Les Barricades Mystérieuses


Les Barricades Mystérieuses 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. It is emblematic of the style brisé characteristic of French Baroque keyboard music.

Music

The work is in rondeau form, employing a variant of the traditional romanesca in the bass in quadruple time rather than the usual triple time.
"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."

The piece was voted at #76 in the Australian 2012 Classic 100 music of France countdown.

Title

Les Barricades Mystérieuses was originally published with the spelling Les Baricades Mistérieuses . All four possible spelling combinations have since been used with "double r" and a "y" being the most common. There has been much speculation on the meaning of the phrase "mysterious barricades" with no direct evidence available to back up any theory. Nevertheless, of those that link the title to features of the music itself, Evnine believes harpsichordist Luke Arnason's is the most plausible:
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 harmonic of the music, lute figurations are imitated to produce an enigmatic stalemate", as Judith Robison Kipnis explained the work's title and its interpretation by her husband Igor Kipnis.
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Other suggested meanings for the title include:
The piece has been used as a source of inspiration by many others across different artistic fields including music, visual arts and literature. Some have simply used the title while others have created new works inspired by the original.

Music

Film