Marc Antoine

In France, during the reign of Louis XIV, the religious service known as Tenebrae was one of the most distinctive ceremonies in the liturgical year. Gradually, in the course of the office, the candles were extinguished, recalling the darkness that covered the earth when Jesus died on the cross. Charpentier composed Tenebrae settings throughout his career, thirty-one lessons in all. The three presented here, written for the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of Holy Week, are scored for a solo bass voice, accompanied by an orchestra composed of recorders, oboes, strings, bassoon and organ.

Drawing on its vast catalogue of Baroque recordings, French label Naïve has assembled a selection of opera and ballet extracts from Marais, Charpentier, de Visée and others that the Sun King would have enjoyed. The disc itself is nicely layered in mood and energy, showing off some of the world's finest period-performance players at their best - including lute master Luca Pianca, the Ensemble Organum and Le Parlement de Musique-Strasbourg.

Drawing on its vast catalogue of Baroque recordings, French label Naïve has assembled a selection of opera and ballet extracts from Lully, Charpentier, Couperin and others that the Sun King would have enjoyed. The disc itself is nicely layered in mood and energy, showing off some of the world's finest period-performance players at their best - including harpsichord master Skip Sempé, the Talens Lyriques and Canada's own soprano Karina Gauvin.

Ce CD fait découvrir trois motets à grand choeur du compositeur méridionnal Antoine-Esprit Blanchard, dont deux en première mondiale. Ces grandes pièces, tout à la fois empreintes de noblesse et de théâtralité, alternant faste des chœurs et intimité des récits, donnent un aperçu fidèle de la musique pratiquée et appréciée à la chapelle de Louis XV, dans la tradition du grand motet français instaurée par Louis XIV.

L'homme descend-il du singe ? Les hommes préhistoriques ont-ils vécu en même temps que les dinosaures ? Lucy est-elle notre ancêtre, Homo habilis le premier homme intelligent et Cro-Magnon l'ancêtre des Français ? La préhistoire était-elle vraiment l'époque des « âges farouches » ? Les mammouths - et Néandertal ! - vivaient-ils dans un décor de l'âge de glace ? Faisait-on du feu en tapant deux silex l'un contre l'autre ? L'art préhistorique avait-il un sens religieux ? Et y a-t-il quelque chose d'Indiana Jones en Antoine Balzeau ? …

The five Canticles constitute a series of five musical works by composer Benjamin Britten. The pieces were written at various points in his career, with three of them written as memorials. Instrumentation differs on each piece, and several are based on non-sacred texts. A review in Opera Today notes, "Britten didn't draw upon the Scriptures for the texts of his canticles, which resemble cantatas more than church hymns in scale and structure, but an intense religious spirit pervades them all." Critic Peter Evans notes the works contain a "mood of spiritual elevation intense enough to demand realization in an ambitious musical structure."

Francisco Lopez Capillas was born in 1608 in Mexico City, and studied plainchant and polyphonic composition at the Royal and Pontifical University before assuming the post of chorister and second organist at Puebla Cathedral in 1641. Although most of his significant works were composed toward the end of his life–and thus well into what is generally regarded as the baroque period–the Messe de la Bataille is, like many of his other works, ambiguous in its relationship to the musical innovations that were taking place in the old world at the time.