Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Fleury, Charles, Sieur de Blancrocher [Blanrocher, Blancheroche]

(b c1605; d Paris, Nov 1652). French lutenist. The son of a valet de chambre, writers of the period refer to him as Blancrocher in their summaries of leading performers. His sudden death (following a fall down a flight of stairs) inspired a number of tombeaux from his contemporaries, Denis Gaultier, François Du Fault, Louis Couperin and Johann Froberger (the last witnessed the accident). Due to the paucity of attributed works, it appears that Fleury thrived mainly as an amateur performer; a single allemande (or gigue) is extant (D-Kl, ROu, F-B (Manuscrit Vaudry de Saizenay, 1699; facs., Geneva, 1980; ed. B.K. Burchmore, in preparation), GB-En, Ob).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MersenneHU

W.J. Rave: Some Manuscripts of French Lute Music 1630–1700: an Introductory Study (diss., U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1972)

B.K. Burchmore: ‘A Saizenay miscellany’, JLSA (forthcoming)

BRUCE K. BURCHMORE

Fleury, Louis (François)

(b Lyons, 24 May 1878; d Paris, 10 June 1926). French flautist. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Paul Taffanel, winning a premier prix in 1900. In 1902 he joined the Société Moderne des Instruments à Vent, succeeding Georges Barrère as director in 1905 and commissioning more than 100 new chamber works over the next 20 years. In 1913 he also gave the première of Debussy's Syrinx (originally called La flûte de Pan), which was dedicated to him. Fleury gained some experience as an orchestral player but, unusually for a flautist at that time, chose to concentrate on a solo and chamber music career, achieving success throughout Europe and America. Fleury was an elegant player and his broad musical and cultural interests also made him a perceptive writer and scholar. He revived and edited much 18th-century music for the flute and wrote extensively about the instrument and about musical life in general in many musical journals. He also completed the article on the flute which Taffanel had planned for Lavignac's Encyclopédie de la musique et Dictionnaire du Conservatoire (Paris, 1920–31).

EDWARD BLAKEMAN

Fleury, Nicolas

(b ?Châteaudun, Eure-et-Loire, c1630; d after 1678). French composer, haute-contre singer and theorbo player. He is referred to in the Mercure galant for March 1679 as being ‘from Châteaudun’. He served the Duke of Orléans as ordinaire de la musique from 1657, but by 1663 he was in England, where he was admitted as one of ‘the King's French Musicians’ by a warrant of 23 July, together with Jean de la Volée and Claude Desgranges. This appointment must have been short-lived, however, since the Etat de la France of 1665 lists Fleury as Haute-contre ordinaire among musicians serving the Duke of Orléans. Fleury's Méthode pour apprendre facilement à toucher le théorbe sur la basse-continuë (Paris, 1660/R) is a manual devoted to teaching the realization of thoroughbass on the theorbo by means of tablature; his rules are especially directed to beginners. The work shows that quite early there was interest in France in thoroughbass practice as well as in the theorbo as an accompanying instrument. Fleury's airs reflect the vogue of his time for love songs and drinking-songs as well as for airs spirituels. His settings show particular concern with expressing the dramatic quality of the text, which he achieves largely through the use of ornamented melodic lines, vocal leaps, active basses, mild chromaticism and changes of metre to accommodate text scansion.

WORKS

Airs spirituels, 2vv, cont (Paris, 1678)

Depuis que de ces lieux, air, 1v, bc, 1692^3, 1692^5

Qu'on est content, air, 1v, in Recueil d'airs sérieux et à boire (Paris, 1704)

Dialogue, Mars, la Victoire, la Paix, music lost, referred to in Mercure galant (March 1679)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Brenet: Les concerts en France (Paris, 1900), 71, 87

H. Quittard: ‘Le théorbe comme instrument d'accompagnement’, BSIM, vi (1910), 231–7

F. Robert: ‘La musique à travers le “Mercure Galant” (1678)’, RMFC, ii (1961–2), 173–90

C. Massip: ‘Le mécénat musical de Gaston d'Orléans’, L'âge d'or du mécénat (1598–1661), ed. R. Mousnier and J. Mesnard (Paris, 1985), 383–91

M. Vincent: Donneau de Visé et le Mercure Galant (Paris, 1987), i, 272

ALBERT COHEN

Fleury Playbook.

The title usually given to a separable unit of the manuscript F-O 201, ff.176–243. The four gatherings contain the following liturgical plays: Tres filie, Tres clerici, Iconia Sancti Nicholai, Filius Getronis, Officium stelle, Ordo Rachelis, Visitatio sepulchri, Peregrinus, Conversio Sancti Pauli, Resuscitatio Lazari (these are editorial titles used by Young). The provenance of the manuscript is traditionally supposed to be the Benedictine monastery of Fleury (St Benoît-sur-Loire); an argument for the abbey of St Lomer at Blois (see Corbin, 1953) has been questioned (Collins, see Campbell and Davidson, 1985). The plays date from the 12th century, and the manuscript was probably copied late in that century; the music is written in diastematic neumes. The literary texts have been edited by Young and others, and the plays complete with their music by Coussemaker (1860), and by Tintori and Monterosso (1958) with complete facsimiles of poor quality.

For further information and bibliography see Medieval drama, §II, 7(iv).

JOHN STEVENS/RICHARD RASTALL