Er[nest] Thoinan. Curiosités musicales et autres trouvées dans les oeuvres de Michel Coyssard de la Compagnie de Jésus...

Description

Ernest Thoinan's Study of the Curiosities in the
Works of Sixteenth-Century French Jesuit
Michel Coyssard

French writer on music Ernest Thoinan [pseudonym of Antoine Ernest Roquet] (1827-1894) was a "merchant by trade, [and] he took the opportunities offered by business journeys to England, Italy and Russia to accumulate an extensive music library which included early printed books and manuscripts. He became a contributor to the periodicals La France musicale and L'Art musical, later publishing his articles (and others) as pamphlets. He worked exclusively on the history of French music, basing his research firmly on primary sources and using an unusually transparent methodology which involved the critical evaluation of items of secondary material in annotated bibliographies. His work built upon that of [François-Joseph] Fétis in particular, correcting many of the inaccuracies in the Belgian scholar's writings. Much of the strength of Thoinan's work lies in his ability, amply demonstrated in his essay on Maugars, to see isolated historical events in a larger perspective" (Katharine Ellis in Grove Music Online).

French hymn writer and writer on music Michel Coyssard (1547-1623) "was active in the religious instruction of children, and taught at the new Jesuit colleges in Vienne and Lyons (Collège de la Trinité, 1579), later serving as rector in Tournon, Puy and Besançon. Following the instructions of the Council of Trent he became deeply involved in the Counter-Reformation movement in France. His determination to emulate the popularity of Lutheran chorales and Calvinist psalms in disseminating Christian doctrine through vernacular religious song led him to compile a collection of hymns and canticles, some new and others translated from Latin liturgical texts, mostly adopting the form of the rhymed quatrain which had proved so successful in the moralistic verses of Guy du Faur de Pibrac and Pierre Mathieu. Coyssard's Hymnes sacrez & odes spirituelles were first published as an appendix to his Sommaire de la doctrine chrestienne (Lyons, 1591) with an indication that they were to be sung before and after the lessons of catechism. The hymns proved popular, and appeared in several later editions" (Frank Dobbins in Grove Music Online).