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

Fournier, Pierre (Léon Marie)

(b Paris, 24 June 1906; d Geneva, 8 Jan 1986). French cellist. He began to study the piano with his mother, but after an attack of polio at the age of nine took up the cello. He had lessons with Paul Bazelaire and André Hekking at the Paris Conservatoire, where he later taught (1941–9), after a period on the staff of the Ecole Normale de Musique (1937–9). A player of firm intellectual control, with smooth tone, easy technique, and a classical turn of phrase, he nonetheless cultivated a wide repertory and was an effective advocate of contemporary music. In 1925 he played in the first (private) performance of Fauré’s String Quartet. Works written for him include Martin’s Cello Concerto and Poulenc’s Cello Sonata; among notable premières were sonatas by Martinů and Roussel’s Cello Concertino. In 1943 he took Casals’s place in trios with Thibaud and Cortot; in 1947 he joined Szigeti, Primrose and Schnabel for chamber concerts in many European centres, and the following year made his first tour of the USA. He later played in a trio with Szeryng and Kempff. Fournier made many recordings, including the Bach suites, Dvořák's Cello Concerto, Strauss's Don Quixote under Karajan and Beethoven's cello sonatas with Kempff. He was made an Officier of the Légion d'Honneur in 1963. Fournier's brother Jean (b Paris, 3 July 1911), a violinist, studied at the Paris Conservatoire and privately with Enescu, Thibaud and Kamenski. He played in a trio with Janigro and Badura-Skoda, and in sonata repertory with his wife, the pianist Ginette Doyen. From 1966 to 1979 he taught at the Paris Conservatoire.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Gavoty: Pierre Fournier (Geneva, 1956)

ROBERT ANDERSON

Fournier, Pierre-Simon [le jeune]

(b Paris, 15 Sept 1712; d Paris, 8 Oct 1768). French typographer. The son of a typefounder, he was cutting punches and casting type by 1736, and in 1739 was registered in this craft with the printing section of the Chambre Syndicale of Paris. He issued his first specimen book, Modèles des caractères de l’imprimerie, in 1742. It was a tremendous achievement, showing (among other material) 4600 letters that he had cut in a wide range of styles with their sizes correlated in a logical and mathematical way. This system, quite new in typefounding, he had evolved in 1737, and he showed it in his Modèles as ‘Table des proportions des differens caractères de l’imprimerie’.

Fournier’s power of analysis and prodigious technical skill were clearly demonstrated in the six types that he devised for the printing of music. Two were for plainchant, one was for ‘Hugenot music’. Three were for songs and instrumental music. The first of this group was designed for double impression, with the staff lines printed first and the notes and other signs overprinted in a second pass through the press (1756). The other two (1760) were based on a variation of a technique originated by Breitkopf which required only one pull at the press to deliver a complete copy.

In the foreword to his Essai d’un nouveau caractère de fonte, in which he demonstrated his 1756 type, Fournier drew attention to the stagnation that had settled over French music printing, claiming that French publishers could produce music characters in the form of squares or diamonds only. He had devised a method of rendering music from type as if it had been printed by copperplate engraving, but had laid it aside as only one person in France was allowed to undertake this sort of printing (Christophe-Jean-François Ballard, music printer to the king, 1750–65). Breitkopf had revived his interest in the subject, however, and the types he showed in the specimen were the outcome; he offered six short pieces of music set in round-headed notes as if engraved, with the words of the songs in his elegant italic, and the decorative title-page framed by some of his typographical border units: all very much in the taste of the day. Fournier had been ‘obliged’, as he wrote, ‘to be the inventor, the cutter, the founder, the compositor and the printer’. This quotation defines his notion of the complete typographer: the master of a complex of related skills, a craftsman equipped and free to practise them all.

Unfortunately the regulations of the printing trade denied Fournier, as a cutter and founder of types, the right to print: the Ballard monopoly denied him the right to exploit his music. So in 1756 he applied to the Chambre Syndicale to be admitted as a printer, but was refused. He presented a petition, and after considerable controversy, on 27 July 1764, Parlement confirmed Ballard as sole printer of music to the king but decreed also that any other printer was authorized to print music should he so wish. Ballard, in the eyes of the establishment of the day ‘a lazy man without much talent’, took a serious view of this threat to his interest. On 23 October 1764, to demonstrate his still privileged status, he made a gesture towards having some of Fournier’s music type seized at the office of a printer who was using it to produce a book that was to be published by subscription. It was a gesture without substance: the Ballard monopoly had been broken.

During the time Fournier’s petition was under consideration the reporter of the Grand Conseil had asked for a memorial on ‘the affair of the music characters’. Fournier wrote one, and having extended the historical part ‘to make it more interesting’ he published it as a general account of typographical music printing (Traité historique et critique, 1765). Though it is polemical, the work contains much source material collected from the archives of letter cutters and founders and from notarial records, court registers and elsewhere, which gives it permanent value. The Traité is rounded off with an ‘Ariette, mise en musique par M. l’Abbé Dugué à Paris, des nouveaux caractères de Fournier le jeune’, in which his ‘petite musique’ and ‘grosse musique’ are used in two settings of words: the ‘petite musique’ shown as a vocal line only, the ‘grosse musique’ as a vocal line with an accompaniment for the harp.

In 1765 Fournier had the satisfaction of seeing his ‘petite musique’ used to splendid effect in Jean Monnet’s Anthologie françoise (see illustration). Ideally suited to the scale of the pocket book, the type was adopted by printers to set favourite airs in comedies with music and for similar purposes. The type survived well, and as late as 1819 was in case at the Imprimerie Royale in Paris.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

N. Gando and F.Gando: Observations sur le Traité historique et critique de Monsieur Fournier le jeune sur l’origine et les progrès des caractères de fonte pour l’impression de la musique (Berne, 1766/R)

G. Lepreux: Gallia typographica, série parisienne (Paris, 1911)

P. Beaujon: Pierre Simon Fournier 1712–1768, and XVIIIth Century French Typography (London, 1926)

H. Carter, ed.: Fournier on Typefounding (London, 1930) [trans. of P.-S. Fournier: Manuel typographique (Paris, 1764–8)]

A. Hutt: Fournier the Compleat Typographer (London, 1972)

H. EDMUND POOLE/STANLEY BOORMAN