The great European composers of the 1600s and 1700s are well known: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and their colleagues. But there was another, possibly a master of more genres than the others, and whose genius was widely acknowledged at the time. And this composer was a woman, at a time when women were hardly ever educated. Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre was born March 17, 1665 in Paris. She was born into a musical family; her father and grandfather were master harpsichord makers and virtually everyone in the family could play them.
Her father, Claude Jacquet, started teaching her very early, and thanks to his reputation, she gave a concert in the palace of Versailles when she was just five. The king, Louis XIV, thought so much of her that he invited her to join his court as a teenager to continue her musical studies. She was a musician in the Royal Court until she was in her early 20s, when she married a well-known organist. She continued her musical work, composing, giving concerts at her home, and giving music lessons to the upper crust of Paris.
She was much more than just a dilletante, though; she was well known and included in the biographical work by Evrard Teton du Tiller, who wrote about all the top musicians of the time. He rated her highly, and noted that “Sometimes she improvises one or another for a whole half hour with tunes and harmonies of great variety and in quite the best possible taste, quite charming her listeners.”
She published only one opera, but many sonatas, cantatas, and reams of harpsichord music. Her work was relatively ignored for many years, but starting in the 1990s has been revived and are now available in recordings. Much of the work she published during her lifetime can be found only in manuscript form in various collections in and around Paris. A couple of compositions mentioned by Titan du Tillet have not been found. At least not yet.
