Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Ensemble Correspondances; Sébastien Daucé, dir.
The Louvre was the chief residence of the King, the epicentre of power, where the important events in the life of the court naturally took place. A ceremonial tradition was developed within its walls, which was to reach its zenith under Louis XIV. In this theatre of power, music was an object of entertainment as well as an instrument of magnificence. While laying the foundations of the future splendours of the Grand Siècle, the reign of Louis XIII represents the golden age of a galant culture, whose musical emblem, the air de cour, pervaded the whole of society and was heard in all the salons, galleries and ruelles of the capital’s aristocratic residences, and especially the most symbolic of them: the Louvre. Another key centre of sociability was the Queen’s apartment, located on the ground floor beneath the King’s apartment. It was in these different spaces that the Musique de la Reine could be heard. The echoes of these ‘pleasures’, inhabited by strange and whimsical divinities, allegorical characters or characters from the realm of galanterie, are bound to delight every listener.
This concert is generously supported by Bruce Munro Wright.
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Programme
Louis Constantin (1585-1657)
Le Ballet royal de la Nuit : Chasseurs I & II – instrumental
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Concert de Diane et de ses Nymphes
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Dialogue de la troupe d’Orphée & des Hamadryades
François De Chancy (1600-1656)
Allemande en Ut
Pierre Guédron (1570-1620)
Cesse mortel d’importuner
Pierre Guédron (1570-1620)
Quels tourments rigoureux
Etienne Moulinié (1599-1676)
Concert de différents oyseaux
Jacques Champion de Chambonnières (1602-1672)
L’Entretien des Dieux
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Ne vante point flambeau des Cieux
Moulinié Antoine
Première fantaisie
Moulinié Antoine
Rompez les charmes du sommeil [Air de la Ridicule]
Pause
Michel de la Voye (1700-1779)
Prélude – instrumental
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Noires Forets
Louis Constantin (1585-1657)
Le Ballet royal de la Nuit : danses du Sabbat
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Quelle merveilleuse Aventure
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Récit de la Félicité
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Ce roi vainqueur de nos malheurs
Louis Couperin (1626-1661)
Fantaisie pour les violes
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Que prétendez-vous, mes désirs
Louis Constantin (1585-1657)
Le Ballet royal de la Nuit : Folia (maggiore & minore)
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Segua chi vuoi iniquo Amore
Louis Couperin (1626-1661)
La Piémontoise – instrumental
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Conseille-moi mon cœur (David disgrâcié)
François de Chancy (1600-1656)
Rares fleurs, vivantes peintures
Antoine Boesset (1586-1643)
Flores apparuerunt
Programme Notes
During the reign of Louis XIII (1610-43), the entertainments and festivities of the French court owed much to the legacy of the last Valois sovereigns, who had raised art and magnificence to the status of political tools, but also to the influence of the culture of the salons and leisured society pursuits, which had emerged during the preceding reign of Henri IV (1589-1610). If the invention of the ballet de cour at the end of the sixteenth century sought to link entertainment and political necessity, the establishment under Henri III (1574-89) of a genuine court ceremonial, which found its emblematic setting in the Louvre, had made it possible to integrate music into the King’s day in a more organic and symbolic fashion. Under the early Bourbons, the influence of salon culture gave the court a more galant atmosphere, to which the codes and elegant manners of a new civility in high society added the last touch of refinement. While laying the foundations of the future splendours of the Grand Siècle, the reign of Louis XIII itself represents the golden age of this galant culture, whose musical emblem, the air de cour, pervaded the whole of society and was heard in all the salons, galleries and ruelles of the capital’s aristocratic residences, and especially the most symbolic of them: the Louvre.
The air de cour at the time of Louis XIII
The air de cour was a by-product of the humanist debates of the late Renaissance, and served as an ornament to royal ballets and divertissements, whose splendour it enhanced with large-scale récits (vocal solos) and dramatic or encomiastic choruses. Most such airs were short settings of refined galant poetry, the growing taste for which subsequently spread to literary, aristocratic and bourgeois circles. With its subtle music capable of expressing all the nuances of the realm of love, the air de cour was one of the emblematic elements of a society where the honnête homme devoted himself to the art of pleasing his entourage (plaire) and expressing himself elegantly (bien dire) according to the codes of galant culture imposed by literary préciosité. The numerous collections published by Ballard, Imprimeur du Roi pour la musique (Printer of music to the King), were full of airs galants, paeans of praise, récits from the ballets danced at court and saynètes (short dramatic sketches) in dialogue, but also airs à boire (drinking songs) or pieces of Italian or Spanish origin or showing the influence of those neighbouring cultures with which the honnête homme was expected to be familiar. In the face of this formidable vogue, the air de cour became a target for the pious, who hastened to replace the amorous texts of fashionable airs with religious poetry more suitable for hymning the love of God.
Under Louis XIII, city and court influenced each other, bringing about changes in aspirations and practices. Just as Parisian society enjoyed singing the airs from the ballets danced by or before the King and Queen, the court in its turn yielded to the galant culture that flooded the Parisian salons. The polyphonic air, which remained the prerogative of the Musique de la Chambre du Roi, was infiltrated by new trends. The rise of basso continuo and the domestic practice of singing with lute hastened the development of French accompanied monody. Depending on its intended recipients, its inspiration and its texture, and thanks to the polymorphic character bestowed on it by the different versions of the same pieces offered by Ballard’s publications, the air de cour offered a wide range of interpretative possibilities, in combinations that could be adapted at will to suit the circumstances or the available vocal and instrumental resources.
The Musique de la Chambre du Roi
At the same time as amateur music-making developed among the aristocracy, the Musique de la Chambre du Roi remained a professional elite, the heir to the polyphonic tradition of the Renaissance. It comprised a dozen adult male singers (chantres), two or three choirboys (enfants de la Musique) and a band of instrumentalists (playing recorders, lutes, viols, and keyboard instruments collectively referred to as épinettes, ‘spinets’), to which a few female voices might be unofficially added. The Musique de la Chambre du Roi was placed under the responsibility of a Surintendant, himself assisted by a Maître. Among other functions and prerogatives, the Surintendant had the charge of providing the vocal music for the many ballets in which the King, the Queen and the whole court were the dancers. Airs, récits and choruses performed by the Musique de la Chambre, reinforced for the occasion by the members of the Chapelle and the Écurie du Roi, alternated with danced entrées accompanied by the Vingt-quatre Violons (themselves led by their ‘roi’ François Richomme, then, from 1624 to 1656, by Louis Constantin), or purely instrumental interludes played by lutes and viols. The Queen also had her own Musique, the organisation of which was more or less modelled on that of the Chambre du Roi. It was reserved primarily for the Queen Mother, and then passed to the reigning Queen. Several musicians belonged to both bodies, serving the sovereigns on a six-monthly alternating basis.
Among the outstanding personalities gravitating in court musical circles, first mention must go to Pierre Guédron (c.1565-1620), Maître (1608) then Surintendant (1613) of the Musique de la Chambre du Roi, the first great architect of the air de cour, which he helped to make fashionable. His extensive œuvre (nearly 200 airs) is evoked here through sacred parodies of two of his most famous airs, Cessez mortels de soupirer and Quel espoir de guérir, published in 1612/13. Although he was never actually a member of the Musique du Roi, Étienne Moulinié (1599-1676), a native of Languedoc who followed his brother Antoine to Paris after the latter became a chantre in the Musique de la Chambre, quickly made a name for himself in the capital’s elite circles with his airs de cour. Appointed Intendant de la Musique to the King’s brother, Gaston d’Orléans, in 1627, he left a large output of airs, published between 1624 and 1639, for voice and lute or for four and five voices. With a final book of Airs à 4 ‘avec la basse continue’ published in 1668, he must be considered as one of the last representatives of the polyphonic tradition of the genre. Three representative examples of this rich corpus may be heard here: two airs originally from ballets (Il sort de nos corps emplumés and Rompez les charmes du sommeil) and published in 1625 and 1639 respectively, and an air galant (Ô doux sommeil) from the 1668 collection. As for François de Chancy (c.1600-56), who was in the service of Cardinal Richelieu before becoming Maître des Enfants (Master of the Choirboys) in the Musique de la Chambre du Roi between 1630 and 1635, his contemporaries placed him alongside Guédron, Moulinié and Antoine Boesset (1587-1643), to whom this programme chiefly pays homage.
A native of Blois, Antoine Boesset was still a child when he entered the court of Henri IV, where he was able to rub shoulders with the leading musicians of the kingdom, among them Eustache Du Caurroy and Claude Le Jeune. But it was most likely from Guédron that he learnt the secrets of an art that was to take him to the highest musical offices at court. His career took a decisive step forward in 1613 when Guédron, the new Surintendant de la Musique de la Chambre, offered him his daughter’s hand and endowed him with his own previous position as Maître de la Musique de la Chambre du Roi. From then on, the musical and social career of the so-called ‘Apollon de la France’ progressed steadily. Four years later, in 1617, his appointment as Maître de la Musique de la Chambre de la Reine confirmed him as the guarantor of his father-in-law’s artistic legacy. In due time, he succeeded in his turn to the highest musical position in the realm: when he became Surintendant de la Musique de la Chambre in 1623, it was his task to organise the official entertainments – such as the ballets danced by or in front of the sovereigns – and private concerts for Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, and to provide the vocal music required for their pleasure. At the head of the court’s musical elite, he moved very close to the seat of power through the intimate relationships he was able to establish with the sovereigns and the links he maintained with his most influential contemporaries, in political and financial circles as well as artistic and scholarly milieux.
A renowned musician, a sought-after singing master, but also a courtier, he amassed a substantial fortune and held a number of honorary offices and functions at court that gained him the support of its most prestigious figures. His airs de cour and airs de ballet – nearly 250 published between 1606 and 1643 – represent the peak not only of their composer’s art but also of the golden age of the polyphonic air, and more generally illustrate the evolution of the genre towards a lighter form for solo voice and continuo. These delicately chiselled miniatures reveal great understanding of the poetic text and a keen feeling for word-setting, melody and counterpoint, underlined by a refined use of vocal scoring.
Alongside entrées from royal ballets from the years 1635-36, themselves compiled in a large-scale ‘Concert’ offered to Louis XIII for the feast of St Louis (25 August), the airs on this recording are punctuated by pieces written for harpsichord by the King’s musicians (here arranged for viols). Jacques Champion de Chambonnières (c.1601-72), a member of the Musique de la Chambre du Roi and his father’s successor as épinette du Roi (1611), enjoyed a solid reputation at court and in Parisian circles from the 1630s on. He is regarded as the founder of the French harpsichord school, and it was he who introduced to court the three Couperin brothers, the eldest of whom, Louis (uncle of François ‘le Grand’), was to become violiste ordinaire (viol player in ordinary) of the Chambre du Roi at the beginning of Louis XIV’s reign.
All the King’s musicians had to be ready to serve in all circumstances, to respond to the daily demands of court ceremonial and the imperatives of protocol, and to play for the sovereign’s official and private entertainments. Hence, logically enough, most of them lived close to the Louvre, in the Parisian parishes of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois or Saint-Eustache.
The pleasures of the Louvre
Although less vast, convenient and comfortable at this period than other palaces such as Fontainebleau or Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the Louvre had become, since the reign of Henri III, the chief residence of the King, who spent part of every year there, chiefly the winter months. It was a key hub of the monarchy and of royal symbolism, the epicentre of power, where the important events in the life of the court naturally took place: a veritable ceremonial was developed within its walls, which was to reach its apogee under Louis XIV. In this theatre of power, music was an object of entertainment as well as an instrument of magnificence, and was performed in a setting at once public and intimate.
For major events of a political dimension, the court moved to the hall of the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon, situated between the Louvre and the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. However, the palace itself had two halls for entertainments, built under Henri II in the south-west wing (by Pierre Lescot) of what was to become the Cour Carrée. On the ground floor was the ‘Grande Salle’ (now the Salle des Caryatides), measuring about 44 x 16m, with a ceiling height of 8m. This played host to the grand dynastic ballets, such as the Ballet de la Félicité, danced in 1639 to celebrate the long-awaited birth of the future Louis XIV – and the last royal ballet for which Boesset provided the récits (Je suis l’adorable Équité). Above all, it was there that, every year during Carnival, the court attended the Ballet du Roi, an allegorical spectacle in which the sovereign himself performed, ‘representing’ the image of majesty in his dancing. This ceremonial hall was extended to the south by a raised platform known as the tribunal, decorated with columns and featuring an imposing triumphal arch composed of two richly worked porticoes joined by a barrel vault. It was in this space, a symbol of regal power, that the royal family was placed, as was the ‘haut-dais’ under which the King would sit when he was not dancing. On the opposite side, under a richly sculpted gallery with standing space for a few musicians, a ‘théâtre’ was set up, the point of departure for the dancers, who performed before the gaze of the court, placed in terraced seating around the sides of the hall. On the first floor of the palace, a slightly smaller and less official ‘Salle haute’ was also used for divertissements, balls, ballets and banquets of lesser political importance. It was usually here that Anne of Austria and the ladies of her household danced the Ballet de la Reine a few days after the Ballet du Roi.
The royal apartments were also used for divertissements and for the moments in the sovereigns’ day that were accompanied by music. At the Louvre, Louis XIII occupied the apartment built in the reign of Henri II (and modified under Henri III) on the first floor of the south wing along the Seine. Its most remarkable room was the ‘Chambre de Parade’, where the ceremonies of the King’s levee and couchee took place, as well as receptions and public meetings. Henri Sauval (1623-76), an invaluable historiographer of Paris, describes at length the beauty of the panelling, ceilings and decorations, while also providing rare information on the acoustic qualities of the room: ‘The Chambre de Parade is a truly royal room. Connoisseurs and musicians find it so ideal that they not only call it the finest chamber in the world, but also assert that, of its type, it is the height of all the perfections of which the imagination can form an idea… Musicians also make observations about it that neither painters nor sculptors make… They declare that in all Paris there is no place more suitable for soft music, and attribute the reason for this to the wood of its ceilings, its panelling and the embrasures of each casement. For they are convinced that stone vaults are less flattering to concerts than those made of wood; experience having taught them that stone treats the voice with a much greater degree of reflection and echo than wood; that it is too dry, has too much brilliance and creates excessively harsh echoes; and that, on the contrary, wood has all the softness that music can desire…’ (Sauval, Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris; Paris: Charles Moette, Jacques Chardon, 1724, vol. II, pp. 35-36).
Sauval probably obtained these observations from musicians of the Musique de la Chambre du Roi, who could enjoy these ideal conditions at their leisure; and Louis XIII himself, an artist-king who composed from time to time, writing several airs de cour and the Ballet de la Merlaison (Ballet of the blackbird hunt, 1635), from which an entrée (Les Gascons) is heard here, could not but appreciate them. It was mainly there that the sovereign heard the ‘concert’ of his musicians, especially at his petit coucher, a custom recalled at the end of the seventeenth century in L’État de la France: ‘In the past, in Paris, there was the Musique du Petit Coucher on certain days of the week. This ensemble comprised a few voices, and sometimes also a few instruments.’
The antechamber was the venue for the King’s midday and evening meals (dîner and souper), which, when they were held in public, were also accompanied by music. The Cabinet du Roi, the study reserved for the monarch’s private conversations and his repose, might also echo with music on occasion.
Another key centre of sociability was the Queen’s apartment, located on the ground floor beneath the King’s apartment. This had been laid out by Pierre Lescot for Catherine de’ Medici, and was scarcely smaller than the King’s, consisting of a reception hall, an antechamber, a bedroom and wardrobe, a large study and two small ones, and an oratory. The Queen Mother Marie de Medici occupied it until her exile in 1631, whereas on the first floor Anne of Austria confined herself to the few rooms of the apartment reserved for the reigning Queen, adjoining that of the King. It was in these different spaces that the Musique de la Reine could be heard. Since the reign of Henry III, musical entertainments had normally been held there three evenings a week, on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
So let us allow ourselves to be guided by the echoes of these ‘pleasures’, inhabited by sometimes strange and whimsical divinities, allegorical characters or characters from the realm of galanterie, which delighted Louis XIII, Marie de Medici, Anne of Austria and their court, in what was, before Versailles, the emblematic residence of the Kings of France.
Ensemble Correspondances
Founded in Lyon in 2009, Correspondances brings together under the direction of the harpsichordist and organist Sébastien Daucé a group of singers and instrumentalists, all of whom are specialists in the music of the Grand Siècle. In a few short years of existence, Correspondances has become a benchmark ensemble in the seventeenth-century French repertory. Placing itself under the auspices of Baudelaire’s notion of correspondences between the arts, it performs music whose sonorities can still directly touch today’s listeners while presenting staged productions of rarer and more original forms such as the oratorio and the ballet de cour.
The exceptional reconstruction of the score of Le Ballet Royal de la Nuit, the result of three years of research, allowed modern audiences to discover a major musical event of the seventeenth century, the unprecedented moment that inaugurated the reign of the Sun King. After the public and critical success of the CD-book released on harmonia mundi (Le Concert Royal de la Nuit, 2015), the ensemble returned to this extraordinary spectacle in 2017 with the théâtre de Caen, in a contemporary production by Francesca Lattuada combining elements of the circus and the dance, also given at the Opéra Royal de Versailles and at the Opéra de Dijon. This staged version has been published recently: an exceptional box set gathering the full music (27 additional dances) and the recording of the show.
Sébastien Daucé, dir.
The organist and harpsichordist Sébastien Daucé is lit up with the urge to revive an abundant yet little-known repertory, the sacred and secular music of seventeenth-century France.
It was during his training at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon that he met the future members of Correspondances. Key influences among his teachers there were Françoise Lengellé and Yves Rechsteiner. Initially in demand as a continuo player and vocal répétiteur (with the Pygmalion ensemble, the Festival d’Aix en Provence, and the Maîtrise and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France among others), he formed the Correspondances ensemble in Lyon in 2009, assembling around him singers and instrumentalists with a passion for the French sacred repertory of the Grand Siècle.
With this ensemble, which he directs from the harpsichord or the organ, he now travels throughout France and around the world, and frequently broadcasts on radio. Sébastien Daucé and Correspondances are in residence at the théâtre de Caen, where they developed their first staged projects (Trois Femmes directed by Vincent Huguet in 2016, Le Ballet Royal de la Nuit directed by Francesca Lattuada in November 2017), and are associate artists at the Opéra and Chapelle of the Château de Versailles, and at the Louvre Museum.
Significant stages in the ensemble’s career have been tours to Japan, Colombia, the United States and China, alongside regular appearance in Europe (the United Kingdom, Germany, Benelux, Italy, Poland). Its exploration of a little-performed and often unpublished repertory has led, with the support of the harmonia mundi label, a pioneer of the Baroque repertory in many respects, to a discography of twelve recordings that have attracted considerable press attention and have received such distinctions as the Diapason d’Or of the Year, ffff de Télérama, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, ‘Choc’ of the Year in Classica, German Record Critics’ Award and IRR Outstanding.
Correspondances now enjoys international recognition: at the ECHO Preis ceremony in the Berlin Konzerthaus in 2016, it won the award categories of Best World Premiere Recording (for Le Concert Royal de la Nuit) and Best Young Conductor of the Year, while the Australian Limelight magazine named it Operatic Recording of 2016 for Le Concert Royal de la Nuit.
Alongside his activities as a performing musician, Sébastien Daucé works with the leading scholars of seventeenth-century music, publishing regular articles and taking part in important performance practice projects. Passionately interested in questions of musical style, he edits the music that makes up the ensemble’s repertory, going so far as to recompose complete pieces when necessary, as was the case in Le Ballet Royal de la Nuit. He has taught at the Pôle Supérieur de Paris since 2012. In 2018 he was guest artistic director of the London Festival of Baroque Music. Sébastien Daucé is also an associate artist of the Fondation Royaumont.