Oh Bless IGI, I knew me Carpentier
Carpentier: the oft-cited, rarely-sighted 'lost album' by Karen and Richard Carpenter. This ambitious recording, dating from late 1982, attempted to weave a concept album from a succession of covers of arias by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and original material by Richard Carpenter. The recording involved musicians who would later go on to found the ensemble
Les Arts Florissants (indeed William Christie credits the album and its disappearance for having inspired him to go on to found the ensemble seven years later) in an attempt to appeal to a more 'arty' audience as their more popular material was increasingly ignored. Unfortunately, in the tragic confusion of the next six months, first Richard then the studio lost enthusiasm for the project and the studio tapes were archived, only to disappear by the time that the files were audited in 1986. Fan legends recount how Richard Carpenter removed the tapes in 1985 (while recording was under way on
Time) and keeps them to this day, unable to destroy them yet unwilling to release them. A minority (but a vocal and growing one) of fans maintain that the tapes were removed by producer Phil Ramone as some sort of 'once and future album' to be released 'when the world of music needs it most' (Daniel Levitin, 'Unlucky Thirteen; the fate of
Carpentier', in Ray Coleman (ed.),
The Carpenters, a forty-year retrospective (Cambridge University Press; due for publication in 2009)).
