Marais Trios

Ces suites en trio ont été gravées par d'autres ensembles très talentueux : en intégralité pour l'ensemble "Pacifica" Marais : Pièces En Trio et le "Ricercar Consort" Marin Marais : Pièces en trio pour le coucher du roi ; ou partiellement comme pour les "aux pieds du roi" Marais : Pieces en trio pour les flutes, violon et dessus de viole (1692) . Chacun de ces enregistrements à de grands mérites. Toutefois l'ensemble Amalia à mon sens, mérite dans ce registre la première place pour plusieurs raisons.

A portrait of d'Artagnan in the form of a tribute to Alexandre Dumas, illustrated by authentic pieces of music written by Lully and Philidor for the real Musketeers. Trumpets and kettledrums, oboes and side-drums play the favourite marches and trios of the royal regiments in alternation with passages from the novelist's prose. A fascinating meeting between history and fiction.

Ensemble Molière presents a luxuriant and varied selection of French Baroque music to accompany Louis XIV, the Sun King, in his daily life. What better way to wake up than to be serenaded by the Overture from Charpentier’s Les Arts Florissants ? The King’s day continues with extracts from Lully’s Phaëton as the sun rises, a little Couperin as the royal household’s day unfolds, a Symphonie pour les soupers du Roy by Delalande to accompany supper, dance music from the Ballet Royal de la Nuit and a suite to accompany the setting sun from Marais’ Trios pour le coucher du Roy . Louis XIV chose to portray himself as the Sun, the manifestation of the god Apollo on earth and the ultimate power which gives life to all things. This album reimagines a day in the life of one of the most magnificent royals of the Baroque era.

The Italian-style trio sonata, honed by Corelli into a monument of seventeenth century classicism with its perfect balance of new-found tonality and assimilation of dance forms into art music, had a hard time finding a foothold in France. Among other aspects, the unwillingness to abandon the dance suite – possibly caused by the privileged position of ballet as a royal pastime at the court of Louis XIV – meant that French composers waited until the end of the century to compose "proper" trio sonatas. But a great deal of experimentation with the form went on before that, and not surprisingly one of the experimenters was the Italian "immigrant" Lully. His rôle at the court of the Sun-king included providing small-scale works for the Coucher du Roi, the nightly ceremony marking the king's withdrawal to bed.

An invitation to experience music played in the court of Versailles – for Louis XIV and his successors. An imaginary story gives it its framework: A young provincial beauty comes to the court, is presented to the King and becomes his favourite, falls into disgrace through the intrigues of her rivals, but finally retrieves her honour.

This Concert Parisien, subtitled "from the era of Louis XV," is something more specific still: it offers music more or less closely connected with the circle of Alexandre La Riche de La Pouplinière (oddly spelled "Poplinière" here), a music patron whose suburban home was a major incubator of music by Rameau and the generation that followed him. The music on this disc is not brainy, experimental Rameau, or the smooth chamber music of the Concerts Spirituels; rather, it's progressive, allied in spirit to the literary salons that Pierre Jaquier in his concise booklet notes called "temples of wit," and, above all, fun.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since Antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age– every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the Revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follow in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century.

The Pièces de clavecin en concerts are a kind of link between the Italian trio sonatas and Bach’s polyphonic trios. An example of the latter would be the trio sonata which concludes the Musical Offering. Another example would be the keyboard sonatas – for harpsichord or pianoforte – with violin or ad libitum accompaniment which were developed considerably at the end of the XVIII century, especially in France.