The composer

Jacques Duphly was born in Rouen, and became organist at Évreux cathedral at the age of 19. In 1742 he moved to Paris, specializing in the harpsichord and achieving fames performer and teacher. Louis-Claude Daquin wrote of him, ‘For some time he was organist at Rouen, but doubtless finding that he had a greater gift for the harpsichord, he abandoned his first instrument. One may suppose that he did well, for he passes in Paris for a very good harpsichordist. He has much lightness of touch and a certain softness, which, sustained by ornaments, marvelously render the character of his pieces’.

His published music includes four volumes of clavecin music, printed in 1744, 1748, 1756 and 1768. Thereafter he seems to have disappeared from public life, and in 1788 a newspaper advertisement even enquired whether he was still living, nothing having been heard of him for twenty years. He died in Paris on 15 July 1789, at the ourbreak of the French Revolution, and did not even own a harpsichord at his death.

There is an interesting Cambridge connection with Duphly: Viscount Fitzwilliam (1745-1816), founder of the Fitzwilliam Museum, studied harpsichord and composition with Duphly in Paris after graduating from Cambridge, and a manuscript labelled ‘R. Fitzwilliam, Paris 1765, Mr. Duphly’  in the Museum collection records his lessons.

Bibliography

Françoise Petit, ‘Sur l’œuvre de Jacques Duphly’, Courrier musical de France xxiii (1968), pp.188–90

Mark Kroll, ‘French Masters’, in Robert L. Marshall (ed), Eighteenth Century Keyboard Music ( 2/2003), p.146

David Fuller, ‘Jacques Duphly’, Grove Music Online