(Fr.).
A term usually reserved for a body of 17th-century harpsichord preludes written without orthodox indications of rhythm and metre. Various methods of notating such works can be seen in the manuscripts and early printed editions of Louis Couperin, Nicolas Lebègue, J.-H. D’Anglebert and Gaspard Le Roux. In the early 18th century unmeasured notations were largely abandoned, some publishers even omitting the unmeasured preludes altogether when republishing harpsichord music. The interpretation of these extraordinary-looking pieces has caused confusion for players and scholars.
Rhythmically free preludial pieces were common before the 17th century (under such titles as intonazione, toccata, ricercare and Prelude), but the usual notation of these pieces was rhythmically precise even if the notes did not fall into regular patterns. Although it seems likely that 17th-century harpsichordists adopted elements of the French lute prelude, the earlier tradition of keyboard pieces that did not conform to regular rhythmic groupings but were written in measured notation is a main line of descent for the prélude non mesuré.
Rhythmically unmeasured notation for preludes originated in lute preludes designed to test the tuning of the instrument before playing, at about the same time as the nouveau ton triadic tuning was introduced for that instrument. The earliest examples date from about 1630. The five short unmeasured preludes in the lute manuscript of Virginia Renata (D-Bsb 40264) are in various tunings; four include the normal rhythmic signs above the tablature, while one does not indicate any rhythm but includes a series of slurs to group the notes. A generation later Denis Gaultier wrote similar preludes. Although they are generally playable in free rhythm, they include sections that fall naturally into regular groups. Thus the genuinely unmeasured lute pieces represent a style in which notes cannot satisfactorily be grouped into regular rhythmic and harmonic patterns, independent of the presence or absence of notated rhythm; numerous pieces written without rhythmic notation, particularly in the late 17th-century lute repertory, clearly fall into regular patterns and thus are not really unmeasured. Unmeasured music was also written for the viol: De Machy included eight such preludes in his Pièces de violle (1685) and Sainte-Colombe wrote many unmeasured movements for one and two viols together, surviving with titles such as La volontaire … parce qu’estant sans mesure, on joue comme on veut (‘because it is unmeasured one plays it how one wishes’) and L’aureille … parce qu’il se joue sans mesure et seulement il faut jouer d’aureille (‘because it is played unmeasured, only by ear’). Wholly unmeasured notation for these instruments is normally found only in manuscript books. Despite superficial similarities, however, the harpsichord preludes are really a separate phenomenon from the lute and viol examples, and in the past too much has been made of their connection with the lute pieces. The surviving repertory of préludes non mesurés for harpsichord comprises over 50 works.
Most unmeasured preludes fall into one of two main groups: toccatas and tombeaux, relating to the Italian toccatas of Frescobaldi and Froberger and to the elegiac tombeaux composed, mostly by the French, in honour of dead teachers, patrons or friends. (Many such laments occur in the works of Froberger, often disguised as allemandes, as in Suites nos.12 and 30; see also the Tombeau … de M. Blancheroche, lequel se joue fort lentement à la discretion sans observer aucune mesure.)
The toccata style is recognizable in four of the preludes of Louis Couperin (nos.1, 3, 6 and 12 in Pièces de clavecin). These are in three sections, the outer two freer and the central one strictly fugal. One (no.6), occurring in both the Bauyn (F-Pn Rés.Vm7674–5) and Parville (US-BE 778) manuscripts, bears the title ‘Prelude … a l’imitation de Mr. Froberger’ in the latter source. The fact that it is almost certainly derived from Froberger’s first organ toccata confirms the connection between the two forms. Furthermore, its interpretation of the opening chord of Froberger’s toccata is instructive: Couperin’s notation (ex.1) elaborates the chord into a series of arpeggios, recalling Lebègue’s remark that in harpsichord playing the ‘manner is to break and re-strike the chords quickly rather than play them as on the organ’ (see Keyboard music, §I, ex.4, for the toccata).
The tombeau-allemande style in normal measured notation is characterized by a slow tempo, a freedom of rhythm and a characteristic opening motif of an anacrusic melodic scale rising a 4th (usually from the leading note to the mediant). Three of Couperin’s preludes (nos.2, 4 and 13) relate to this style (ex.2a). Couperin’s Tombeau de Mr Blancrocher (ex.2b) might as well have been written in the same unmeasured notation, for the musical style is almost identical.
The basic unmeasured notation as devised by Louis Couperin consists of a succession of slurred semibreves. Playing it depends mainly on understanding the several meanings of the slurs, distinguishable by their context. Firstly, slurs can indicate sustained notes, as in ex.1, when notes in immediate succession form a chord. The combined factors of sustained sound and chordal cohesion tend to give such notes the rhythmic weight of a strong beat. Secondly, slurs can indicate that a group of notes has ornamental significance (ex.3) or melodic importance (ex.1, at asterisk). Thirdly, slurs can isolate notes from what precedes or follows. These last slurs are sometimes not attached to any note at all, and usually extend from the lower staff to the upper one. In ex.4 the slurs indicate a chord sequence quite at variance with the vertical alignment on the page. Thus a manner of arpeggiating is suggested by an exceedingly elegant and economical notation.
In the preface to his Les pièces de clavessin (1677) Lebègue commented on the difficulty of notating preludes intelligibly, and he devised a modified notation which was the basis of most later published préludes non mesurés. His notation uses normal note values from semibreve to semiquaver (including dotted notes) and bar-lines, but the bar-lines (usually sloping) indicate chord changes; thus they appear to have a meaning like that of the third kind of slur mentioned above, in that they are lines unattached to any note, sloping from the lower staff to the upper one, designed to clarify the harmonies.
Lebègue’s semi-measured notation was not universally adopted; indeed, no other composer used such a precise notation. Louis Marchand, Clérambault and Rameau all used a notation first adopted by D’Anglebert for the printed preludes of 1689. (These preludes survive in his own handwriting, written entirely in semibreves, in F-Pn Rés.89ter.) D’Anglebert’s system is perhaps the closest any composer came to an acceptable solution to the problems of unmeasured preludes. Semibreves are used for the basic notation, but fragments of melodic importance are identified by being notated in quavers. The sequence of notes from left to right indicates conventionally the sounding sequence of notes in time, and the occasional bar-lines indicate the end of a significant musical sentence. In ex.5 the use of quavers for the arpeggio shows that it is not to be played fast but rather melodically, and the bar-line indicates a pause to mark the arrival on the dominant.
D’Anglebert’s notation, unlike Lebègue’s, is not in any real way more measured than the semibreve notation used by D’Anglebert in his manuscript preludes or by Louis Couperin. It simply uses white notes for harmonic pitches and black ones for melodic passages. The black notes are quavers (semiquavers for ornamental notes) because these can be ligatured into melodic groupings which are more easily assimilated by the player. The visual aspect of this notation is a parallel with the kind of notation used by Italian toccata composers, where shorter notes do not always imply an increase in speed, but may show a distinction between harmonic and melodic passages (see Keyboard music, §I, ex.4).
Many of these preludes are highly organized works, cogently and coherently planned, with a powerful harmonic structure and a careful use of motivically developed melodic elements. Continued performance from the original unmeasured notations brings a musical insight and freedom not to be obtained from any other notation.
A. Curtis: Unmeasured Preludes in French Baroque Instrumental Music (diss., U. of Illinois, 1956)
A. Curtis: ‘Musique classique française à Berkeley’, RdM, lvi (1970), 123–64
D. Moroney: ‘The Performance of Unmeasured Harpsichord Preludes’, EMc, iv (1976), 143–58
C. Pfeiffer: ‘Das französische prélude non mesuré für Cembalo: Notenbild, Interpretation, Enfluss auf Froberger, Bach, Händel’, NZM, Jg.140 (1979), 132–6
P. Le Prevost: Le prélude non mesuré pour clavecin (France 1650–1700) (Baden-Baden, 1987)
C. Tilney: The Art of Unmeasured Prelude for Harpsichord: France 1660–1720 (London, 1991)
R.W. Troeger: ‘The French Unmeasured Harpsichord Prelude: Notation and Performance’, Early Keyboard Journal, x (1992), 89–119
DAVITT MORONEY