ABSTRACT
Couperin's autograph manuscript of the works is lost, and hence the Italian anagram of his name which would have appeared on the title-page can only be conjectured, but two copies of three of the four sonatas have survived under the titles of La Pucelle, La Visionnaire and L'Astree, these names being altered when Couperin revised and published them some 35 years later in Les Nations. On the other hand, France had cultivated the viol fantasia as the central medium of instrumental chamber music during the seventeenth century, although the contrapuntal and 'learned' style inherited from the fantasias of the Renaissance gave way in the middle of the century to the simpler style of the dance suite. The picture of Corelli drinking at the Fountain of Hippocrene is painted in one of Couperin's loveliest movements.
