Programme
La Fête de l’Amour
Divertissementi compiled by Nicolas-Antoine Bergiron du Fort-Michon (1690-1768)
Les Caractères de la danse
Choreographic symphony
Jean-Féry Rebel (1666-1747)
Exurgat Deus
Motet for large choir
Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726)
The CMBV and the national Conservatoires of Paris and Lyon offer a totally new musical experience – the recreation of a music session around 1720 at the Académie des Beaux Arts in Lyon, one of the most famous French concert establishments.
This concert stems from recent AcadéC research findings, part of the 2022-2026 research project on 18th century Concert Academies led by the CMBV and financed by the French research agency, to shed fresh light on a neglected area in the French musical landscape, namely the advent of today’s public concerts. Around sixty music academies were created in France from the 1710’s onwards, like in Lyon offering the public a new form of entertainment, new repertoires and new musical practices.
The two revived pieces in the programme were the kind of music heard every week in Lyon during the Regency period. Opera (here in the form of a medley of hits from the Opéra de Paris) is accompanied by a motet for large choir by Lalande (Lyon version). It was doubly innovative at the time - the opera was performed without staging, and for the first time a motet was performed in a secular venue.
The musicians, directed by Damien Guillon, conductor in residence at the CMBV choir school (2024-2025), comprise students from the Lyon and Paris Conservatoires (CNSMD) and the CMBV choir Les Chantres. Such performance practice of concert repertoires and musical practices has a pedagogical slant.
