"In the Court of the Sun King" - Concert of the Veduta Musica Chamber Ensemble

The French court of Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, was famous for its patronage of the arts, where music not only served representative purposes, but also accompanied the king’s every day activity. Louis XIV himself danced with pleasure; dance became a defining element of court life, and French music – starting with Lully – was organized around this dance-centered musicality. Our concert gives a taste of this musical approach and French court culture, in which we select works by Lully and other French court composers, adapted to the apparatus of our ensemble. Jean-Baptiste Lully created the French opera style as the court composer of the Sun King, which is fundamentally different from Italian opera. In addition to an aria from his opera Armide, we also bring a taste of Lully’s lesser-known chamber works. Through the more intimate trios accompanying the king’s personal daily routine, we can gain insight into the everyday life of the court. Jean-Philippe Rameau, who continued Lully's legacy, became divisive in the eyes of the public with his first opera, Hyppolite et Aricie; Lully's fans found his music too modern. However, he later achieved such success that Louis XV elevated him to the rank of nobleman and appointed him as court composer, and we bring you a specially orchestrated aria from his opera above.

Dance (ballet) also played a prominent role in French opera, and chamber music works were often written in the form of suites, as a series of dance movements. The indispensable movement of these is the Chaconne or Passacaille, which sometimes has a larger breath at the end of the work. At our concert, we will also highlight two Passacailles: one from the E minor trio by the king's virtuoso viola da gamba player, Marin Marais, and another from the Spanish Suite from François Couperin's Les Nations. We will also select works by well-known and lesser-known French composers, with a trio by Louis-Antoine Dornel and Joseph Bodin de Boismortier.

Dance has played an important role in the composition of our program, and the alternating vocal and instrumental works are this time enriched by contemporary dance reflections, forming a bridge from the Baroque to our contemporary world. Michel-Pignolet de Monteclair's cantata Pan et Syrinx will be presented in a unique, dance-scenic form, in which the collaboration of the singer and the dancer is our own attempt to create harmony between genres.