A Franco-Flemish double-manual harpsichord,
One of the parchment strips glued under the soundboard during the first grand ravalement in 1750
In the process of the ravalement of 1750 it was necessary to extend the soundboard along the bass edge. This was a particularly delicate job since it had to be carried out with the main section of the soundboard still in the instrument but totally unsupported along the edge to which the join had to be made. This meant that, in order to get a clean join between the new, added wood and the old original soundboard wood, the workman had to plane the edge of the old soundboard in situ in the instrument. This would have required making an elaborate supporting jig that would ensure that the edge of the old wood was not only perfectly straight, but was planed at an exact right-angle to the surface of the old soundboard. However it was done, the execution was accurately carried out and the join between the new and old soundboard wood is perfect along the entire length of the joint to the extent that the visible join between the new wood extending the old soundboard wood is no more obvious than the joins between the planks of the original soundboard. This is but one excellent example of the superb workmanship of the author of the ravalement.
Once the soundboard join had been glued together and planed smooth, it was reinforced and strengthened underneath the soundboard by glueing thin strips of parchment over the join between the old, original soundboard wood from 1617, and the new added soundboard wood. The parchment strips were glued across the soundboard join by dipping them in hot animal glue. When the parchment was wetted by the glue in this way it would expand in all directions. The advantage of using parchment to reinforce the joins is that, in drying, it then tries to shrink back to its original dimensions and this has the effect of pulling the edges of the join tighter together and holding the joint firmly in place.
As is so often the case with the parchment strips used to reinforce the joins in the soundboard, old re-used parchment was employed to save the expense of using costly new parchment in a position that was totally unseen. These parchment strips appear to be from old legal documents and they have a number of inscriptions on them. The largest piece of parchment was once part of a document dealing with two important figures in French politics from the period before the instrument was widened. By far the most important and interesting of these parchments is the one seen in the photograph below. This parchment is located at the tail of the instrument (seen at the right in Figure 1 below) and is partly covered by one of the upper-level braces running from the spine to the bentside. Because of the presence of this brace the whole of the parchment strip could not be photographed in its entirety. It was therefore photographed in two sections, and the two photographs then were spliced together to give the composite photograph seen below. The join between the two different kinds of soundboard wood covered over by the parchment strip can be seen clearly at the left-hand side of the photograph where the difference in the type and size of the wood grain can be clearly distinguished.
This is a composite photograph of one of the parchment strips securing part of the join made in the soundboard when the instrument was widened in 1750,
possibly by François Étienne Blanchet in 1750.
What remains of the writing on the parchment has been transcribed and it reads (beginning at the top right):
“ - - S. de Groubental /? autorisée ?des? SS[Sieurs] leurs Epoux en presence d’un / le d’SS de Groubental pareill[ement] au S[ieur]. Villebois / [P] Germains . . . . aux S[ieur]. Villebois”.
Not enough remains of the writing to make much sense of what is written there, but the names of Sieur de Groubental and Sieur Villebois are clear and unambiguous. The form of address Sieur was an antiquated French title of respect roughly equivalent to ‘Sire’ in English. Both Groubental and Villebois were important figures in eighteenth-century French history in a number of different ways.
Marc Ferdinand Grouber de Groubentall de Linière, born in 1739 and died in 1815, was the son of Ferdinand Joseph Grouber de Groubentall and of Marie-Anne Boutinot de Plainville. Marc Ferdinand Grouber was a parliamentary lawyer working for the French Parliament. One of his jobs, with the help his fellow lawyers Malesherbes, Tronchet and De Sèze was to defend Louis XVI against the will of the National Convention - the self-proclaimed judge and jury - in one of the most controversial trials of Western European history (another being that of Charles I of England). The result, a severe threat to the well-being of de Groubentall and his fellow defence lawyers, was that Louis XVI was sentenced to death and was beheaded.
However, de Groubental's heritage lives on in the work he wrote: Théorie générale de l’administration politique des finances. Dédiée à Monsieur, frère du Roi, (Paris), 1788, notably dedicated to the brother of the King and published only one year before The French Revolution in 1789 and 4 years before the king was beheaded in 1793.
The name Villebois that occurs here is represented by two important figures, father and son, in French history at the time of the ravalement of the instrument. It is unclear whether the name on the parchment refers to the father or to the son. The father was effectively, among other posts that he held, the Minister of Finance for the French colony Louisiana during some of the period before it was sold to the USA in 1803 by Napoleon. Napoleon had to settle his enormous debts resulting from his military campaigns in Europe and he did this, in part, by selling off Louisiana . The father died in New Orleans in 1753. The son Villebois was born in Montreal in what is now the Province of Quebec. He became the Finance Minister of Quebec before the French lost Quebec to the British in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759.
Sieur Honoré Michel de Villebois (1702 - 1752) Il est aussi connu sous le nom de Sieur Honoré Michel de Villebois et de la Rouvillière, Honoré Michel de Villebois de La Rouvillière, Sieur Honoré de Villebois de la Rouvillière et Honoré Michel. Il est le fils de Sieur Jean Baptiste Michel de Caseneuve et Anne Roustan. Il est le filleul de Honoré Michel et Françoise Tassy. Il nait le 9 juillet 1702 à Toulon, 93, France. Il est conseiller du Roi, crivain de la Marine, puis commissaire général de la Marine, ordonnateur de la Louisiane et premier conseiller au conseil supérieur de la Louisiane. Il épouse Marie-Catherine-Élisabeth Bégon, fille de Charles-Michel Bégon et Marie-Isabelle Rocbert le 17 novembre 1737 à Montréal, Île de Montréal, Québec, Canada. Il décède le 18 décembre 1752 à la Nouvelle-Orléans, Louisiane, États-Unis.
Sieur Honoré-Henry-Michel-Étienne Michel de Villebois (1738 - 1807), Il est le fils de Honoré de Villebois et Marie-Catherine-Élisabeth Bégon, Il nait le 23 octobre 1738 à Montréal, Île de Montréal, Québec, Canada. Il est baptisé le 25 octobre 1738 à Notre-Dame, Montréal. Il épouse Charlotte-Bénédicte-Ursule Potier, fille de Claude-Jean-Baptiste Potier et Julie-Marguerite Blanc le 18 juin 1771 à Versailles, France. Il est commissaire général de la Marine en 1776. Il décède en 1807 à Bordeaux, Gironde, France .
There is, in fact, a total of 7 parchment strips have been glued under the soundboard to secure the ravalement join in the soundboard wood, but none of the other strips has the fore- or surname of anyone on them, and not enough script remains to make any sense of what is written there.
A brief history of the musical and decorative states of the Franco-Flemish harpsichord
Details of the original state of the instrument
Details of the eighteenth-century states of this harpsichord
Details of the modern history of this harpsichord
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