Gaspard Le Roux

Gaspard Le Roux was a French harpsichordist and composer active in Paris in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. His name first appears in the Parisian musical world in the early 1690s, which places him among the leading musicians of the capital during the reign of Louis XIV. The exact date of his death is unknown: it is known that he died in Paris, but the only documentary evidence is an inventory of goods cited in a notarial index dated 17 June 1707, whose original text has been lost.

The earliest references to him date from 1690, when the Mercure de France cited a figured bass he supplied for a translation of the hymn Veni creator. At that time he was described merely as a music master, but six years later he was already called a famous music master. He was among the Parisian organists and harpsichordists listed in the Livre commode of Blegny du Pradel (1692) and, in 1695, he belonged to the group of the city's musicians paying the highest tax. In 1705 he published his Pièces de clavessin, a book for harpsichord whose preface complains of defective manuscript copies in circulation, and which explains why he finally agreed to print them at the request of amateurs. On stylistic grounds, the book appears to have been composed at least ten years before its publication, although the surviving manuscripts do not indicate wide dissemination of his work. A reprint by Roger in Amsterdam carried the collection to Germany, where J. G. Walther copied almost half of its contents and included Le Roux in his Musicalisches Lexicon of 1732.

The book contains 47 pieces, of which 41 form seven suites, although they are not labelled as such. Le Roux drew heavily on D'Anglebert's book of 1689, from which he copied verbatim fifteen of the eighteen ornament signs and their explanations. Four suites open with preludes without metre, written in the traditional notation of semibreves, an unusual practice among the French. The most distinctive feature of the collection is that it offers alternative versions: almost all the dances also appear in a version for two treble lines and figured bass, and the book closes with second harpsichord parts for five pieces and an additional gigue. He thus proposes three ways of performing the music beyond solo harpsichord: singing the melody accompanied by the figured bass, playing the pieces as instrumental trios (an idea Dieupart had anticipated in 1701), or creating a second harpsichord part from the second treble voice.

His legacy rests above all on the large body of rich and sumptuous music written for two harpsichords, which constitutes his greatest achievement, although its counterpoint is not very individualised. Two works from his output are securely attributed to him: an air from the Recueil d'airs sérieux et à boire (Paris, 1701) and a motet, Thuris odor. Two other motets in the same manuscript carry doubtful attributions from the eighteenth century.