Surname
Cellier
Given Name
Jacques
Role
Musician
Organist
Active period
1577 - 1577
Workplace
Laon
Institution
Cathédrale de Laon
Biography
Cathédrale de Laon, 1573-1575. F-AD 02, G1860, f. 297, 5.7.1577 A. Branslart ne veut plus « jouer des orgues ». f. 312, 18 oct : Jacques Cellier reçu organiste, puis engagé pour ensiegneur la grammaire aux enfants de chœur (f. 316, 4 nov).
IL EST DANS LE GROVE
Cellier, Jacques
(b France, mid-16th century; d Reims, c1620). French organist and calligrapher. He was organist at the cathedrals of Laon and Reims. Between 1583 and 1587 he copied out a manuscript by François Merlin, controlleur général for Marie Elizabeth, only daughter of Charles IX. The work, Recherches de plusieurs singularités (F-Pn fonds fr. 9152), contains drawings, diagrams and finely written texts on a number of artistic and scientific subjects, including alphabets and the Lord's Prayer in many languages, exterior and interior views of buildings (among them two showing the organs in Reims Cathedral and the Ste Chapelle in Paris), scientific diagrams and maps, music, and drawings of musical instruments. Many of the pages are signed by Cellier. The volume was prepared for presentation to Henri III. The musical section is dated 1585.
Besides tunings, canons and short compositions, a table of notes and rests, and samples of tablature, the section on music contains detailed drawings, some of them incorrect, of many instruments, including the mandore, drums, trumpet, several wind bands, musical glasses, anvil, psaltery, hurdy-gurdy, transverse flute, viol, harp, bagpipe, violin, carillon, the Turkish ‘tambora’, jingles sewn on to a dancer, clavichord, regals, lute, triangle, cittern, a neo-classical lyre, virginals, guitar and panpipes (some of the drawings are reproduced as plates 6 and 7 in GSJ, x (1957); see also pp.88–9 of that volume). Many of the same drawings appear also in the manuscript GB-Lbl Add.30342, apparently copied by a scribe named Mercurio Vecchio in 1588, possibly for Merlin's own use. The manuscripts are important because they offer more detail than any French source before Mersenne. Since both manuscripts show the smallest pipes of the regals at the bottom of the keyboard both may have been copied from a now lost printed work in which the engraver reversed the original image.
An even more beautiful calligraphic manuscript (F-RS 971), copied by Cellier between 1593 and 1597 for Claude de Lisle, governor of Laon, includes musical instruments as ornaments in its borders.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
DBF (M.-L. Blumer)
H. Jadart: Les dessins de Jacques Cellier (Paris, 1900)
S. Jeans and G. Oldham: ‘The Drawings of Musical Instruments in MS Add. 30342 at the British Museum’, GSJ, xiii (1960), 26–31
HOWARD MAYER BROWN
IL EST DANS LE GROVE
Cellier, Jacques
(b France, mid-16th century; d Reims, c1620). French organist and calligrapher. He was organist at the cathedrals of Laon and Reims. Between 1583 and 1587 he copied out a manuscript by François Merlin, controlleur général for Marie Elizabeth, only daughter of Charles IX. The work, Recherches de plusieurs singularités (F-Pn fonds fr. 9152), contains drawings, diagrams and finely written texts on a number of artistic and scientific subjects, including alphabets and the Lord's Prayer in many languages, exterior and interior views of buildings (among them two showing the organs in Reims Cathedral and the Ste Chapelle in Paris), scientific diagrams and maps, music, and drawings of musical instruments. Many of the pages are signed by Cellier. The volume was prepared for presentation to Henri III. The musical section is dated 1585.
Besides tunings, canons and short compositions, a table of notes and rests, and samples of tablature, the section on music contains detailed drawings, some of them incorrect, of many instruments, including the mandore, drums, trumpet, several wind bands, musical glasses, anvil, psaltery, hurdy-gurdy, transverse flute, viol, harp, bagpipe, violin, carillon, the Turkish ‘tambora’, jingles sewn on to a dancer, clavichord, regals, lute, triangle, cittern, a neo-classical lyre, virginals, guitar and panpipes (some of the drawings are reproduced as plates 6 and 7 in GSJ, x (1957); see also pp.88–9 of that volume). Many of the same drawings appear also in the manuscript GB-Lbl Add.30342, apparently copied by a scribe named Mercurio Vecchio in 1588, possibly for Merlin's own use. The manuscripts are important because they offer more detail than any French source before Mersenne. Since both manuscripts show the smallest pipes of the regals at the bottom of the keyboard both may have been copied from a now lost printed work in which the engraver reversed the original image.
An even more beautiful calligraphic manuscript (F-RS 971), copied by Cellier between 1593 and 1597 for Claude de Lisle, governor of Laon, includes musical instruments as ornaments in its borders.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
DBF (M.-L. Blumer)
H. Jadart: Les dessins de Jacques Cellier (Paris, 1900)
S. Jeans and G. Oldham: ‘The Drawings of Musical Instruments in MS Add. 30342 at the British Museum’, GSJ, xiii (1960), 26–31
HOWARD MAYER BROWN