French Cantatas: The Theatre of the Salon

Programme

  • Ouverture from Sylla et Glaucus (& Overtura no III op XIII) - Leclair

  • La Morte di Lucretia - Montéclair

  • Orphée: Laissez-vous toucher par mes pleurs - Clérambault

  • Musette for Viola da Gamba - Marin Marais

  • Les Regrets: Venez chère ombre - Louis Antoine Lefebvre

  • A Storm from Les Boréades - Rameau

********* Interval ********* 

  • Entrée de Polimnie from Les Boréades - Rameau

  • Sans freyer dans ce bois - Charpentier

  • Le Berger Fidèle - Rameau

  • Six dances: Tambourins and tunes by Rameau, Mouret, Montéclair, Duval

  • Les Génies: Final chorus - Mademoiselle Duval

Hello, and welcome to our show! We are serving up a sumptuous musical feast of music from the 18th century French Salon, a selection of the finest dishes and delicacies that these largely unknown composers offered up 300 years ago, that we can still sample all these centuries later. We are delighted to have you join us!

Sarah and I had a wonderful time at the beginning of this year, looking through all sorts of forgotten music by little known French composers writing between 1700s and 1730s, in the generation between Lully and Rameau. Rameau, the summation and crowning glory of the French Baroque, we knew of course and loved already, but names like Courbois, Lefebvre, Montéclair, Clerembaut, Leclair, and Duval were either largely unknown to us, or entirely new. We discovered that many of them had written chamber cantatas intended for salon performance, a genre that is the introvert cousin of the grand operas that were happening on the great stages of Paris and Versailles. Virtually all of them are written for a solo voice, and would not originally have been acted out - the aim was more a sort of musical storytelling, often with a classical subject and an improving moral messages about virtue or love. For Rameau, his early works in this genre (such as Le Berger Fidele of 1728) were an innovative testing ground for the revolutionary operas that were still to come from him.

These pieces were a thrilling discovery for us, not just for the ravishing musical beauty and vitality contained within these gems of compression, but also for their potent dramatic intensity. I realised that by splitting the solo vocal parts up between a small cast of singers, the theatricality, psychological acuity, and humour of these wonderful works could be released in an exciting new way. 

Although this is an all French program, you’ll notice that Monteclair’s superb cantata, La Morte di Lucretia, is actually sung in Italian. There was great debate in French musical circles throughout the 18th century about the value of Italian influence on French music, though usually this was a stylistic debate about the place of melody in the hierarchy of musical concerns and the treatment of words in word setting. It is rarer to get an actual example of a French composer setting an Italian text, and here Monteclair beautifully marries the French style to certain tricks he learned from the Italians, to devastating effect.

Framing the cantatas are overtures, dances, folk tunes, and orchestral storms from some of our favourite operas by Rameau and his contemporaries. In fact, this concert shows the whole span of Rameau’s composing life. Included are two excerpts from Rameau’s Les Boreades, his last opera. Composed in 1763 in the last year of his life, it shows the octogenarian’s powers of invention not just undimmed, but more vital than ever. We have made chamber arrangements of these orchestral pieces to juxtapose this final dramatic flowering of Rameau’s oeuvre with his Salon cantatas, the nursery of his writing for the dramatic stage.

Several of the works on this program have never been played in the UK before, and certainly none of them staged, so we hope you enjoy these tasty offerings!

Synopses

Monteclair - La Morta di Lucretia

Lucretia (a real historical noble woman who died in 510BC) has just been raped by Tarquinius, a tyrant prince of Rome, who is fleeing the scene of the crime. She calls after him and tells him to end her suffering. Her conscience tells her that the only noble thing to do now that she is impure, is to kill herself. Her rape and suicide had enormous political consequences - it lead to a rebellion which meant the end of the Roman monarchy and the beginning of the Roman republic.

Lefebvre - Venez, Cherie hombre

A woman calls to her deceased beloved to return to her. When he doesn’t, she rails against Fate who has brought her this suffering, and asks that Fate at least grant her death so that she can join him.

Rameau - Le Berger Fidele

Amaryllis is about to be sacrificed to the goddess Diana. Her lover Mirtis, a shepherd, appeals to Diana saying that breaking their sweet bond of love is too cruel a punishment. He decides that the true lover should sacrifice himself for his love so vows to take Amaryllis’s place on the altar. This impresses Cupid. At the very last moment, Diana gives a sign that she is content, and that Hymen, god of marriage, has lit his torch, signifying marital happiness. Mirtis praises Cupid, god of Love.