Anne Louise Brillon de Jouyaus classic

Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy (* December 13, 1744 in Paris; † December 5, 1824 in Villers-sur-Mer) was a French harpsichordist, pianist and composer.

Life

Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon was born the daughter of the royal tax official Louis-Claude Boyvin d’Hardancourt (ca. 1710-1756) and his wife Marie-Elizabeth, née Martin (1723-1785), and learned to play the harpsichord as a child.

In October 1763, she married the tax official Jacques Brillon de Jouy (1722-1787), 22 years her senior, with whom she had two daughters. At her country residence in Passy, the salon, which she held every Wednesday and Saturday, became a permanent fixture. In addition to André-Noël Pagin, foreign musicians who were currently in Paris performed at her salon and she herself played the harpsichord and pianoforte. She gained an excellent reputation as a musician, although she neither performed in public concerts nor were her own compositions printed. Several composers such as Johann Schobert, Luigi Boccherini, Ernst Eichner and Henri-Joseph Rigel dedicated sonatas to her.

In 1777, Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon met the American ambassador Benjamin Franklin, who had rented a house in the same street in Passy where the Brillon de Jouys’ country residence was located. From then on, he became part of the musician’s circle and an intense friendship and lively correspondence developed.

After the death of her husband, she sold the estate in Passy and spent the period of the French Revolution with her daughters and their families at a castle in the Seine-et-Marne department, which belonged to one of her sons-in-law. From 1808, she lived partly in Paris and in Villers, where she died at the age of 79.

Her friendship with Benjamin Franklin led to research on Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon at the beginning of the 20th century as part of Franklin’s research, which was sponsored by the American Philosophical Society. This led to the discovery of around 400 works from the musician’s music library, which was started in the 1760s. This library is of particular importance because it is the only coherent French collection of its kind known to date. Some works were sold by her descendants to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 1957, while the rest are largely in private hands and have been filmed, cataloged and analyzed.

The instrumental and vocal compositions by de Jouy Brillon in the music library date from a time when the harpsichord and fortepiano were still used side by side in France, but their musical characteristics had not yet been fully exploited. Six surviving works by the musician are expressly intended for several different keyboard instruments and thus document the transition from harpsichord to fortepiano in France. It is known that Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon owned a harpsichord, a German pianofort and an English pianofort sent to her from London by Johann Christian Bach, and two of her trios mention precisely this combination of instruments.

In 1768, when Luigi Boccherini wrote his 6 Sonatas for Piano and Violin, G. 25-30 op. 5, the piano was still a relatively new instrument. Anne Louise de Jouy Brillon encouraged him to write the keyboard part, including the dynamic markings, especially for the new instrument. When the sonatas were published in 1769, the publisher was forced for commercial reasons to replace the indication “pianoforte” with “harpsichord” and to remove many dynamic markings because the harpsichord was still the dominant keyboard instrument.

The best-known composition by de Jouy Brillon is the “Marche des Insurgents” for keyboard instrument, written in 1777 to mark the victory of the Americans over the British forces at the Battle of Saratoga, which is now available in an orchestrated version. None of her works were published during her lifetime.

Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Louise_Brillon_de_Jouy