Dumont Israel

Born in Normandy and largely self-taught in musical theory, Sebastien de Brossard (1655-1730) spent most of his career directing cathedral choirs in Strasbourg, Meaux, and other Alsatian cities. Brossard's 'Grands Motets' are plainly in the tradition of Lully, but have less of French elegance and more of German seriousness about them, a quality perhaps suited to Alsatian taste. Brossard has been better known as a musical theorist and as the author of the first musical dictionary in the French language, but his compositions are quite well-crafted and concert-worthy. He ranks, I think, with Delalande, Dumont, Charpentier, and a notch or two below Lully himself and Rameau. Nearly every French Baroque composer worth his salt wrote a Grand Motet on the text of Psalm 125, "In convertendo Dominus captivitatem Sion," and it's quite interesting to compare the various expressions of rejoicing in the Lord's favor.

This 20cd box set dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the music of versailles. The box set is beautifully packaged with complete english translations featuring distinguished baroque artists such as les arts florissant's with william christie, les musiciens du louvre with marc minkowski, les talens lyriques with christophe rousset, paul agnew, bernarda fink, veronique gens, patricia petibon and many more. The majority of these recordings have been recorded live during the festival at versailles palace and have never been commercially available. Approximately 5% has been licensed from warners and glossa. It is manufactured in france and put out by the centre of baroque music in versailles.

On this, the largest set ever compiled of one of the last century's most popular composers, we may not only renew our familiarity with the Concierto de Aranjuez, or perhaps with one of the other ever-melodious guitar concertos that sustain his reputation with audiences, but also discover chamber, instrumental, choral and especially vocal works which testify to a creative imagination confident in the formation of its style but never satisfied with repetition, one which responded directly to poetic and lyric inspiration, and transformed its ideas with unfailing skill and respect for the idiom under consideration.

This 20cd box set dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the music of versailles. The box set is beautifully packaged with complete english translations featuring distinguished baroque artists such as les arts florissant's with william christie, les musiciens du louvre with marc minkowski, les talens lyriques with christophe rousset, paul agnew, bernarda fink, veronique gens, patricia petibon and many more.