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Marin Marais published his last collection in 1725, eight years after the appearance of his Quatrième Livre de Pièces de Viole . He was no longer playing in the Chambre du Roi by that time and had moved to a house in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau where he cultivated plants and flowers in his garden. He continued, however, to give lessons to people who wanted to improve their viol playing. The Cinquième Livre de Pièces de Viole reflects this image of a peaceful life; today we regard it as the final testament of a musician who was looking back upon his past years as their undisputed master — and which he remains today.

The opera L’incontro improvviso (The Unexpected Encounter), a work set in Egypt’s Cairo when it was under Ottoman dominion, was the main musical attraction during the four days of festivities held at Esterház Castle, near Süttör, at the end of August 1775 and hosted by Prince Nikolaus I Esterházy. The occasion was a visit from the Viennese imperial court led by Ferdinand Karl, Empress Maria Theresia’s second youngest son, the later Governor of Lombardy and the founder of the House of Austria-Este.

Even amidst the already seedy underbelly of the late-'80s L.A. glam metal scene, L.A. Guns were the undisputed bottom-feeders. A ragged collection of outcasts from various other bands (guitarist Tracii Guns was the original "guns" in Guns n' Roses, drummer Steven Riley had recently vacated the stool with shock-kings W.A.S.P., and British vocalist Phil Lewis had done time with London glamsters Girl), they elevated the unrepentant sleaziness and undeniable tackiness of their environment to a new VD-encrusted low. The union of such an unsavory cast of characters could only result in a wildly over-the-top rock & roll album, and while it may not have been as successful as their latest efforts, this eponymous debut rocked with a bile and fury not seen since Mötley Crüe's Shout at the Devil. Sh*t-kicking anthems like "No Mercy," "Sex Action," "One More Reason," and the marvelous "Bitch Is Back" slap the listener silly while still making room for slightly more commercial but equally hot offerings such as "Electric Gypsy" and "Down in the City".

Roman accounts of the nobleman Kapsperger reveal a highly eccentric musician: a virtuoso theorbist, a singer, a successful composer, he was said to be arrogant, even irascible. A character straight out of a novel, as the musicians of L’Escadron Volant de la Reine present him in their first album on harmonia mundi, aided and abetted by a distinguished partner: on this colourful disc, the madrigals, villanellas and arias of ‘Il Tedeschino’ (The German) meet the literary fantasy of the writer Carl Norac.