Conversations Galantes et Amusantes
Born in Paris in 1705, Louis-Gabriel Guillemain is, together with Leclair, Guignon and, of course, Rameau, one of the most distinguished representatives of the gallant music popular in 18th century France, although, in many countries, he is perhaps the least well-known of those named.
The term “gallant music” has, ever since it became fashionable, been used to describe a courtesan style, that is, in the style of court musicians, which sought to delight and to please, with an apparent lightness that is characteristic of this music. But in the France of the Age of Enlightenment, the gallant style more specifically meant a new style which the musicians of the court of Louis XV began to adopt, abandoning the pompous heaviness of the artistic forms of the Louis XIV and Regency periods, which basically consisted of the Italianisation of taste and musical forms.
And the Italian style won popularity in the salons of the time: the sonata and the cantata became fashionable among French composers and gave form to the new chamber music that was being heard at court. The person mainly responsible for this sweeping influence was Giovanni Battista Somis, an Italian violinist and composer whose fame spread throughout France thanks to his disciples, Leclair, Guignon and Guillemain; with them, the French school of violin opened up to the tradition of Corelli, who had been Somis’s master.
Guillemain had visited Italy twice. The first occasion was to train under Somis, and the second, when he was first violin with the Dijon Academy of Music, where he became established as a composer and musician in 1729. And so with that experience behind him, he presented himself at court in 1737, where he was named musicien ordinaire to Louis XV. He played in private sessions for the King and Queen and became one of the most popular and best paid of the King’s musicians. But the patronage of the Marchioness of Pompadour was perhaps more favourable to him. He formed part of the Marchioness’s orchestra for over ten years, and it was in her theatre that he premiered his first great success: the ballet-pantomime L´operateur chinois, which later, in January 1749, was performed at the Comédie Italienne.
His works were often performed in the Concert Spirituel, the admirable institution organised by Philidor in the Salle des Cents Suisses at the Tuileries in order to promote French music and which had a dominant influence during the whole of the 18th century. But Guillemain never played there himself as soloist, since he suffered what appears to be a neurotic refusal to perform before large audiences.
In fact, of the little that we know of Guillemain, the most striking characteristic is his stormy personality and the harrowing life that accompanied his apparently successful position as a court musician: he was a drinker, he was deeply in debt, and ended his life in Chaville in 1770.
The 18 published works of Guillemain are all instrumental, and include pieces for solo violin, violin and keyboards, two violins, trio sonatas, quartets, concertos, trio symphonies and divertimentos for orchestral trios.
Guillemain’s sonata quartets still show elements of late Baroque, such as the use of continuous bass, and they share with the Rococo of the period a liking for profuse ornamentation, despite the thematic and formal clarity that characterises them.