The music of the French Baroque has always been a tougher sell than the flashy Italian or the faith-embodying German, and when French Baroque sacred music is recorded it's almost always in the weighty grand motet genre, redolent of French court splendor. These Leçons de Ténèbres, or Responsories for Holy Week, of Michel-Richard de Lalande are something else again: intimate pieces for soprano and a small ensemble. Thanks to a tangled publication history (it's not clear when they were composed, and they were published in 1730 ...
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The music of the French Baroque has always been a tougher sell than the flashy Italian or the faith-embodying German, and when French Baroque sacred music is recorded it's almost always in the weighty grand motet genre, redolent of French court splendor. These Leçons de Ténèbres, or Responsories for Holy Week, of Michel-Richard de Lalande are something else again: intimate pieces for soprano and a small ensemble. Thanks to a tangled publication history (it's not clear when they were composed, and they were published in 1730 in an apparently incomplete state), they have remained almost unknown. Belgian soprano Sophie Karthäuser, the Ensemble Correspondances, and their leader, Sébastien Daucé make a good case for the music here, introducing the Leçons de Ténèbres with a substantial Miserere and interspersing choral pieces among the three lessons. The music has an unusual mixture of deep solemnity -- the Lessons are introduced by heavily ornamented lines intoning the names of the single letters of the...
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