GAULTIER, DENYS

born 1597 or 1603, Marseille? died January 1672, Paris, France also called Gaultier Le Jeune (the Younger) celebrated lute virtuoso whose style influenced the French school of harpsichord music. Gaultier came from a renowned family of lutenists that also included Jacques and Ennemond Gaultier. Little is known of his life except that he resided for many years in Paris. He was the last great representative of the Parisian school of lutenists prominent in the early and middle years of the Baroque era. His music explores the full range of the French stylegraceful and subtle ornamentation, broken chords, skillful exploitation of the lute's resources to suggest polyphonic texture. These facets of the lute style were transferred to the keyboard in the compositions of Jacques Champion de Chambonnires and the later clavecinistes, as were also the characteristic arrangement of stylized dances into suites and the fanciful and descriptive titles given to the individual pieces. The suites also influenced the keyboard style of Johann Jakob Johann Jakob Froberger. Gaultier's compositions include the Pices de luth and a collection of 69 compositions arranged in suites, in each of the 12 modes, La Rhtorique des dieux (166472; The Rhetoric of the Gods). He was hugely popular in his own time, and much of his music was transcribed from lute tablature into staff notation so that it might reach the growing public of keyboard players. Gaultier also originated the tombeau, a small piece written to the memory of a great personage.