During the Holy Week of 1680, the many readers of the Mercure Galant learned that while Louis XIV was listening to the Tenebrae service in the chapel of the Vieux Château in Saint-Germain in Paris, there was at the same time some “beautiful music” heard at the Abbaye-aux-Bois composed by Charpentier.
This music, conserved as the marvellous Neuf Leçons de Ténèbres cycle, forms part of a collection of thirty-one lessons, nineteen responses and three psalms for the Tenebrae. It was the most significant work for Holy Week of the French baroque period.
The corpus is especially exemplary in the quality of the works, a quality that today’s performers continue to recognise. |
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