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, [...]

Teaching projects

The Lalande Tricentennial in 2026 with the Conservatoires

On this occasion, the CMBV invites conservatoires and their early music departments to integrate initiatives centred on Michel-Richard de Lalande into their educational and artistic programmes in 2025 [...]

The CMBV's filmed lectures

The first lecture sums up a “short history of French singing (1630-1800)”, introducing the general historical context and setting milestones in terms of practice, teaching, repertoire and stylistic evolution, [...]

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 [...]

Atys, Lully

Atys , tragédie en musique de Lully sur un livret de Quinault, suscite un intérêt exceptionnel de la part de Louis XIV, avant même sa création. Le roi assiste à plusieurs répétitions de l'œuvre, plus d’un [...]

CMBV’s playlists

Each month, the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles offers an approximately 90 minutes thematic playlist for an authentic sound immersion at the heart of the musical works, genres, composers and artists of the 17th and 18th centuries’s French music repertoire.

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 [...]

Restructuring of the CMBV research database

Laurent Guillo has been working on the restructuring of the CMBV’s research database since 2019. It will merge around 80 databases (of works, sources, events & people) produced by the JLB-NET [...]

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 [...]

Music and Liturgy in the Royal Chapel

In the wake of Alexandre Maral’s research into the Royal Chapel at Versailles, and drawing on seminars and performance practice instigated by the CMBV, this project will investigate how music was addressed [...]

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 [...]

Theme-based projects

French opera singers

Keen to spot today’s finest baroque singers and highlight neglected French opera music, the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles has created or supported ‘imaginary operas’ and recitals based on well-known [...]

Theme-based projects

Lully across the centuries

The Académie Royale de Musique repertory theatre, somewhat unusually, performed old musical compositions. Lully’s music was played there for over a century between 1673 and 1779. However, from the mid [...]

Theme-based projects

Salieri’s French operas

Antonio Salieri was born in Verona in 1750 and died in Vienna in 1825. He was a major composer during the late baroque and early romantic era. He was a protégé of Gluck and worked essentially at the Habsburg [...]

Teaching projects

Paris CRR

The CMBV and the early music department of the Paris CRR (regional conservatoire) are joining forces to revive Ariane et Bacchus , a little known masterpiece by Marin Marais. The CMBV will be publishing [...]