À la recherche de François Couperin

The article attempts to analyse the research on François Couperin. For a musicologist the main problem is the deplorably bad accessibility of the biographical sources. The repertoire of archival documents published in 1968 does not provide sufficient information about the sources edited in the course of the 20th century. This fact led to several misconceptions of Couperin's life. The re-reading and comparison of well-known, but not seriously evaluated documents allows to date precisely the period during which Couperin taught the Duc de Bourgogne. In contrast to the traditional view the lessons did not take place from 1694 to 1706 but from 1700 to 1712. It was the petit Dauphin himself who had chosen the organist as teacher, whereas the King apparently favoured Jean Buterne as maître de clavecin. The social rise of Couperin must have begun at the turn of the century. The valet of Louis XIV, Louis Alexandre Bontemps, might have played a decisive role as patron of the musician in organising the carnival divertissements at Marly in 1700. Refuting the theories of Edward Corp the author puts forward a new dating of the editing process of the Premier livre de pièces de clavecin (1713), which began already around 1710.