This two-CD set includes previous Virgin releases of liturgical music by two French composers of the French middle Baroque, the brilliant and acclaimed Marc-Antoine Charpentier and the very obscure Pierre Tabart. The Parisian de Guise family was stricken by multiple tragedies and then commissioned Charpentier to commemorate them in his Mass and Motet for the Dead and a work that has come to be known as Miserere des Jésuites. This is therefore not a particularly upbeat CD, but neither is it glumly mournful, and the works are ...
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This two-CD set includes previous Virgin releases of liturgical music by two French composers of the French middle Baroque, the brilliant and acclaimed Marc-Antoine Charpentier and the very obscure Pierre Tabart. The Parisian de Guise family was stricken by multiple tragedies and then commissioned Charpentier to commemorate them in his Mass and Motet for the Dead and a work that has come to be known as Miserere des Jésuites. This is therefore not a particularly upbeat CD, but neither is it glumly mournful, and the works are ample demonstration of the intense expressiveness of Charpentier's imagination and of the individuality of his gift for creating music that steers clear of convention and cliché and goes straight for the heart. Conductor Jean Tubéry, leading Choeur de Chambre de Namur and his own instrumental group, Ensemble La Fenice, has a sure grasp of the style of the French middle Baroque, and this material, which in less capable hands could come across as a downer, is full of passion, deep...
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