Les Barricades Mystérieuses (The Mysterious Barricades) is a piece of music that
François Couperin composed for
harpsichord in 1717. It is the fifth piece in his Ordre 6ème de clavecin in
B-flat major, from his second book of collected harpsichord pieces (Pièces de Clavecin).[1][2] It is emblematic of the style brisé characteristic of French
Baroque keyboard music.[3]
"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
Title
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 sacrament of 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]
a "technical joke...the continuous suspensions in the lute style being a barricade to the basic harmony".[10]
Legacy
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]
Homages and references in other works
The piece has been used as a source of inspiration across different artistic fields including music, visual arts and literature.[6]
Music
1971
Moog synthesizer rendition titled "Variations on Couperin's Rondeau ("Les Barricades mystérieuses")" on the album Short Circuits by
Ruth White.
1973 harpsichord piece titled "Barricades (Rock piece after Couperin)" on the album Bhajebochstiannanas [an anagram of
Johann Sebastian Bach] by
Anthony Newman.
1984 written for and incorporating texts by
Christopher Hewitt, a piece for women's chorus, piccolo, bassoon, harpsichord and clapping titled "Les Barricades Mysteriéuses" by
Juilliard composer
Andrew Thomas.
1986 album titled Heavenly Bodies including the Appia Suite, one movement of which is titled "Les Barricades mystérieuses", by British jazz composer
Barbara Thompson. Re-recorded in the same year to be the title track of the German film Zischke.
1987 piece for solo guitar by
John Williams on his album The Baroque Album.
1988
rock piece titled "Mysterious Barricades" on the album of the same name by former
Police guitarist
Andy Summers.
1989 work for flute and orchestra called "Les Barricades Mystérieuses" by
Luca Francesconi.
1989 piece for three recorders called "Les Barricades" by
Matthias Maute.
1994
quintet arrangement for clarinet, bass clarinet, viola, cello and double bass in the album America: A prophecy by
Thomas Adès.
1994 piece for solo guitar titled "Mysterious Habitats" by Serbian guitarist
Dusan Bogdanovic.
1995
sextet arrangement for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and cello titled "Les Barricades mystérieuses", the fourth of nine
movements that make up the composition Récréations françaises by French composer
Gérard Pesson.
1995 Le Barricate Misteriose (Hommage à Couperin) for 12 cellos, composed by Italian composer
Gabriella Zen (commissioned by the Orquestra Villa Lobos).
Mid-1990s solo percussion and electronic piece titled "Mysterious Barricades" on the album of the same name by
Scott Smallwood.
1999 "Les Baricades Fantasques" is the second movement of a suite of three harpsichord pieces paying homage to Scarlatti, Couperin, and Bach, by American composer
Robert T. Kelley.
2001 "Girándula" for 4 corni di bassetto or 4 bass clarinets, based on "Les Barricades mystérieuses", by
Jacobo Durán-Loriga.
2002
folk song "Mysterious Barricades" on the album Letter to the Editor by
Max Ochs.
2003 piece for drums, voice and instruments titled "Through the Mysterious Barricade" by
Philip Corner. This was revisited in 2011 with a new work titled "Petite fantasie sur Les Barricades Mystérieuses (déjà une révélation) d'après François Couperin".
2007 "decomposition and performance" for piano titled "Les Barricades" Canadian performance artist
Yawen Wang.
2010 piece for oboe, horn, violin, viola, cello and harpsichord titled "The Mysterious Barricades" by Korean composer
Jung Sun Kang.
2019 song "Bambina" off the album Father of the Bride by
Vampire Weekend, bearing resemblance to the piece.
2021 The composer
Alma Deutscher suggested that her vocal and visual arrangement of the piece,[13] where the notes in the different voices rest on one another like barrels, may explain the imagery of barricades.
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1922: The Worm Ourobouros. ER. Eddison. Early in this fantasy novel the protagonist and his wife, hearing their daughter play this piece, comment to each other that only they know the true meaning of the title.
1990: mentioned in Paul Auster's The Music of Chance. The protagonist Jim Nashe feels compelled to play this work because it reminds him of the wall he is building. Wondering about the meaning of the tile, Nashe states that "[a]s far as he was concerned, the barricades stood for the wall he was building in the meadow, but that was quite another thing from knowing what they meant." (chapter 8)
^The mirror of human life': Reflections on François Couperin's Pièces de Clavecin by Jane Clark and Derek Connon (Redcroft, King's Music, 2002), cited in Evnine.
^(François Couperin and the French Classical Tradition, new version, London, Faber and Faber, 1987, pp. 400–2). Cited in Evnine.
^Wheeldon M (2009). Debussy's Late Style. Indiana University Press. pp. 67–68.
ISBN978-0-253-35239-2.
^ Cited in: Wheeldon (2009), p. 68; translation by
Richard Langham Smith in: Lesure F; Smith RL, eds. (1977). Debussy on Music: The Critical Writings of the Great French Composer Claude Debussy. A. A. Knopf. p. 275.