Jean-Baptiste Lully: L'Orchestre du Roi Soleil

Editorial Reviews
What is it that makes French baroque music so unmistakable? You have only to listen to a minute or two of this disc to recognize its nationality, even if guessing the composer is more difficult. Perhaps it's the instrumental color, as many-hued as the finest embroidered cloth; perhaps it's the juxtaposition of the most stately overtures--full of brass flourishes and dignified pomp--with the liveliest dance movements. Indeed, so French is this music in style that it's of little consequence that Lully was actually Italian-born (though French-trained). These three suites were all composed for the court of Louis XIV, a great patron of the arts and an enthusiastic dancer. Le divertissement royal is as gilded and magnificently over-the-top as the Versailles festivities it was designed to celebrate (just sample the magnificent trumpets in track 11), while Le bourgeois gentilhomme was Lully's most spectacular collaboration with Molière in a form that combined music and drama (sample the Turkish ritual in track 4 or track 8, a ceremonial and gracious end to the suite). The suite from the opera Alceste makes a fittingly rich finale, ranging wide from the dramatic possibilities of "Echos" (track 23) to the overcast "La pompe funèbre." The playing by Jordi Savall and his band is terrific: vivid, perfectly drilled, and endlessly responsive to the theatrical possibilities of this effervescent music--brought to the fore by the excellent recording. --Harriet Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Tracks:

Premiere Ste 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme': Ov
Premiere Ste 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme': Gavotte
Premiere Ste 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme': Canaries
Premiere Ste 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme': Marche Pour La Ceremonie Turque
Premiere Ste 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme': Premier Air Des Espagnols: Sarabande
Premiere Ste 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme': Second Air Des Espagnols: Gigue
Premiere Ste 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme': L'Entree Des Scaramouches, Trivelins Et Arlequins
Premiere Ste 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme': Chaconne Des Scaramouches, Trivelins Et Arlequins
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Danse De Neptune
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Les Suivants De Neptune
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Prld Des Trompettes Et Autres Instruments Pour Mars
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Les Hommes Et Femmes Armes
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Rondeau Du Mariage Force
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Second Air ('Le Mariage Force')
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Bourree Du Mariage Force
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Bourree Du Divertissement De Chambord
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Sym Des Plaisirs
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Les Esclaves
Deuxieme Ste 'Le Divertissement Royal': Menuet Pour Les Trompettes
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': Marche Des Combattans
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': Menuet
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': Loure Pour Les Pecheurs
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': Echos
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': Rondeau De La Gloire
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': La Pompe Funebre
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': Rondeau Pour La Fete Marine
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': Les Vents
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': La Fete Infernale: 1er Air
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': 2eme Air, Les Demons
Troisime Ste 'Alceste': Marche Des Assiegeants
Chaconne De L'Amour Medecin

Customer Reviews:

A very exciting recording.......2006-09-23

This is a marvellous introduction to the French Baroque music, 17th century music and the music from the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully. I bought this CD because I love Lully and because I am a fan of Jordi Savall and his Concert des Nations.

So what is on this CD?

Well, for your money you get some excellent recordings of orchestral movements from the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully. These movements are in the various dance forms popular in the French court in the 17th century. The music is colourful, rhythmic and stylish. Lully was a great tunesmith and he had a great feel for dance.

Please, if you buy no other CD of Lully's music in your life, please consider this one.

"Marche pour la Cérémonie Turque" 10 thumbs up!.......2006-08-17

If you love Lully's music you will give it 10 stars. Great recording too!

Gorgeous Swing for Le Roi-Soleil.......2006-03-25

Although I used to study music and I knew his name, I hadn't listened Jean-Baptiste Lully's music. I listened to music of Ramaeu, Vivaldi, Purcell, J.S.Bach, and Handel but no Lully's.
First time I listened his music was from French film "Le Roi Danse" which was a story about Lully's life with Louis XIV and Moliere. Music impressed me so much that even I thought it was not by Lully, but it was.

So I bought this CD to listen in a complete way to "la musique pour le roi-soleil (the music for the sun king)". I would say, the music is like as gorgeous as Château de Versailles. The first suit "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman)" is called as the masterpiece of Lully and Moliere collaboration. I love fourth piece, Marche pour la C?r?monie turque (March for the Turkish ceremony)" which was also used in the film, and 13th melancholy piece is also my favorite.

My impression of Lully's music is swing, suppose French baroque style upright swing. Lully himself danced balley and he composed many pieces for ballet for Louis XIV dances. "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" is also a ballet, a comedy-ballet. Listening to his music, tapping feet, I wonder the ballet at that time focused on jump rather than turn, step, or movement.
Performance by Le Concert De Nations is also impressive and commentary by Philippe Beaussant is interesting as a view of music history.

One another I like about this CD is the package. It is paper three-fold and put the music score inside, very fashionable. The front picture if the King family is gorgeous too. Usually I drop packages to change to thin plastic cases but I will keep this package.

The Sun King's Most Beloved Composer Really Shines in this Performance!.......2005-10-13

As the main reviewer mentions, the French Baroque style is completely original in its sound so that even one with little familiarity in Baroque styles will recognize instantly. Jean-Baptiste Lully's music is probably the most regal, warm, and literally gay of all the Baroque music composed in France, but also one of the least performed. Lully is actually a very underrated composer and this album is probably the best example of how underrated he has remained which is unfortunate because his work is highly original and as complex as any other contemporary Baroque work. Jordi Savall and Le Concert Des Nations are undisputably a very few the very best performers of French Baroque pieces and each use 17th-18th century authentic instruments. The recording quality of this album is also stupendous. This album is a gem for anyone looking to expand their horizons in Baroque music or curious about French Baroque specifically.

Jean-Baptiste Lully was actually of Italian origins and his French style was influenced in some parts by his native Italy but mostly by French Late Renaissance and very early Baroque folkloric styles. Lully was active in the mid-17th century in the court of Louis XIV, The Bourbon Sun King and founder of Versailles who, in addition to having reigned for about 75 years, was the greatest patron of the arts and sciences in Europe during his time. This is of course music for the Sun King and so the pieces usually have a regal Baroque weightiness to them in trying to portray the absolute monarch as the mighty Jove who appeared as thunder but who moved on in his royal procession as regally and lightly as a cloud. Such techniques in the strings were mostly imitated and refined by contemporaries and used in later German Baroque concerto works such those of Bach, Telemann, and Handel. This regal weightiness is also carried by a lot of brass but Lully always presents his brass arrangements lightly unlike his heavier German and especially English Baroque counterparts. Accentuating its classicist themes, the music simultaneously conveys both the typical aristocratic fluff of the Bourbon court as well as its weighty Olympian pageantry demonstrated in his Turkish procession. In other parts, some of the ballad pieces make one feel as if they have just left the stuffy aristocratic halls of Versailles to join some jovial musketeers merrily drinking in a common nearby tavern instead. Lully's music is highly unique, expressive, and generally jovial with a lot of tonality: he uses a lot of period dances for his pieces such as sarabandes, gavottes, etc. There's also a lot more use of the viola da gamba, lute, and various percussion than other contemporary Baroque pieces but somewhat typical in French ones. The most moving pieces in these arrangements might just be those for solo Baroque violin and lute or a small accompaniment: they are very expressive and as hauntingly beautiful and divine as any of Biber's comparable works or those of Marais. Lully was simply a genius in very evocative music that seemed to defy its own excess demands for pomp and frivolity. He is certainly one of the most innovate composers of the Baroque period. Lully is actually the main founder of both modern ballet and opera as forms of art which he first performed in the court of Versailles as distinctive musical repertoires incorporating theatrical and dance forms. Louis XIV was indeed so enamoured with Lully's majestic works that he ignored Cardinal Mazarin's resentments and France's own capital laws against homosexuality so that he could keep him under the patronage of his court. Although tragic, Lully's death is somewhat ironically as fatalistic as many of the classicist subjects of his ballets and operas: as if he had been a gifted muse who rendered Apollo jealous and so was struck down by Fate. While passionately conducting a piece using a heavy set staff weighing several pounds, he accidentally crushed his foot and died of gangrene soon after. He was an artist who died from his passion in a true sense and this is always a touching end for an artist in terms of posterity. He was replaced by Marin Marais as court composer whose pieces are also exquisitely performed by Jordi Savall solo on the viola and with Le Concert Des Nations for his orchestral works.

Lully was definitely an accomplished master of music and very original. A composer who is more obscure simply for the fact that he's not played as much as Bach or Vivaldi and that the French Baroque is not as common in performance circles. Lully however was certainly no less accomplished in his genius than any other of the great Baroque masters. Although many French composers such as Marais and Rameau would imitate his expressive style throughout the 18th century particularly in their operas and ballets, none of them could ever match it. In terms of French Baroque, I strongly recommend you get every piece you can by Jordi Savall and Le Concert Des Nations as they are few of the very foremost experts on performing in the French style. Another decent group is Les Arts Florrisants who have done various French Baroque performances. There are few other groups and artists that perform Lully or any French Baroque besides the latter anyway and most of them that do don't even compare to them. Their CDs are typically more expensive than the common labels and might have to be ordered but the quality of the performances and the recordings are really worth every penny believe me. Many of Savall's earlier performances are also starting to become hard to find.

Recommended highly.......2002-04-16

I am not as familiar as some with the music of Lully, but enough to know where Handel must have taken some of his points when he himself became the master splendour and majesty in music!

The music is astounding to say the very least. Though I am still quite partial to the 'Handelian' brand of grandeur, Lully also seems to have stolen my heart with this most royal and dignified collection of pieces, a fascinating and important compilation. I commend warmly the performers and conductor for an astounding example of excellence in interpretation, and recommend highly this recording to all.

Average customer rating:

Music to transport you to Versailles (and make you get up and dance !)

Lully: L'Orchestre du Roi Soleil
Jean-Baptiste Lully , Jordi Savall , and Le Concert des Nations
Manufacturer: Alia Vox Spain
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Classical | Imports | Stores | Music
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ASIN: B000071XA6
Release Date: 2003-04-08

Customer Reviews:

Music to transport you to Versailles (and make you get up and dance !).......2007-07-19

This is a stunning disc: if you don't know the music of the French Baroque it will convert you - if you know the music already the performance and interpretation will dazzle you. Lully wrote with what I hear as an incredibly modern sense of melody - his tunes (and most of the pieces are short) are instantly accessible to a modern ear and are impossible to shake off, but these are more than simply pop songs; they are layered and varied, from exuberance to melancholy, to resignation and tears, to delight. And why buy this one rather than another interpretation ? Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations combine technical virtuosity with a beautiful musicality that allows you to hear the layers in the music, and they play with a sense of joy, and at times wildness, that make me wish I could dance. It is easy to see France under Louis XIV purely as grotesque, as the parody we see so often in film or literature; the affectation, the wigs, the thick cracking make up, the gilt clothing and the rancid sweat, the inept aristocracy and the starving peasantry. Lully and Savall remind us that these were people, with fears and hopes and exuberance and joy, and the skill and passion in the writing and performance of this music transport me instantly to Versailles under the Sun King, and make it a place I love being.Lully: L'Orchestre du Roi Soleil

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