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Concept
Les Barricades Mystérieuses
Summary
Les Barricades Mystérieuses (The Mysterious Barricades) 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 (Pièces de Clavecin). It is emblematic of the style brisé characteristic of French Baroque keyboard 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. In the view of Tom Service,
Les Barricades Mystérieuses was originally published with the spelling Les Baricades Mistérieuses ["single r" in the first word, and "i" rather than "y" in the second word]. All four possible spelling combinations have since been used with "double r" and a "y" being the most common. The intended meaning of the phrase has remained an enigma (an example of how musical allusions can remain hidden over time).
There has been much speculation on the meaning of the phrase "mysterious barricades", but no direct evidence appears to be available. The harpsichordist Pascal Tufféry has suggested that, in keeping with the bucolic character of other pieces in Couperin's Ordre 6ème de clavecin, the pounding rhythm may represent the stamping of grapes in winemaking (given that the French word barrique means 'barrel', and barriquade was a designation adopted by viticulturalists of the day in France). In this view, the "mysterious" epithet could allude to the significance of wine in the Mysteries of Bacchus (as well as in the Eucharist). Some of the less likely interpretations of the "mysterious barricades" proposed over the years – sometimes in relation to the salonnières of the 17th century - include women’s eyelashes, underwear and even chastity belts.
A plausible attempt to link the title to features of the music itself has been provided by the harpsichordist Luke Arnason:
While the title reflects the musical structure, there may be more at play.
Official source
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