Louis-Nicolas Clérambault

Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (19 December 1676 – 26 October 1749) was a French musician, best known as an organist and composer. He was born, and died, in Paris.

Biography

Clérambault came from a musical family (his father and two of his sons were also musicians). While very young, he learned to play the violin and harpsichord and he studied the organ with André Raison. Clérambault also studied composition and voice with Jean-Baptiste Moreau.

Clérambault became the organist at the church of the Grands-Augustins and entered the service of Madame de Maintenon. After the death of Louis XIV and Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, he succeeded the latter at the organ of the church of Saint-Sulpice and the royal house of Saint-Cyr, an institution for young girls from the poor nobility. He was responsible there for music, the organ, directing chants and choir, etc. It was in this post—it remained his after the death of Madame de Maintenon—that he developed the genre of the "French cantata" of which he was the uncontested master. In 1719 he succeeded his teacher André Raison at the organs of the church of the Grands-Jacobins.

His Motet du Saint Sacrement in G major is one of the first French works known to have been performed in Philadelphia.

Works

His important published work includes:

a large number of religious pieces with chants and choirs, (motets, hymns, Magnificat, Te Deum etc.);
more than 25 secular cantatas on subjects often inspired by Greco-Roman myths;
sonatas for violin and basso continuo:
a book of dance pieces for the harpsichord (1704) in which he adopted the tradition of the unmeasured prelude;
a book of organ pieces in two suites (1710) in which melodic charm wins out over religious spirit. These two collections seemed destined to begin a cycle of pieces in all keys but Clérambault never completed the cycle.