Public Research Seminar: Antoine Charpentier
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire - Workshop 2
200 Jennens Road, B4 7XR
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Uncertain and Changing Times: Aspects of Metre Signs and Tempo Indications in the Autograph Manuscripts of Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Adrian Powney (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire)
Across his corpus of over 550 works, Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) uses a range of metre signs and time words greater than any of his French counterparts. This is notable given that he composed during a period of transition from the archaic use of metre signs as indicators of tempo or mensural configuration to the more modern orthochronic practice, in which time words primarily indicate tempo.
This seminar explores Charpentier's use of metre signs (among them, composite and archaic signs) and time words, and concludes that rather than metre signs indicating a fixed tempo as reported by many theorists of the day, Charpeniter used aspects of notation and context to flex the tempo to one or the other end of a range of speeds in proximity to the conventionally associated speed.
Dr Adrian Powney is Head of Operations at the University of Birmingham and a member of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire's forum for 17th and 18th century Music and French Music Research Hub. His research centres on performance practice in French Baroque music, particularly Charpentier and Mondonville. He recently published a critical edition of Charpentier’s Leçons et répons de Ténèbres with the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles. He is currently developing a digital catalogue of Charpentier's works and organising the symposium The Practice of Editing Music to be hosted by RBC, 30 October - 1 November 2026.
Running time approx. 90 minutes