Anne Louise Boyvin d'Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy

Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy (née Boyvin d'Hardancourt, 13 December 1744 – 5 December 1824) was a French musician and composer.

Life

She was born in Paris, played and composed for the harpsichord and the piano, and lived in Passy.

About 1767, Luigi Boccherini composed in Paris the Six Sonatas for Pianoforte and Violin op 5. The set was dedicated to Anne Louise Boyvin : "She is one of the greatest lady-players on the harpsichord in Europe. This lady (...) plays the most difficult pieces with great precision, taste and feeling (...). She likewise composes, and she was so obliging as to play several of her own pieces both on the harpsichord and pianoforte accompanied with the violin by M. Pagin, who is reckoned in France the best scholar of Tartini ever made." This remark about her performing on the pianoforte is interesting: At the time Boccherini wrote his Six Sonatas op 5, the pianoforte was still a relatively new instrument, but Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy inspired him to write the keyboard part specifically for the new instrument, including dynamic markings. When the sonatas were published in 1769, the reference to the pianoforte was replaced by "harpsichord" and many dynamic markings were removed because the harpsichord was still the dominant keyboard instrument, and the publisher had to adapt the sonatas for commercial reasons.

In 1777, she composed the Marche des insurgents (March of the Insurgents) to celebrate an American victory in the American Revolutionary War.

She became a friend of Benjamin Franklin, with whom she had a large correspondence having become acquainted with him during and after his stay in her home city during the American Revolution.

She died at Villers-sur-Mer, Calvados, aged 79.

In popular culture

Madame Brillon appears in the children's book Ben and Me by Robert Lawson, and is the subject of an elaborate, humorous full page illustration, but does not appear in the 1953 animated short film adaptation.

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