ABSTRACT
A little-known collection in the Département de la musique at the Bibliothèque nationale de France includes an intriguing Messe des morts, an anonymous setting which author came across some 20 years ago while cataloguing the department’s manuscript music. The collection, assembled by Félix Raugel and deposited in this library in 1987, comprises 84 catalogued items, mainly scores and separate part-books of eighteenth-century French sacred music. It includes several Masses with instrumental accompaniment, Christmastide pastorals, and motets. A number of pieces bear attributions, but many others remain anonymous. The borrowings are effected on several levels. The simplest and most obvious are the quotations from Rameau with only minimal modification, these mainly having to do with the simplification of the orchestration already mentioned.
