Nicolas Bernier: Les Nuits de Sceaux may not be quite as revelatory as other entries in a remarkable series of Renaissance and Baroque discs issued by France's Alpha label, but it has plenty to interest lovers of the French Baroque, and indeed anyone interested in what French music of the period might have sounded like beyond the court and the circles of the powerful Lully and Rameau. The Château of Sceaux was the part-time residence of the Duchess of Maine, the wife of Louis XIV's son and an enthusiastic patron of the arts ...
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Nicolas Bernier: Les Nuits de Sceaux may not be quite as revelatory as other entries in a remarkable series of Renaissance and Baroque discs issued by France's Alpha label, but it has plenty to interest lovers of the French Baroque, and indeed anyone interested in what French music of the period might have sounded like beyond the court and the circles of the powerful Lully and Rameau. The Château of Sceaux was the part-time residence of the Duchess of Maine, the wife of Louis XIV's son and an enthusiastic patron of the arts and sciences. She mounted elaborate musical entertainments, most of which have been lost; Nicolas Bernier's large two-part cantata Les Nuits de Sceaux (1715) is the most substantial survivor. The chief innovation of the Alpha series is the inclusion with each album of a reproduction of an artwork contemporary with the music on the disc. The happy choice here is a painting by François de Troy (1645-1730) of the Duchess herself, seated at a table next to an armillary sphere, receiving...
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