In the 1680s, Jesuit ceremonies were among the most spectacular in the capital. The liturgy became a form of sound architecture: choirs answered one another from one gallery to the next, orchestras engaged in dialogue, and voices merged into vast and powerful soundscapes designed to move both the senses and the spirit. Close to the Jesuits even before his official appointment to the church of Saint-Louis in 1688, Marc-Antoine Charpentier found in this context the ideal setting for developing a monumental style of writing inherited from the Italian polychoral tradition he had discovered in Rome, while also incorporating elements characteristic of the French tradition.

Gathered together in an imaginary cycle of Marian Vespers, litanies, psalms, the Magnificat and the poignant three-choir Salve Regina form a true sacred theatre, where musical splendour becomes an image of divine glory.