to Rome to study painting before being discovered by Carissimi. However, this story is not proven and may be false. His 28 volumes of handwritten manuscripts show he was skilled at copying decorative patterns used by scribes, but they contain no drawings. Despite this, he learned Italian musical practices and brought them back to France.

After returning to France, Charpentier likely became the house composer for Marie de Lorraine, duchesse de Guise, known as "Mlle de Guise." She gave him an apartment in the newly renovated Hôtel de Guise, suggesting he was a courtier, not a paid servant. For seventeen years, he composed many vocal works for her, including psalms, hymns, motets, a Mass, a Dies Irae for her nephew’s funeral, and Italian-style oratorios. Most of these works were for trios, typically two women and a male singer, plus instruments. Later, when performances required male voices, he wrote for a haute-contre, tenor, and bass. Around 1680, Mlle de Guise expanded the ensemble to 13 performers and a singing teacher. Charpentier’s manuscripts from 1684 to 1687 include the names of Guise musicians, such as "Charp" next to the haute-contre line. Étienne Loulié, a senior instrumentalist, likely coached newer musicians.

During his time with Mlle de Guise, Charpentier was not the director of the ensemble. The director was Philippe Goibaut, a court musician who loved Italian music. Because Mlle de Guise and Goibaut shared a passion for Italian music, Charpentier did not hide the Italian influences he learned in Rome. He also composed for "Mme de Guise," Louis XIV’s cousin. Mme de Guise helped Charpentier’s musicians perform his chamber operas, defying the monopoly held by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Many of these operas and pastorales, written between 1684 and 1687, were commissioned for court events. Mlle de Guise also included them in her frequent entertainments in Paris.

By late 1687, Mlle de Guise was dying. Around this time, Charpentier joined the Jesuits. He was not named in her will or estate papers, suggesting she had already rewarded him and approved his departure. During his seventeen years at the Hôtel de Guise, Charpentier wrote nearly as much music for outside commissions as for Mlle de Guise. For example, after Molière’s conflict with Lully in 1672, Charpentier began writing incidental music for Molière’s plays. Molière likely chose Charpentier over another composer due to pressure from Mlle de Guise and her daughter. After Molière’s death in 1673, Charpentier continued writing for his successors. His works often required more musicians than Lully’s monopoly allowed, but by 1685, the troupe stopped challenging these rules, ending Charpentier’s theater career.

In 1679, Charpentier was chosen to compose for Louis XIV’s son, the Dauphin. He wrote devotional pieces for a small ensemble of royal musicians, including the Pièche sisters and their brothers. With Mlle de Guise’s permission, this group performed works Charpentier had previously written for the Guises. By 1683, Charpentier received a royal pension and was commissioned for court events like the annual Corpus Christi procession. In April 1683, he became seriously ill and withdrew from a competition for the royal chapel’s sub-mastership. His autograph notebooks show he wrote nothing from April to mid-August, proving he was too ill to work.

From late 1687 to 1698, Charpentier served as maître de musique (music master) to the Jesuits. He first worked at their collège of Louis-le-Grand, composing works like Celse martyr and David et Jonathas. Later, he taught at the church of Saint-Louis. During this time, he focused on liturgical music, such as psalm settings and the Litanies of Loreto. His works often included singers from the Royal Opera. He also became the music teacher to Philippe, Duke of Chartres, succeeding Étienne Loulié.

In 1698, Charpentier was appointed maître de musique for the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, a royal position he held until his death in 1704. One of his famous works from this time was the Mass Assumpta Est Maria (H.11). Few of his compositions from 1690 to 1704 survived, as the royal administration confiscated all his chapel music after his death. Charpentier died at Sainte-Chapelle and was buried in a small cemetery behind the chapel, which no longer exists.

In 1727, Charpentier’s heirs sold his 28 volumes of handwritten manuscripts to the Royal Library, now the Bibliothèque nationale de France. These manuscripts are commonly called the Mélanges and are available as facsimiles.

Music, style and influence

Charpentier's compositions include oratorios, masses, operas, leçons de ténèbres, motets, and many smaller pieces that are hard to classify. Many of his smaller works for one or two voices and instruments are similar to Italian cantatas from the same time, sharing most features except for the name: Charpentier called them airs sérieux or airs à boire if they were in French, but cantata if they were in Italian.

Charpentier composed during a time when old and new musical styles coexisted and influenced each other. He also worked as a respected music theorist. In the early 1680s, he studied the harmony in a polychoral mass by Francesco Beretta (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. Réserve VM1 260, fol. 55–56). Around 1691, he wrote a manual for the musical training of Philippe d'Orléans, duke of Chartres, and expanded it around 1693. These two versions still exist as copies written by Étienne Loulié, Charpentier's colleague, who named them Règles de Composition par Monsieur Charpentier and Augmentations tirées de l'original de Mr le duc de Chartres (Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. n.a. fr. 6355, fols. 1–16). On a blank page of Augmentations, Loulié listed some points from a treatise Charpentier wrote, which Loulié called Règles de l'accompagnement de Mr Charpentier. Three theoretical works known to scholars existed before, but they provided limited information about Charpentier's development as a theorist. In November 2009, a fourth treatise, written in Charpentier's own hand, was discovered in the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S.A. Written in the final months of 1698 and numbered "XLI," this treatise appears to be the forty-first in a series of theoretical works spanning nearly two decades, from the early 1680s to 1698.

Modern significance

The introduction to his Te Deum, H.146, a rondo, is the official theme song for the European Broadcasting Union. This music is played at the start of Eurovision events and was also used as the opening music for The Olympiad films created by Bud Greenspan.

Writings

• Notes on the 16-Part Masses from Italy, H.549
• Rules of Composition by Mr. Charpentier, H.550
• Summary of Mr. Charpentier's Accompaniment Rules, H.551

Tributes

The asteroid found in May 1997 by Paul G. Comba at the Prescott Observatory in Arizona, United States, was named 9445 Charpentier (1997 JA8) by NASA.

Thierry Pécou: Le Tombeau de Marc-Antoine Charpentier, for three equal-voice choirs, baroque organ, viola da gamba, positif, and bells (1995).

Philippe Hersant: Le Cantique des 3 enfants dans la fournaise (1995), a poem by Antoine Godeau, performed with the same chorus and orchestra as Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s La Messe à 4 Choeurs H.4. This work was released on a CD by Radio France in 2019.