François Couperin

Couperin wrote for the harpsichord with a precision about ornaments that no other composer of his period matched — and then wrote a book explaining exactly how he wanted them played, because he had noticed people ignoring him.

The keyboard music is organised into four books of ordres, loose suites of character pieces with descriptive titles. Individually many are accessible to an intermediate player; the difficulty is almost never the notes but the ornamentation, which is written out in a symbol system of his own and is not optional decoration.

This is the one composer where buying an edition that reproduces his ornament table is genuinely necessary. Editions that silently modernise or simplify the ornaments are giving you a different piece. He also wrote a substantial body of chamber music and the Leçons de Ténèbres, which are among the finest French vocal works of the period.