Anne Louise Boyvin d’Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy

Anne Louise Boyvin d'Hardancourt, known as Madame Brillon de Jouy, was a French harpsichordist, pianist and composer born in Paris in 1744 who died in Villers-sur-Mer in 1824. Her significance lies in the fact that her output and her musical library reflect the transition from the harpsichord to the piano in late eighteenth-century France.

Born into a family connected with the financial administration of the crown, both her father and her husband held that office. Thanks to the family fortune she was able to maintain musical salons in the Marais district of Paris and, downriver along the Seine, in Passy. There she was the star of evenings that Benjamin Franklin, during his stay in Passy between 1777 and 1785, ironically dubbed her “opera”. Among her circle were the violinist André-Noël Pagin and several composers who dedicated sonatas to her, including Johann Schobert, Luigi Boccherini, Ernst Eichner and Henri-Joseph Rigel.

In 1770 Charles Burney bore witness to her skill: she played with great fluency, taste and sensitivity, and was an excellent sight-reader. Besides performing, she composed and presented her own pieces to the public, sometimes accompanied by Pagin. She owned an English piano sent by J. C. Bach, a German piano and a harpsichord, and she indicated these instruments in two keyboard trios.

Her legacy is doubly valuable. On the one hand, she kept a library of music, both her own and by other authors, almost all dated between the 1760s and the early 1780s, the only collection of this kind associated with a well-known French harpsichordist. On the other, her work shows that although performers and listeners appreciated the differences between the two instruments, composers had not yet exploited them. Her music, of galant charm and originality, includes a march composed to celebrate the American victory at Saratoga in 1777.