Technical Details: Interactive Menu, Language Selection Dolby Digital 5.1 Recording / PCM Stereo 16:9 Wide Screen Extras: Biographies, A la recherche du son perdu – a documentary film on French Baroque Music   Running Time: ca. 70 min (Concert)                        ca. 50 min (Specials)

Order No: 70004                                              upcoming! French Baroque Music at Versailles Sacred Music by Etienne Moulinié and Contemporaries Conductor: William Christie Orchestra: Les Arts Florissants Soloists: William Christie, Organ, Atsushi Sakai, Viola da Gamba, Elizabeth Kenny, Theorbe French Baroque music is fantastically rich in content: more than 20.000 works catalogued and nearly 500 composers. It was the musical standard at time, performed in all European courts and cathedrals. But these musical works are the most abused in French musical tradition: forgotten manuscripts in the back of libraries, scattered pieces – often never performed – unknown authors and fragmented transcriptions. Harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist and teacher, William Christie is the architect of one of the most extraordinary musical ventures in the past 20 years: he has been a pioneer of the rediscovery in France of Baroque music, and made known to a large audience the French repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries. He created in 1979 and has been leading since then Les Arts Florissants, an instrumental and vocal ensemble devoted to French Baroque music. William Christie is the undisputed master of lyrical-tragedy as well as opera-ballet, of French motet as well as court music. Etienne Moulinié (ca.1599-ca.1676) was first altar boy at  Narbonne cathedral. He went to Paris, where he became music master of Duke Gaston d’ Orléans from 1627 to 1660 – when the Duke died. He became music master (1665) then Intendant à vie (1667) of the Etats du Languedoc. He left an immense and rich collection of works – partly lost. He composed during the years when a new style was developing involving a dialogue between soloist and choir which was to establish itself in the famous Versailles “Grand Motet”. Moulinié and his contemporaries, under Louis XIII’s Kingship, brought to life the first Baroque music.