Société Lunaire
73:26
Ramée RAM2207
The celebrated traveller and commentator on music Charles Burney heard a performance of Godecharle’s music for harp in Brussels in 1772, and although he identified him as German, in fact, we can add him to our list of famous Belgians as Eugéne-Charles-Jean Godecharle was a local boy born in that city in 1742. Such was the turbulent state of Europe during his lifetime that he was born in the Austrian Netherlands and died in the French First Republic, all without leaving Brussels! Burney heard a ‘young lady play extremely well on the harp with pedals’, an invention permitting more chromatic demands to be placed on the instrument, and indeed Godecharle’s six quartets are each in a different key. While the epicentre of harp playing and composition inevitably became Paris, with Queen Marie-Antoinette becoming proficient on the instrument, and the link with ‘young ladies’ also becoming almost ubiquitous, it was the Brussels maker Simon Hochbrucker who ensured the success of the pedal harp, and his two sons, both harp virtuosi, who ensured its spread throughout Europe. Perhaps it was for one of these players that Godecharle wrote his three Sonatas for harp with violin accompaniment and the present six Quartets. Godecharle’s music is relatively undemanding on players and listeners, but not without its charms, and the Société Lunaire and their harpist Maximilian Ehrhardt wisely let it speak for itself in these delightful recordings.
D. James Ross