Jacques Hardel (died March 1678) was a French

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

and

harpsichord A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one ...

ist. He came from a family that included two noted instrument makers: his grandfather Gilles Hardel (

fl. ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...

ca. 1611) and his father Guillaume Hardel (died 1676), who was a

lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (music), neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lu ...

maker and a well-established harpsichordist—in 1673–4 he served as harpsichord teacher to the daughter of Philippe d'Orléans. Practically nothing is known about Jacques Hardel's life. He was a pupil of Jacques Champion de Chambonnières and achieved a very high reputation at the court, at one point giving concerts for the King every week, performing together with the lutenist Porion. For several years he lived together with a pupil, a "Gautier" who remains unidentified today. The two men shared a close friendship, and Hardel bequeathed all of his works to Gautier. Only eight pieces by Hardel are extant today. These are a

courante The ''courante'', ''corrente'', ''coranto'' and ''corant'' are some of the names given to a family of triple metre dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era. In a Baroque dance suite an Italian or French courante is typically pair ...

for lute, a six-movement harpsichord suite in D minor, and a harpsichord

gavotte The gavotte (also gavot, gavote, or gavotta) is a French dance, taking its name from a folk dance of the Gavot, the people of the Gap, Hautes-Alpes, Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné in the southeast of France, where the dance originated, accordin ...

. All of the harpsichord works are of the highest quality, displaying Hardel's perfect grasp of his teacher's techniques, particularly Chambonnières's strong sense of the melodic line, which in Hardel's works is augmented with advanced bass writing, tightening the harmony and working towards a more progressive sound. The suite, which consists of an

allemande An ''allemande'' (''allemanda'', ''almain(e)'', or ''alman(d)'', French: "German (dance)") is a Renaissance and Baroque dance, and one of the most common instrumental dance styles in Baroque music, with examples by Couperin, Purcell, Bach ...

, three courantes, a

sarabande The sarabande (from ) is a dance in triple metre, or the music written for such a dance. History The Sarabande evolved from a Spanish dance with Arab influences, danced by a lively double line of couples with castanets. A dance called ''zara ...

, and a

gigue The gigue ( , ) or giga () is a lively baroque dance originating from the English jig. It was imported into France in the mid-17th centuryBellingham, Jane"gigue."''The Oxford Companion to Music''. Ed. Alison Latham. Oxford Music Online. 6 July ...

, is one of the earliest examples of a complete "classical" French suite. The lute courante may be a transcription of a lost harpsichord piece.

References

* Year of birth missing 1678 deaths French male classical composers French Baroque composers French harpsichordists 17th-century French classical composers 17th-century French male musicians {{france-composer-stub