ABSTRACT
Pechon conceived the gatherings with the final compilation and binding of res. 571 in mind: thus, instead of the large single gatherings used earlier in his career, he was able to use a series of smaller connecting gatherings which would be preserved in the correct relationship to each other by the binding. Pechon began by copying a Pie Jesu for high voices and basse-continue onto the last blank side of the final folio of gathering 4. Little is known about the provision of music at the royal Benedictine abbey of Montmartre in the first half of the seventeenth century other than that Antoine Boesset ‘taught the nuns to sing’. Marie de Beauvilliers’s tenure began at the end of the sixteenth century, a century which had seen the decline of the abbey to virtual ruin. The Tenebrae celebrations at Montmartre were a significant event in the Parisian calendar of ‘socio-religious’ events.
