The performance of orchestral excerpts from stage works, such as those by Lully, Marais, and Rebel on this album, began in the seventeenth century and continues today.
Composer Biography
Jean-Baptiste Lully, an Italian page who adopted a French name, became a favored associate of King Louis XIV and was given his own ensemble, the Petits Violons or Petite Bande.
Composition History
Lully collaborated with the preeminent comic writer-actor Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) to create a series of comédies-ballets, which combined dances with a structured plot.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Jean-Féry Rebel's ballet 'Les Éléments' opens with a movement called 'Le Chaos' that uses a chord of all notes in the D minor scale to represent the confusion of elements before natural order.
Historical Context
The Vingt-quatre Violons, or Grande Bande, was the string ensemble of the French royal court, founded in the sixteenth century and renowned by the 1640s for its precision and brilliance.
Compositional Technique
Marin Marais's opera 'Alcyone' includes a dramatic symphony portraying a tempest, using rapid scales, tremolos, and thundering basses, including the then-new double-bass in French orchestras.
Compositional Technique
Lully's tragédie lyrique, or tragédie en musique, combined elements of court ballet with a strong dramatic structure based on classic French plays, featuring a prologue and five acts with divertissements.
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