Jean-Henri d'Anglebert

Jean-Henri d'Anglebert (baptized 1 April 1629 – 23 April 1691) was a French composer, harpsichordist and organist. He was one of the foremost keyboard composers of his day.

D'Anglebert's father Claude Henry known as Anglebert was an affluent shoemaker in Bar-le-Duc. Nothing is known about the composer's early years and musical education. Since he at one time composed a tombeau for Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, it is possible that Chambonnières was his teacher—or at any rate a friend for whom D'Anglebert had much respect. The earliest surviving manuscript with D'Anglebert's music dates from 1650–1659. It also contains music by Louis Couperin and Chambonnières, and possibly originated in their immediate circle; thus already by the mid-1650s D'Anglebert must have been closely associated with the most prominent French harpsichordists of the time. The earliest reference to D'Anglebert survives in his marriage contract from 11 October 1659. D'Anglebert married Magdelaine Champagne, sister-in-law of the organist François Roberday. In the contract, he is described as bourgeois de Paris, suggesting that by 1659 he was already well established in Paris. How he left Bar-le-Duc and settled in Paris remains unknown.

D'Anglebert's career in Paris must have begun at the Jacobins church in Rue St. Honoré, where he was still organist in January 1660. In August 1660 he succeeded Henri Dumont as harpsichordist to Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, the King's younger brother. He kept the position until at least 1668, but in the meantime, in 1662, he bought the reversion of the post of harpsichordist from Chambonnières, who had been recently disgraced at the court; Chambonnières kept the salary, but D'Anglebert assumed the duties. He served as royal harpsichordist until his son Jean-Baptiste-Henry became his reversioner in 1674. After 1679 D'Anglebert served Dauphine Duchess Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria, who died in 1690. D'Anglebert died the following year, on 23 April. His only published work, Pièces de clavecin, appeared just two years before, in 1689. The rest of his music—mostly harpsichord works, but also five fugues and a quatuor for organ—survives in manuscripts.

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