Release Date: 01 January 2000
Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 730099417525
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: CHARPENTIER
Description
Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643 - 1704)Te Deum, H. 147Messe et Motets pour l'offertoire et l'élévation Canticle of Zacharias: Benedictus, H. 345 Marc-Antoine Charpentier never held any official position at the court of Louis XIV. Nevertheless he attempted in April 1683 the open contest for the recruitment of assistants at the Chapel Royal. After success, with fifteen other candidates, in the first test, which consisted of each candidate singing a motet, he fell ill and could not continue. This was obviously a great disappointment for him, but it did not prevent him from becoming the most important composer of sacred music of the reign. In spite of a career outside the coveted royal institutions, Charpentier was appreciated by the King. One sign of this esteem is the invitation extended to him, at the end of the 1670s, to write music for the services of the Dauphin, only surviving child of the marriage of Louis XIV and Queen Marie-Thérèse; the Dauphin, however, did not succeed to the throne, dying of smallpox in 1712. The Mercure Galant of April 1681 bears witness to the liking of the King for the music of Charpentier: \ Arriving at S. Cloud, he (the King) sent away all his musicians and wished to hear the musicians of Monseigneur the Dauphin until his return to Saint-Germain. Every day there were sung at Mass motets of Monsieur Charpentier & His Majesty did not want to hear others, although it was proposed to him. The music for the Dauphin was written generally for two trebles, a bass and two treble instruments, usually flutes, played by the brothers Anthoine and Joseph Pièche, whose names are written in the manuscript of the music for the Elevation, Panis quem ego dabo, which makes use of an exceptional ensemble of five vocal parts. Some motets are clearly dedicated to the Dauphin, such as the prayer for the King's son, Precatio pro filio Regis, a setting of the text from Psalm LXXI, Deus judicium tuum regi da that King David wrote after having established his son Solomon on the throne of Israel and in which he predicted the future kingdom of Jesus Christ. The comparison with the son of the King of France is an obvious one. Charpentier lived for nearly twenty years at the Hôtel de Guise, rue de Chaume (the present rue des Archives). He wrote a number of pieces of music, sacred and secular, for the singers employed by Marie of Lorraine, grand-daughter of Henri of Guise. This powerful princess had a great passion for music and from the 1670s engaged in her entourage some fifteen musicians, instrumentalists and singers, Charpentier himself taking part as an haute-contre. The music of Charpentier designed for this ensemble, sacred and secular, was commanded not only by Marie of Lorraine (called Mademoiselle de Guise) but also by Elisabeth of Orléans (called Madame de Guise), youngest daughter of Gaston of Orléans, the brother of Louis XII, and married to the nephew of Mademoiselle de Guise. The C
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
