Nicolas-Antoine Lebègue (1631 – July 6, 1702) was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. Events 1044 - The Battle of Ménfő takes place 1189 - Richard the Lionheart is crowned King of England Year 1702 ( MDCCII) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. Baroque art redirects here Please disambiguate such links to Baroque painting, Baroque sculpture, etc A composer (literally meaning 'one who puts together' is a person who creates Music, usually in the medium of notation, for Interpretation and Performance An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or Orchestra, or accompany A harpsichord is a Musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. Although he was an innovative composer and quite famous during his lifetime, Lebègue's music is rarely performed or recorded today. He is perhaps best remembered as the teacher of Nicolas de Grigny. Nicolas de Grigny ( baptized September 8 1672 &ndash November 30 1703 was a French Organist and Composer.

Little is known about Lebègue's early years and musical training. By 1656 he was living in Paris and by 1661 he was already known as the famous Paris organist. Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city Indeed, the surviving copies of his music are much more numerous than those of other organ composers of the era, apparently he was a highly acclaimed musician. In 1664 he became organist of Church Saint-Merry. He occupied that post until his death in 1702. He published three "livres d'orgue" [organ books] that, according to their prefaces, were designed to show how professional organists played in Paris. Lebegue wrote in the 8 church modes, just like the Renaissance organ masters such as Titelouze, but his works are already tending toward modern tonality. He codified the types of French classical organ pieces (Plein jeu, tierce en taille, echo, dessus de cromhorne, etc. ) that are standard in all the other classical French organ composers, but he also is an important intermediary step between the Renaissance organists and JS Bach, who copied De Grigny's Livre d'Orgue by hand. Although some tonalities seem to us like minor and some like major, there is also a characteristic modulation that may differentiate them. For instance A minor can modulate to C major or to E major. These modulations come from the "mediant" of the old church modes. In other words, although the tonic in both cases is A, one mode may have a mediant of C and the other of E.

Works

Title page of Troisieme livre d'orgue.

Lebègue was the first French composer to apply the term suite to harpsichord suites and one of the first to compose suites for organ. In Music, a suite is an ordered set of Instrumental or Orchestral pieces normally performed in a Concert He also contributed to the development of the unmeasured prelude by introducing the usage of different note values in such pieces and by making attempts to explain, in publications, how to play the pieces. Unmeasured or non-measured prelude is a prelude in which the Duration of each Note is left to the performer The very first published unmeasured preludes appear in Lebègue's Le pièces de clavessin (1677).

His surviving works include:

• 1er livre d'orgue (1676), 8 organ suites in the eight Church Modes. In Music, a scale is an ordered series of Musical intervals which along with the key or tonic, define the pitches However mode
• 2e livre d'orgue (1678), a mass and Magnificat settings for organ. For other uses see Mass (disambiguation The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that The Magnificat (also known as the Song of Mary) is a Canticle frequently sung (or spoken liturgically in Christian church services
• 3e livre d'orgue (1685), miscellaneous organ pieces.
• two volumes of harpsichord works (Pièces de clavecin, 1677 and 1687), some of which were, for some time, falsely attributed to Dieterich Buxtehude (see List of compositions by Dieterich Buxtehude). Dieterich Buxtehude ( Dietrich, Diderich) (c 1637 &ndash 9 May 1707 was a German-Danish Organist, Lutenist The Buxtehude-Werke-Verzeichnis ("Buxtehude Works Catalogue" commonly abbreviated to BuxWV) is the catalogue and the numbering system used to identify Musical

See also

• French organ school

References

• Edward Higginbottom. The French organ school formed in the first half of the 17th century "Nicolas Lebègue", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an Encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), xiv, 429.

External links

• Nicolas Lebègue was listed in the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Nicolas Lebègue in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Recordings of Lebegue works on French organs by W. D. Halsey
• Another recording, also in the 5th tone
• To hear the fourth mode, which is closer to a minor