Les Barricades Mystérieuses

The work is in rondeau form, employing a variant of the traditional romanesca in the bass in quadruple time rather than the usual triple time.[2] In the view of Tom Service,

"The four parts create an ever-changing tapestry of melody and harmony, interacting and overlapping with different rhythmic schemes and melodies. The effect is shimmering, kaleidoscopic and seductive, a sonic trompe l'oeil that seem to have presaged images of fractal mathematics, centuries before they existed."[4]

Opening bars of Les Barricades Mystérieuses

Les Barricades Mystérieuses was originally published with the spelling Les Baricades Mistérieuses ["single r" in the first word, and "i" rather than "y" in the second word]. All four possible spelling combinations have since been used with "double r" and a "y" being the most common. The intended meaning of the phrase has remained an enigma (an example of how musical allusions can remain hidden over time).[5]

There has been much speculation on the meaning of the phrase "mysterious barricades", but no direct evidence appears to be available.[6] The harpsichordist Pascal Tufféry has suggested that, in keeping with the bucolic character of other pieces in Couperin's Ordre 6ème de clavecin, the pounding rhythm may represent the stamping of grapes in winemaking (given that the French word barrique means 'barrel', and barriquade was a designation adopted by viticulturalists of the day in France).[6] In this view, the "mysterious" epithet could allude to the significance of wine in the Mysteries of Bacchus (as well as in the Eucharist[7]).[6] Some of the less likely interpretations of the "mysterious barricades" proposed over the years – sometimes in relation to the salonnières of the 17th century - include women’s eyelashes, underwear and even chastity belts.[6]

A plausible attempt to link the title to features of the music itself has been provided by the harpsichordist Luke Arnason:[6]

"The title Les Barricades Mystérieuses is probably meant to be evocative rather than a reference to a specific object, musical or otherwise. Scott Ross, in a master class filmed and distributed by Harmonia Mundi, likens the piece to a train. This clearly cannot have been the precise image Couperin was trying to convey, but it is easy to hear in Les Barricades the image of a heavy but fast-moving object that picks up momentum. In that sense, the mysterious barricades are perhaps those which cause the "train" to slow down and sometimes stop... This hypothesis seems to fit in with the pedagogical aims of Couperin's music, since the composer presents himself as something of a specialist in building sound through legato, style luthé playing...Moreover, it seems to form a set with the following piece, Les Bergeries. This latter piece, though more melodic than Les Barricades, set in a higher register and more bucolic in feeling, is also an exercise in using a repetitive motif (in this case a left hand ostinato evocative of the musette) to build sound without seeming mechanical or repetitive. Both Les Barricades Mystérieuses and Les Bergeries, then, are exercises in building (and relaxing) sound and momentum elegantly."[6]

While the title reflects the musical structure, there may be more at play. The suggestion of barricades is "a double entendre referring simultaneously to feminine virginity and the suspensions [of] harmonic [progressions] of the music, [whose] lute figurations [from the style brisé] are imitated to produce an enigmatic stalemate", as Judith Robison Kipnis explained the work's title and its interpretation by her husband Igor Kipnis.[8]

Jean-Honoré Fragonard
The Love Letter (1770)

Other suggested intended meanings for the title include:

• impeding communication between people
• between past and present or present and future
• between life and death
• masks worn by performers of Le Mystère ou les Fêtes de l'Inconnu (The Mysterious One or the Celebrations of the Unknown One) staged by one of Couperin's patrons, the Duchesse du Maine in 1714[9]
• a "technical joke...the continuous suspensions in the lute style being a barricade to the basic harmony".[10]

Claude Debussy, who considered François Couperin to be the "most poetic of our [French] harpsichordists" and an influence on his own piano études, expressed particular admiration for Les Barricades Mystérieuses.[11] In 1903, Debussy wrote:

"We should think about the example Couperin's harpsichord works set us: they are marvelous models of grace and innocence long past. Nothing could ever make us forget the subtly voluptuous perfume, so delicately perverse, that so innocently hovers over the Barricades Mystérieuses."[12]

• Simon J. Evnine, University of Miami, Les Barricades Mystérieuses. A comprehensive listing of references in other works including recordings.
• Pièces de Clavecin, Book 2: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project