Jacquet de la guerre biography of rory

Jacquet de La Guerre's Les Pièces de Clavessin de Mad.elle de La Guerre (1687), was published when she was only 22. At the time, only two other French composers had published harpsichord works, Jacques Champion de Chambonnières (1601-1672) and Nicolas Lebègue (1631-1702); a woman doing so, especially one who was so young, was very unusual. Her political acumen can be seen in the dedication of the piece, in which she managed to highlight both her compositional and political insight, the latter by lavishing praise on her royal patron, Louis XIV:

I am indebted to You for all that my genius has produced up to the present.…The usual exercise of my muse, which continually blesses the peace of this glorious reign, so appropriate for cultivating the fine arts which one sees flowering throughout the entire empire because of the efforts of the grandest monarch in the universe.

In 1694, Jacquet de La Guerre premiered what would be her only opera, Céphale et Procris. Operas were quite cos La guerre en francais!