Before it was a museum, the Louvre was the Paris residence of kings, resounding with music and dance that embodied royal power and style. Sebastien Daucé and his Ensemble Correspondances group examine some of the large and largely neglected repertory connected with the Louvre, here during the court of Louis XIII (1601-1643). These pieces are in the genres of the air de cour and ballet, with the boundaries between the two not always clear: many of the ballets have text. For the most part, these are like Baroque ...
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Before it was a museum, the Louvre was the Paris residence of kings, resounding with music and dance that embodied royal power and style. Sebastien Daucé and his Ensemble Correspondances group examine some of the large and largely neglected repertory connected with the Louvre, here during the court of Louis XIII (1601-1643). These pieces are in the genres of the air de cour and ballet, with the boundaries between the two not always clear: many of the ballets have text. For the most part, these are like Baroque counterparts to the madrigal of the 16th century: brief, often subtle settings of elegant romantic poetry. It is intimate music, chamber music, unlike the splendid genres of the Sun King's realm to come. The Ensemble Correspondances pitches its energy level just right, with precise, sparkling vocal ensembles interspersed with more dancelike pieces. The composers, with the possible exception of Antoine Boësset, are all but unknown, pages in a music history book, if even that, but all of the...
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