Marchand had a violent temperament and an arrogant personality, and his life was filled with scandals, publicized and widely discussed both during his lifetime and after his death.

As a child, the future composer showed exceptional talent: posthumous account, by Évrard Titon du Tillet, states that already at the age of 14 he was offered the prestigious position of organist at the Nevers Cathedral.

We must be circumspect about this, however, since there is no documentary evidence of Marchand's time in Nevers, other than a contract he countersigned with his father engaging the services of Pierre Bridard to enlarge the Saint Martin organ.

[citation needed] Virtually all contemporary accounts contain lavish praise of Marchand's keyboard talents, yet most writers also mention that the composer had an extremely colorful and unpredictable personality.

This combination of prodigious skill and bizarre temperament resulted in numerous anecdotes, scandals, and rumors recounted in various sources, only some of which are fully reliable.

Several, however, are well documented: soon after his arrival in Paris, he became embroiled in a plot along with the organ builder Henry Lesclop, to defame the newly-appointed organist-priest at Saint-Bartelémy (which Marchand coveted), Pierre Dandrieu, Marchand coerced a pregnant sixteen-year-old girl to complain in a now lost letter to the organist of the Grand Couvent des Jacobins that Dandrieu was the father of the child.

[3] On a domestic front things did not fare much better: he beat his wife, who successfully divorced him in 1701 with a settlement of 2,000 livres '... qu’il a reçüe faisant partie de sa dot avec les intérêts suivant l’ordonnance du jour ...’ .

After an unfavorable remark made by Louis XIV about Marchand's hands, the composer responded with an improper retort about the king's ears.

[6] Still another account claims that after Marchand's wife had left him, Louis XIV ordered half the composer's salary to be withheld and paid to her.

By contrast, Titon du Tillet's biography states that, on Marchand's arrival to Paris he was offered virtually all of the vacant positions of the city's churches, because the composer's reputation was so high.

According to later accounts by Marpurg, Jakob Adlung and other German sources (who incidentally were not born at the time; besides, the story is not found in any French documents), the two composers were to have a contest in harpsichord performance, and Marchand fled before Bach's arrival, apparently out of fear of being defeated.

The reality, however, is probably quite different: it was rumoured that Marchand, who had been in Dresden and had performed before the king, was to be offered a position as organist at the Royal Chapel, much to the chagrin of its musicians.

[16] Dumage praised his teacher in the preface to his Premier livre d'orgue (1708), one of the most important works from the late years of the French organ school.