ABSTRACT
Croches blanches are found in Marc-Antoine Charpentier sources, whether autograph or non-autograph, manuscript or printed, in works dating from all periods of his output. Charpentier’s use of croches blanches has aroused considerable interest. In purely metrical terms, void Sm are worth exactly the same as conventional black Sm, and consequently many scholars have concluded that, as H. Wiley Hitchcock puts it, ‘notation in croches blanches was simply a conventionally idiosyncratic substitute for normal notation’. Charpentier’s own contemporaries considered croches blanches to be a foreign - more specifically an Italian - form of notation. Etienne Loulie and Sebastien de Brossard both had links with Charpentier’s circle and were evidently well aware of his notational habits. Charpentier’s role in single-handedly (re)importing void notation to France becomes clear when we examine how his use of it relates chronologically to that of other French Baroque composers.
