Programme
Te Deum
Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726)
Te Deum
Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704)
After an initial collaboration in 2019 with the CMBV choir Les Pages for the album Noëls baroques à Versailles, Gaétan Jarry reunites with the CMBV choir school, bringing together Les Pages & Les Chantres alongside the Choir and Orchestra of the Opéra Royal. Created to mark the tercentenary of the death of Michel-Richard de Lalande, this programme places two French Te Deum settings from the Grand Siècle side by side: Lalande’s Te Deum, by the favourite musician of Louis XIV, and the celebrated Te Deum H.146 by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
Born in 1657, Michel-Richard de Lalande was successively a choirboy, an organist, and then sous-maître of the Chapelle royale following the famous 1683 competition, succeeding Henry Du Mont and Pierre Robert. His remarkable career speaks for itself: composer, superintendent of the Musique de la Chambre, and music master of the King’s Chamber, he was, after Lully, Louis XIV’s favourite musician.
Lalande composed no fewer than seventy-seven grands motets. His Te Deum, composed in 1684 and revised many times, was notably performed for the inauguration ceremony of the Saint-Louis des Invalides church, as well as for the marriage of Louis XV. Already highly renowned during his lifetime, the work was one of his most frequently performed motets at the Concert Spirituel.
Alongside this major work by Lalande, Gaétan Jarry will perform Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s famous Te Deum H.146, composed for the Jesuits of the Saint-Louis church in Paris and made famous among the wider public by its opening bars, which became the Eurovision theme tune.
