Jean-Baptiste Morin

Jean-Baptiste Morin (Orléans, 1677 – Paris, 1745) was a French composer who cultivated the cantata, the motet and other short forms, in a style that combined Italian grace with French delicacy. Born in Orléans, the son of a weaver, he was first a choirboy at the collegiate church of Saint-Aignan in his native city, where his teacher was the canon Oliver Trembloit. Around 1698 he settled in Paris, where he frequented the concerts at Saint-André-des-Arts and befriended the poet Jean Serré de Rieux, a lover of Italian music, whose circle opened to him the doors of the capital's musical life.

Around 1701 he entered the service of the Duke of Orléans, the future regent, as ordinaire de la musique, and took part in the musical evenings at Sceaux. His first French cantatas, composed around 1700, place him among the introducers of the genre in France, based on a poetic form taken from the Italian model by J.-B. Rousseau; the cantata Euterpe is usually cited as the first of them. Between 1706 and 1707 Ballard published two volumes of his cantatas, and in 1709 his second book of motets appeared, together with La chasse du cerf, a divertissement with a libretto by Serré de Rieux, which the Princess of Conti had performed before Louis XIV at Fontainebleau in 1708.

Between 1719 and 1723, approximately, he passed into the service of Louise Adélaïde of Orléans, abbess of Chelles, as maître de chapelle and, in time, surintendant de la musique of that Benedictine convent. There he received a canonry of Saint Lazarus and pensions from the princess and from the archdiocese of Rouen. After leaving that house, from 1731 he lived in the household of a Parisian squire and, although he no longer had a royal patron, he continued to compose hunting fanfares, arias and funeral music, much of which is now lost.

Morin is remembered as a formal innovator who knew how to unite Italian brilliance with French clarity. His style, ornate and highly expressive, is especially evident in La chasse du cerf, which despite its stage origin was reduced in the edition to a trio, and in the Processional of 1726, where he simplified his writing and used fauxbourdon. His work retains interest as evidence of the transition between the early French cantata and the salon music of the eighteenth century.