Marc Antoine Charpentier, Henri Desmarest TE Deum

Charpentier's Te Deum written in the bright key of D major features a four-part choir and eight soloists. It displays the composer's total command of religious music combined with a gift for melodic writing. Brilliant and majestic, yet profound, this Te Deum (Charpentier wrote four Te deums) was probably composed to celebrate the victory at Steinkerque in August 1692 during the wars against the countries of the League of Augsburg. [The struggle would eventually be in vain; and Strasburg, and the Palatine succession lost to France].

The Canticum Zachariae dates from 1687, and its lovely six-part Benedictus shows Charpentier in characteristically fluent lyrical and contrapuntal form. The four-part Mass—the first of the composer’s eleven settings—which opens simply, extends to six voices in the Sanctus, with the spirited Hosanna extended to double choir. But it is the short Agnus Dei, serenely beautiful, that haunts the memory.

Cyril Auvity heads the cast in a new recording of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s La Descente d’Orphée aux enfers in a production being released by Glossa. Auvity is the lovelorn Orpheus who ventures, with his lyre, into the Underworld to plead with Pluto (Etienne Bazola) for the return of his Eurydice (Céline Scheen), struck down in her prime by a snakebite, being encouraged in his efforts by Proserpine, the wife of the ruler of Hades (Floriane Hasler).

Marc-Antoine Charpentier is the only composer of the age of Louis XIV to have distinguished himself so remarkably in the genre of the ‘sacred history’: he wrote more than thirty such works, all composed after his residence in Italy.
Sébastien Daucé and the Ensemble Correspondances have carefully extracted from this outstanding corpus a number of gems that reflect both his experience in Rome (probably studying with Carissimi, the master of the oratorio) and the humanist concerns of an entire period.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier studied in Italy with Giacomo Carissimi, and he was one of the first composers to introduce aspects of Italian styles to France. His big motets lend themselves naturally to operatic singing, and even in liturgical works like the ones collected on this release, the Italian influences are still there. Sample the Magnificat à 3, with its ground bass-like construction and its unusual texture, including three male voices (bass, tenor, and haute-contre). The opening Litanies de la vierge are for a six-voice group, but the bulk of the program consists of the titular Leçons de ténèbres, solo works (two for bass and one for haute-contre) with a small ensemble to which is given a good quantity of expressive writing and contrapuntal clashes.

En co-production avec le Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. Enregistré en concert le Samedi 16 octobre 2004 - 18 h 00 à la Chapelle royale à l'occasion des Grandes Journées Marc-Antoine Charpentier du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles (Automne 2004).

This Virgin Classics release reunites William Christie and Les Arts Florissants with the music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, a composer for whom it can be said Christie has done more to expose than any other he has taken on. This is saying a lot, as Christie has also made extensive recorded forays into the works of Campra, Lully, Montéclair, Monteverdi, Purcell, and in particular, Handel. However, Charpentier remains a special case to Christie, and there is still a monumental amount of unrecorded music by this composer to exploit. The two works on Virgin Classics' Charpentier: Judicium Salomonis actually have been recorded before, though not often and not by well-known groups like Christie's – the Motet pour une longue Offrande has been recorded by Philippe Herreweghe and that's about it in terms of the competition.

Beata es Maria is made up primarily of vocal music in praise of the Virgin that features three men's voices, a counter tenor, tenor, and bass. It's an especially attractive ensemble, and Charpentier, who is known to have sometimes sung the tenor parts, knew how to make the vocal lines terrifically appealing. The Magnificat that opens the album beautifully illustrates his skill in taking a much-used convention – the chaconne, with a harmonic progression that (the composer reports) repeats 89 times – and keeping it endlessly intriguing with his inventive handling of the voices. The piece, while sounding fresh and original, calls to mind two other chaconnes, Monteverdi's madrigal, Lamento della Ninfa, whose harmonic scheme it follows, and the men's trio in the opening scene of Philip Glass' Satyagraha, which it almost spookily foreshadows.

In addition to German and early Italian sacred music, Michel Corboz was very involved in exploring the Grand Siècle, and in particular the music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The re-creation in Lyon of David & Jonathas, a groundbreaking musical form between lyric tragedy and oratorio, with very few recitatives, was one of the main stage events of 1981. Almost three centuries had passed since the premiere and the work was completely forgotten, though being considered nowadays as one of Charpentier’s masterpieces. This recording, made just after the live performances, was the first to reveal the beauty of this work, thanks to Corboz’ conducting of a period instrument orchestra and an amazing cast of vocal soloists: Colette Alliot-Lugaz, Paul Esswood, Philippe Huttenlocher, René Jacobs, François Le Roux…