Antoine de la Garanderie

Dans sa leçon inaugurale du Collège de France prononcée le 30 novembre 2006, l'auteur analyse la valeur et l'utilité de la littérature moderne et contemporaine dans la société et la culture. …

Ce manuel de cours permet de (re)découvrir le droit de la famille grâce à une approche visuelle de la matière. 41 cartes mentales illustrent ainsi des notions juridiques parfois complexes à appréhender afin d'en faciliter leur compréhension.

On the death of Anne of Brittany, her husband King Louis XII honoured her with exceptional funeral ceremonies lasting forty days, which sealed forever her image as Queen of France and Duchess of Brittany. As he prepared this programme centring on the Missa pro defunctis of Antoine de Févin, and read the exceptionally vivid narrative by the herald of Anne of Brittany (whom her subjects nicknamed simply ‘Bretaigne’!), Denis Raisin Dadre realised that beyond all this official mourning staged by the royal authority, there was also a silent sorrow, that of the Bretons who had lost their duchess and were also in the process of losing their duchy’s independence.

Jérôme Lejeune continues his History of Music series with this boxed set devoted to the Renaissance. The next volume in the series after Flemish Polyphony (RIC 102), this set explores the music of the 16th century from Josquin Desprez to Roland de Lassus. After all of the various turnings that music took during the Middle Ages, the music of the Renaissance seems to be a first step towards a common European musical style. Josquin Desprez’s example was followed by every composer in every part of Europe and in every musical genre, including the Mass setting, the motet and all of the various new types of solo song. Instrumental music was also to develop considerably from the beginning of the 16th century onwards.

More than 300 years after Antonio Vivaldi composed The Four Seasons , the most famous work in the history of music is still as lively and invigorating as ever. Now Le Concert de la Loge has recorded this Baroque treasure with its founder and director, the violinist Julien Chauvin, as soloist. For the occasion, the Château de Versailles has loaned him an exceptional instrument: a Neapolitan violin by Nicola Gagliano, adorned with fleur-de-lys and inlaid decorations. This instrument, which was played by Yehudi Menuhin in the 1970s, comes from the ‘collection de Madame Adélaïde’, named after one of Louis XV’s daughters. It has not left the Château for almost a century and is in a perfect state of preservation. The main work is complemented by Vivaldi’s no less celebrated ‘La Follia’ and an aria that is now famous in its own right, ‘Sovvente il sole’ from Andromeda liberata , the score of which was discovered in Venice in 2002. It is performed here by the countertenor Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian.