Biography
A composer of French keyboard music, D'Anglebert issued four harpsichord suites accompanied by one Kyrie and five brief organ fugues. That collection stands among the era’s most refined examples of French keyboard composition. An intricate contrapuntal fabric and a meticulous set of ornaments serve an unaffected melodic thread that remains clearly audible throughout; the suites demonstrate particular skill in combining several independent lines into coherent polyphony. Following conventions of the day, those harpsichord works contain unmeasured preludes along with a full array of dance movements. The well-known Tombeau for Chambonnieres honors the earliest major French practitioner of unaccompanied harpsichord playing, while the modest body of organ pieces affords a useful window onto contemporary performance practice.