The only source for the Lament on Monsieur Blancheroche is that of the Minoritenkonvent in Vienna (call number 743). In the margin, preceded by the letters N.B., we find the following explanation of the piece in Latin:

Monsieur Blancheroche, the illustrious Parisian lutenist and great friend of Mr. Froberger, after dining at the house of Mme de St Thomas, took a walk with the same Mr. Froberger in the gardens of the Palais Royal (in horto regio). On returning home, he climbed a ladder to carry out some task, but fell off it so badly that he had to be carried to his bed by his wife helped by his son and the others present. Mr. Froberger, seeing the danger of the situation, ran to call for a doctor: there arrived also the surgeons, who bled him to discharge the stagnant blood from the wounded foot; and there arrived also M. le Marquis de Termes to whom Mr. Blancheroche entrusted his children shortly before losing consciousness and dying.

Further clarification of the story may be sought from the testimony of the notorious scandalmonger Tallemant de Réaux in his Historiettes written after 1657. Blancheroche (or Blancrocher) had certainly gone to Mme de St. Thomas's house for a professional visit. Yet the visit was perhaps 'professional' in a reciprocal sense for Tallemant tells us that the lady was in fact a courtesan who also played the lute and sang. This perhaps explains why the account attached to the Tombeau omits to say that Froberger also had eaten at the house of Mlle Sandrier/St-Thomas but had only "taken a walk" with Blancheroche. Perhaps it was a merry reunion like those attended by Scarron and the lutenist Louis de Mollier (and perhaps even Blancheroche himself), at which Saint-Thomas would sing.

The account of Mlle Sandrier's 'Italian' manner of singing is echoed by an account of the characteristically 'Italian' paroxysms with which Luigi Rossi's Lament of the Queen of Sweden was performed in the presence of Cardinal Richelieu. In addition, it is also worth considering that the final descending scale may be not so much a metaphor of burial as a manner of directly consigning the unfortunate lutenist to hell on the part of the 'converted bigot' Froberger. The tragic death of the lutenist was also celebrated by Louis Couperin and François Dufault.

Writer: Sergio Vartolo
Translataed by: Hugh Ward-Perkins