Scenes

Court Theatre in France in the 17th and 18th Centuries

The project focuses on court theatre in France during the 17th and 18th centuries, understood as a space of creation at the intersection of performing arts and monarchical power. It is particularly concerned [...]

Workshop

Anches: From Cane to Music

The aim of the project Anches ('Reeds') is to rediscover the historical sound of double-reed instruments (oboes, musettes and their variants), which played a central role in French baroque music, [...]

Territories

Muséfrem (Church music in modern France)

Prosopography of church musicians active in France in 1790 (CHEC and CMBV project).

Territories

Songs from Occitania, French airs from Hebrew sources in Baroque Provence

Jews in Provence, like their Christian neighbours, composed and sang their Hebrew liturgy to popular secular tunes. Between the 16th and 18th centuries their prayer books, manuscripts and printed music [...]

Scenes

Seminar on the CESR research project ‘The European Stage – Performing Arts, Art of Performance’

The seminar sprang from the idea of encouraging across the board reflection on the CESR research project ‘The European Stage – Performing Arts, Art of Performance’ , bringing together the permanent members [...]

Scenes

The Music of Actors

Forty years ago, pioneering work, notably Dene Barnett, Eugène Green, Philippe Lénaël and Michel Verschaeve, paved the way to reviving early performance techniques based on treatises on song, grammar and [...]

Scenes

ThéPARis-France

After a cycle of three seminars (2019-2022) devoted to exploring the phenomena of circulation and the transversality of practices between Parisian theatres, the ThéPARis research programme presented a [...]

Scenes

Night scenes in 17th and 18th century theatre

This project stands between the history of the stage and theatre techniques and includes the mindsets and anthropological values attached to the Night. It incorporates political, cultural, dramaturgical, [...]

Territories

AcadéC: Concert Academies in France (1710-1770)

The AcadéC project is the first comprehensive study to be devoted to the music academies in eighteenth-century France, the societies that gave rise to the first public concerts. It aims to give them a [...]

Power

The Cantata in 18th century France

The Cantata is a major poetic and music genre of the 18th century, particularly during the first thirty years. Born in the 17th century and originally imported from Italy, it took many different forms [...]

Scenes

The Paris Royal Academy of Music

The project is devoted to studying the birth and development of opera in France, as well as the complex relationship between the Académie royale de musique , an emblematic institution linked to the shaping [...]

Workshop

Les Soupers du Roi

Symphonies pour les Soupers du Roi : the nature and role of court music 2019 / 2020 academic year Focusing on the iconic Symphonies pour les Soupers du Roi , the CMBV has embarked on a joint 3-year [...]

Power

Motets and Liturgy

With a particular focus on the motet, a genre emblematic of French music under the Ancien Régime, the aim is to understand how this ‘modern’ paraliturgical and polymorphous music (chapel motet, grand motet, [...]

Territories

Choir school music in France

Choir School Music in France: the Tours-168 and Deslauriers manuscripts The Tours-168 and Deslauriers manuscripts of sacred music are rare testimonies of the music practiced in French choir schools [...]

Power

SPECTACLECONOMICS. Financing Festivals, Music and Theatre

In partnership with the CESR and the University of Tours, the CMBV is hosting a new project funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research grant, devoted to the study of real and fictitious expenditure on [...]

Completed project

Power

Table music

Midway between entertainment and ritual, during the Ancien Régime meals accompanied by music became a social must and symbol of power, a veritable mark of elite status. While the ritual royal banquets [...]

Completed project

Scenes

The Fabrication of Performance: Processes and Politics of Costume-Making in the 18th-Century

In the 18th  century, theatre was an important tool for promoting both political and personal agendas, and it can be seen as a barometer of socio-political changes. While theatrical costumes have [...]

Completed project

Workshop

The Ballard workshop, royal music printers

When directing his workshop from 1672 to 1715, Christophe Ballard worked during a period when institutional music was highly concentrated in Paris and Versailles. Supported by the king, its significant [...]

Completed project

Workshop

The early French music copyists' workshops

Besides printers and engravers, copyists are essential links in the production of musical sources. They may work in a very productive workshop (Philidor and Fossard's is a typical example), or alternatively [...]

Completed project

Scenes

ThéPARis

A multidisciplinary research seminar co-organised by the CMBV, the Centre for Renaissance Studies (Tours University), Côté d’Azur University and the CTEL (Literature & Performing Arts research centre), [...]

Completed project

Territories

Musical life in France and in the lands of the Bohemian crown in the 17th and 18th centuries

The project aims to investigate the different strategies and methods of cultural exchange in Europe during the Ancien Régime, and to focus on the (little-known) links between France and the lands of the [...]

Completed project

Territories

Italian music and Italian musicians in France

Traditionally seen as a counter-model, the Italian musical style actually had a substantial impact on the forming of the French musical style. Italian musicians were on French soil due to circumstance [...]

Completed project

Workshop

Les livres d’airs de différents auteurs (LADDA)

The 37 Livres d’Airs featuring various composers and published each year between 1658 and 1694 by Robert and later Christophe Ballard forms a corpus of around 1220 airs. They reflect the popularity of [...]

Completed project

Workshop

Airs de cour

The air de cour was an iconic social musical genre in the late Renaissance and through the first half of the 17th century. It has aroused a great deal of public interest in the last ten years or so, [...]

Completed project