Ut queant laxis (preceded & ended by the ringing of the Carillon)

Today, June 29th is the Feast Day of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist.

It is also the 358 anniversary of the death of Louis Couperin.

Couperin (c.?1626 – 29 August 1661) was born in Chaumes-en-Brie and moved to Paris in 1650–1651 with the help of Jacques Champion de Chambonnières. Couperin worked as organist of the Church of St. Gervais in Paris and as musician at the court. He quickly became one of the most prominent Parisian musicians, establishing himself as a harpsichordist, organist, and violist, but his career was cut short by his early death at the age of thirty-five.

None of his music was published during his lifetime, but manuscript copies of some 200 pieces survive, some of them only rediscovered in the mid-20th century. The first historically important member of the Couperin family, Couperin made contributions to the development of both the French organ school and French harpsichord school. His innovations included composing organ pieces for specific registrations and inventing the genre of the unmeasured prelude for harpsichord, for which he devised a special type of notation.

The traditional hymn for this day is "Ut queant laxis." It is an "Hymnus in Ioannem", and traditionally attributed to Paulus Diaconus, the eighth-century Lombard historian. It is famous for its part in the history of musical notation, in particular solmization. The hymn belongs to the tradition of Gregorian chant.

Solmization is a system of associating each note of a scale with a particular syllable, especially to teach singing.

It is not known who wrote the melody. Guido of Arezzo possibly composed it, but he more likely used an existing melody.

These two brief settings by Couperin are trios, which, while being in the "French manner," probably sound more "Germanic," considering the style in which I've played them.

The score is attached below, as well as 2 photos of Couperin, and Caravaggio's "Beheading of St. John the Baptist," painted in 1608.