Ensemble Les Surprises & Louis Noël Bestion de Camboulas Charpentier & Desmarest: Te Deum

Two Te Deums go head to head! The famous one by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and a completely new one by Henry Desmarets. Charpentier and Desmarets, remarkable composers of both sacred music and opera, shared a taste for Italian music and travel, but they also shared the disadvantage of having spent some time in Jean-Baptiste Lully's 'shadow'! Desmarets' life was somewhat tormented, between disgrace and exile; it was while he was superintendent of music at the Court of Lorraine that he composed two Te Deums, including the Te Deum "de Lyon". Written for the same ensemble as Charpentier's famous Te Deum, it uses trumpets and timpani for the grandiloquent sections. It is a true work of craftsmanship, notably in the variety of instrumentation, but also in its alternation of different vocal forces.