Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665 – 1729)
Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre was born Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet to a family of musicians and instrument makers living on Île Saint-Louis in Paris. She grew up playing music. At the age of 5 she performed at Versailles before Louis XIV, and later became a court musician. In 1684 she married an organist, Marin de La Guerre, and continued performing in concerts in Paris, as well as composing and teaching. She was particularly renowned as a harpsichord virtuoso.
In the context of music history, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre is roughly contemporaneous with Alessandro Scarlatti and François Couperin, and about a generation ahead of those composers most associated with the Late Baroque: Bach, Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, Telemann, and Rameau.
Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre composed in several genres: cantatas and other vocal music, suites for the harpsichord, sonatas for violin and viola da gamba, and a tragic opera based on the myth of Cephalus and Procris from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
One of Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s sonatas is performed here by the New York City-based Digital Camerata on historically accurate instruments: a baroque violin, a seven-string viola da gamba, a theorbo, and a harpsichord.