Cousineau.

French family of harp makers, harpists and publishers. Georges Cousineau (b Mouchamps, Vendée, 1733; d Paris, 3 Jan 1800) published music in Paris in 1766 and in 1769 was a member of the instrument makers’ guild. His shop, originally opposite the Louvre, stocked music engraved by his wife, and a variety of string instruments, including his own pedal harps.

In 1775 his son Jacques-Georges Cousineau (b Paris, 13 Jan 1760; d Paris, 11 Jan 1836) joined the business, and the title of Luthier-in-Ordinary to the Queen was given them both. Jacques-Georges published his first harp music in 1780. From about 1780 to 1811 he was harpist at the Paris Opéra; he was a soloist at the Concert Spirituel in 1781 and became harpist to Empress Josephine in 1804. Cousineau catalogues of the period list harp solos, ensemble music and methods composed or arranged by the Cousineaus and others.

Now best remembered for their single-action pedal harps (see illustration), the Cousineaus made several improvements in the mechanism of the instrument. Their à béquilles (‘crutch’) system was superior to the earlier hook as a device for raising string pitch, and their bridge-pin slide made it possible to regulate individual string lengths. They also reorganized the connecting levers in the harp neck. These developments assured a more accurate proportioning of the strings throughout the octaves.

According to P.-J. Roussier’s Mémoire sur la nouvelle harpe de M. Cousineau (1782), the Cousineaus developed a harp which could be tuned in C (rather than E) and played in all keys. Ingeniously conceived, but surely formidable to play, the instrument had 14 pedals, arranged in a double row. More conventional seven-pedal Cousineau harps, usually handsomely carved and painted in the Rococo style, are in most major museum collections; the examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, are particularly notable. Empress Josephine’s harp at Malmaison, with its gilt-bronze eagle perched on a rectangular capital, is a Cousineau instrument.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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C. Pierre: Les facteurs d’instruments de musique (Paris, 1893)

A. Jacquot: La lutherie lorraine et française (Paris, 1912)

R. Rensch: Harps and Harpists (London and Bloomington, IN, 1989)

S. Milliot: ‘Cousineau (les)’, Dictionnaire de la musique en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, ed. M. Benoit (Paris, 1992)

ROSLYN RENSCH