Forqueray: La Couperin
And because turnabout is fair play here is Couperin: La Forqueray
There there are the tombeaux. This is the Tombeau de M. Blancrocher by Louis Couperin, played by Gustav Leonhardt.
Too much harpsichord? Ok, here is the rondeau from Les Indes Galantes by Rameau:
And if you are ready to shed a tear or two, here is Les Tendres Plaintes by Rameau, played by Grigory Sokolov:
"Separately, Camille Maurane (on Philips) and Gérard Souzay (on Decca) have left recorded performances of Huascar's Invocation au Soleil from the Peruvian Entrée, a seminal piece in the history of French musical drama."
ReplyDeleteThis is an example of one of Wikipedia's irritating limitations: why are these two or five or six minutes 'seminal in the history of French musical drama'? tsk: but Les Indes Galantes is a lively lovely work in any case. The imperialist cultural appropriation throughout, however, is shocking to my sensibilities.
I'll just bet it is! You should watch out for the Bordeaux Opera production where the first twenty minutes or so are danced entirely naked!
ReplyDeleteBrian,
ReplyDeleteWhether or not one wishes it, most French Baroque music always remains, in nearly all of its best exemplifications, an aristocratic art, an art of cultured and well-educated people; an art created for subtle minds and discreet hearts.... It is not in accord with French tradition to cry out, or to make a show of one's sentiments. And that which we may thus lose as regards power, we gain, perhaps, in penetration and delicacy.
If one follows the road of delicacy, of refinement and subtle intelligence, the road of discreet feeling in the art of causing words and sounds to say all that they are capable of saying, and even that which it would seem they could not say, I do not believe it possible to go further than French art has done.
You may be entirely correct.
ReplyDelete