Hailed for his revelatory account of Bach s Well-Tempered Clavier (The New York Times), Richard Egarr turns to one of the least-known and most entrancing collections in the repertory for solo harpsichord. This complete recording of the works for solo keyboard by Louis Couperin (c.1626-1661) revels in the music s rich harmonic and contrapuntal textures, which are marked by a poignant use of dissonance. None of Couperin s music was published during his lifetime, but manuscript copies of some 200 pieces survive, some of them only rediscovered in the mid-20th century. The first historically important member of the Couperin family, Louis Couperin made seminal contributions to the development of both the French organ school and French harpsichord school. His innovations included composing organ pieces for specific registrations and inventing the genre of the unmeasured prelude for harpsichord, for which he devised a special type of notation.