Louis Couperin 400: Who, When, What and Why

An afternoon of Louis Couperin’s keyboard music, marking the 400th anniversary of his birth.

The programme explores Couperin’s works for both organ and strung keyboard instruments, set alongside music by his contemporaries — from Du Caurroy to Thomelin and Gigault — placing his writing within the rich musical world of seventeenth-century France.

Though less widely known today than his nephew François 'le Grand', Louis Couperin was a vital, prolific, and imaginative figure in the early development of the French classical style. His music ranges from intimate, exploratory pieces to works of striking rhetorical breadth, revealing a composer at once deeply rooted in tradition and quietly inventive.

A short talk will be given during the recital, offering a brief introduction to his life, his music, and the context in which it was written – in the hope of opening up this repertoire to a broader audience and inviting a fresh way (i.e., a historically organic, non-hierarchical way) of listening.