Louis-Antoine Dornel

Louis-Antoine Dornel was a French organist and composer, born around 1680 and active in Paris, where he died after 1756. He belongs to the musical life of Paris in the first half of the eighteenth century, when Italian music was gaining ground, and his interest lies above all in his instrumental output and his work as a church and institutional organist.

His name first appears in the records of Sainte-Madeleine-en-la-Cité in Paris, where he was appointed organist in 1706 after a competition against Rameau. His victory was apparently due to Rameau's refusal to accept the conditions imposed by the ecclesiastical authorities. Ten years later he moved to the abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, where he succeeded André Raison after Raison's death in 1719. In 1725 he also became music master of the Académie Française, required to compose and direct a motet each year on 25 August, the feast of Saint Louis. The motets were also heard at the Concert Spirituel, as references in the Mercure de France show, although none of them survives.

Dornel's career ended abruptly: in 1742 he lost his post in favour of Rebel, in circumstances that suggest intrigue, even though his works were well received. Little is heard of him afterwards; a mention from 1745 records the performance of a motet at the king's mass. The date of his death is not documented precisely. The testimony of La Borde, published in 1780, places it in the 1750s, and an autograph manuscript given in 1756 to an acquaintance, a churchman from Le Mans, serves as a minimal point of reference.

Among his surviving works, the most notable are the Livre de simphonies of 1709, his first serious instrumental works; the sonatas for violin and suites for flute of 1711; the trio sonatas of 1713; and the trio concertos of 1723. His works show a clear debt to Corelli and the Italian school, as well as a marked contrapuntal character that probably stems from his training as an organist. He also wrote a treatise, Le tour du clavier (1745), which opposes the use of keys with more than three sharps or flats.

Contemporary assessment of him was generally favourable, although modern criticism regards him as a minor and uneven composer. His finest pages, such as the organ versets in D minor, reveal a skill and imagination that approach those of Clérambault, which justifies his place in the French Baroque repertoire.