ABSTRACT
Marc-Antoine Charpentier‘s manuscripts are generally perfect, fair copies: he was a clean worker. Emendations in contexts form one distinct category of corrections in the Melanges. On some occasions, for instance, Charpentier found it necessary to adjust his writing to avoid a doubled leading note. The need to resolve a dissonance appropriately may explain a correction in Judith sive Bethulia liberata, H391. Charpentier changed the original continuo line in one bar, removing the interval of a ninth with the voice. The contrapuntal style which Charpentier studied in Italy is especially characteristic of his sacred music, and occasionally he was inspired to make improvements to his original counterpoint. Charpentier originally copied eight bars of the two vocal dessus parts and the first two bars of the continuo line before crossing them through and beginning again. Charpentier changed the interval of imitation in the haute-contre and removed both the diminished chord and subsequent dissonance.
