A Night in Paris: Le Concert Spirituel

Programme Notes

The Concert Spirituel is one of the most delightful spectacles for the lovers of beautiful and fine music, both vocal and instrumental. The wonders of the Psalms of David are expressed there by our most celebrated composers with all the zeal the subject demands. They sing both Grand and Petits Motets, alternately with all types of instrumental pieces. The public often has the sweet pleasure of judging new works, or those of newcomers. The Directors spare nothing to engage the most beautiful voices and the best symphonists, both of our own nation and of foreign lands. The motto of this wonderful spectacle should be HIC ORPHEI PALMA (Here is the palm of ).

So wrote M. L’Abbé Lacassagne in his Traité général des élémens du chant, published in Paris in 1766. The concert series he describes was founded in 1725, the first public concert series in continental Europe. That this took place in Paris is both despite and because of the remarkable restrictions on public performances in France established by Louis XIV and his music master Jean-Baptiste Lully. Strictly observed patents forbade the performance of works in French, the performance of opera, performances with more than six instrumentalists, or the charging of admission for any performance without written permission from L'Académie Royale (the institution of the Royal Opera). Concerts remained private affairs, hosted by the wealthy for invited guests. The appetite for concerts, however, was strong, and the court oboist André Danican Philidor saw an opportunity. By royal decree, the opera theatres throughout France were closed on religious holidays: during Lent and the Easter Season, at Pentecost and Christmas, and on high feast days. Philidor received permission to present concerts on these days, and to hire instrumentalists and singers from the opera as well as from the court. The Academy stipulated that only sacred music, in Latin, could be sung, and required that a substantial fee of 10,000 livres be paid annually for the privilege. In return, the court offered the Salle des Cent Suisses at the Tuileries palace free or charge, with the caveat that any stage that was constructed could be dismantled in a few hours in case the king should require the palace (he used it only once in the history of the Concert Spirituel, for a few weeks in 1744). There was no restriction on the number of musicians that could be employed. The name Concert Spirituel was adopted since all concerts were to take place on holy days.

The first concert took place on Passion Sunday, March 18, 1725, described in the Mercure de France:

The king having given permission to M. Philidor, Ordinaire de la Musique de la Chapelle de Sa Majesté, to present concerts of sacred music in the Château des Thuilleries; the Salon des Suisses has been designated for these concerts, which are made up of choral motets and French and Italian symphonies by the best composers. The salon has been decorated through the good offices of M. Philidor; in a very acceptable manner a tribune in the form of an amphitheatre has been constructed, on which may be placed the players and singers. It can accommodate at least 60 persons, and is enclosed by a balustrade decorated in gold, in the shape of a lyre.

The performance began at six o'clock in the evening and finished at eight, to the great applause of all present. It would be very difficult to find anywhere else a more perfect combination of singers and players than the best performers of La Musique du Roi, of the Académie Royale de Musique, and other excellent masters, numbering 60 in all, who gave this magnificent Concert, which attracted such a large audience, and the admirable execution of which was entirely due to M. Philidor.

The programme for the evening was to set the model for years to come: two grands motets by Michel-Richard de Lalande (including the Confitebor excerpted in our programme this week), two instrumental suites by Lalande, and Corelli's Christmas . Throughout the 65-year history of the Concert Spirituel, motets were featured in all programmes, often those of old masters. Lalande died in 1726, just a year after the concert series was established, and most of his motets performed in that first year had been composed a quarter-century earlier. Yet Lalande's motets continued to be sung at the Concert Spirituel until at least 1770: extant documents list no fewer than 421 performances of 31 motets. The British music writer Charles Burney was present at the 1770 performance and was surprised by the audience's reaction, as he himself had little interest in older styles:

Though this wholly stunned me, I plainly saw, by the smiles of ineffable satisfaction visible in the countenance of 99 in out of 100 of the company, and heard by the most violent applause a ravished audience could bestow, that it was quite what their hearts felt, and their souls loved. C'est superbe! was echoed from one to the other through the whole house.

As repertoire restrictions gradually loosened, one might have thought that these traditional motets might have been abandoned in favour of more secular works. But although secular works eventually found their way into the programmes, the motets remained the focus of the vocal portions. Composers such as Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, who took over artistic leadership in the 1750s, incorporated more modern, dramatic elements into his motets, but they remained in essence thoroughly baroque works.

This sense of tradition in the motet repertoire is contrasted with the tremendous variety and innovation to be found in the instrumental music. If the instrumental music in the first concert in 1725 was relatively conservative, it already introduced the concept of including foreign music — the Corelli concerto. Both foreign musicians and foreign music were routinely featured over the decades, and were in part responsible for the popularity of the concert series. The instruments favoured in French salons in the seventeenth century — the gentle lute, , and harpsichord — gave way to the more extrovert violin and . French violinists vied with Italian violinists in what seems to have been a spirit of friendly rivalry. were included in every concert, and soloists were enthusiastically applauded. The Concert Spirituel was a remarkably successful concert series. From the very first concert, the hall was filled with paying customers, and remained so throughout its history. It is thought that the Salle des Cent Suisses held perhaps 700 people. It remained home to the series until the royal family was forced to move to Paris in 1789. The orchestra ended its final concert there fittingly with Haydn's Symphonie où l'on s'en va (the "Farewell" Symphony). Concerts continued for a few more months in other theatres, until the upheaval of the Revolution brought the series to an end in May 1790.

When choosing the music for our concert programmes this week, we faced a wealth of choices. The musicologist Constant Pierre has pieced together in remarkable detail the programmes presented throughout the series' 65-year history. Given that there was an average of 24 to 34 concerts per year, there is an impressive amount of repertoire from which to choose. As the Parisians so often did, we have invited an exciting young "foreign" violinist — Cecilia Bernardini — to play concertos: one by the elegant French violinist/composer Jean-Marie Leclair, who appeared as soloist countless times, and another by Vivaldi. Vivaldi's concertos were all the rage at the Concert Spirituel, the most popular being "Spring" from The Four Seasons, and the "Tempesta di mare." Our two "suites de simphonies" also contrast the French (Mondonville) with the foreign (Telemann). Telemann visited Paris in 1737-38 and was among the featured composers that year. We know that his "Paris Quartets" were performed, and in subsequent years there are listings of several Telemann simphonies, referring undoubtedly to his orchestral suites, but precisely which ones we do not know. Some of his suites are written with French titles, names of instruments, and clefs, and are signed "M. Melante": an anagram of his last name which he liked to use when writing à la française. The E-Minor Suite we are performing this week is one such suite, and may have been amongst those heard in Paris. The dynamic violinist Mondonville's transcription of one of his own harpsichord sonatas for full orchestra completes our instrumental selection.

We turn to Mondonville again for two of our choral selections: the striking final Requiem from De Profundis, and the theatrical In exitu Israel, which includes a choral representation of a storm at sea — Mondonville's depiction possibly inspired in part by Vivaldi's concerto, so well known at the time. Finally, we turn to the Lalande motet that opened the concert series and was repeated year after year, praised at the time for its naturalness of melody and nobility of expression.

© 2014