Release Date: 01 January 2000
Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 730099417426
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: CHARPENTIER
Description
Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704)Vespres à la Vierge (Vespers of the Blessed Virgin) Marc-Antoine Charpentier was a leading contemporary of Lully. His exact date of birth can only be conjectured, but he studied in Rome with Carissimi, from whom he acquired a knowledge of contemporary Italian styles. Soon after his return, he seems to have entered the service of the Duchesse de Guise, Marie de Lorraine, later assuming the position of her maître de musique, which he held until her death in 1688. He collaborated with Molière, who had formerly worked with Lully, providing music for, among other plays, Le malade imaginaire, and with other playwrights of the Comédie Française. Relative brief association with the court came in work for the Dauphin and a consequent royal pension, but more important was his employment at the Jesuit Church of St Louis, known to contemporaries as l'église de l'opéra. From 1698 until his death in 1704 he was maître de musique of the Sainte-Chapelle. He left a very large quantity of church music, Mass settings, sequences, antiphons, settings of the Tenebrae lessons and responsories, canticle and psalm settings, motets for the elevation and dramatic motets, with a smaller but not insignificant quantity of instrumental and secular music. Keith Anderson On his return from Italy in the late 1660s, Charpentier entered the service of Mademoiselle de Guise. Until 1687-88 he was one of a group of some fifteen players and singers of such quality that it was said that it excelled even those of great kings. On the death of Mademoiselle de Guise in 1688, Charpentier became maître de musique of the College of Louis-le-Grand, then of the Jesuit Church of St. Louis. Finally, on 28th June 1698, he was appointed choir-master of the Sainte-Chapelle, a position he held until his death. The most important aspect of Charpentier's work lies in his sacred music. His contribution to the form of the motet is considerable. From the monastery to the church, he composed for the many seasonal religious ceremonies, from the most intimate to the most overtly celebratory. The music of Charpentier draws its substance and originality essentially from his synthesis of the Italian and French styles. The office of Vespers begins with the verse Deus in adjutorium meum intende and the response Domine ad adiuvandum me festina, followed by five psalms, each preceded and followed by an antiphon. After the psalms comes a short reading (capitulum) and then a hymn, varied, like the psalms and the antiphons, according to the day and the feast celebrated. The office continues with a verse and response and an antiphon more elaborate than those for the psalms, introducing and following the Magnificat. Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed a number of very important motets on psalm texts, most of them for Vespers. These compositions mark the stages of his whole career. He sometimes even took up again a composition so
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Yumiko Oshima Ryan
Yang Liu
Wolfgang Weigel
