Music from Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France

Among the Recent Researches series are editions of some of the finest examples of music composed in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The works include sacred music, such as Nine Settings of the Litanies de la Vierge by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. These settings of the Litany of Loreto belong to the Latin tradition of Marian devotion and reflect Charpentier's approach to the seventeenth-century motet and the style of the petit motet. The extended setting of Super Flumina Babilonis by Charles Hubert Gervais, also in Latin, represents more the tradition of the grand motet than that of the petit motet. Both works involve an orchestral accompaniment.

As to secular music, the set of Airs à deux et trois parties by Sébastien Le Camus emerged earlier in the seventeenth century. In some respects, the settings fall into the kind of vocal writing that was popular in England and Italy at the time of John Dowland. In contrast, Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era also includes an edition of Cephale et Procris, an opera by Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre that was premiered in 1694 at the Paris Opéra.

Another, better known opera is Le Devin du village by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which is available in full score with parts, piano-vocal score and also in a facsimile of a contemporary English-language translation by the music historian Charles Burney. The work deserves attention for its place within the famous War of the Buffoons, that is, the philosophical "Querelle des Bouffons" over the conflicting values between the newly emerging Italian opera buffa and the traditional style of French opéra lyrique, and a discussion of the historical significance of the opera is included in the introduction to the volume. The full score also includes the complete text and translation of the libretto, as well as the critical report, and an appendix with six new airs that Rousseau composed for the opera.

These editions represent some of the various publications of French music found in the two series, Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era and Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era. For further information on these and other Recent Researches editions, consult the 2001 Catalog or the website.