- Chabrier probably composed his Ouverture pour le sacre d’un évêque H. 536 (Overture for the Consecration of a Bishop)1 during the early 1690s.2
- Form: “Ouverture,” or “French overture:” a two-part form with a grand opening in duple meter with slow, dotted rhythms, followed by a faster fugal/imitative polyphony section.3 The form is associated with regal or ceremonial occasions: for example, in Lully’s ballets, a French overture would mark the entrance of the king into the theater.4
- Instrumental ensemble music for religious occasions was unusual in Charpentier’s day; he was one of the few composers who wrote such works at the time.5
- French composers did write “organ masses” (works for organ meant to be played while a spoken Mass was taking place) but writing liturgical music for an orchestral or chamber ensemble was an unusual specialty of Charpentier’s. 6
Sources
- Catherine Cessac, trans. Chrales Johnson, “Motets for the House of Guise,” liner notes to Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Litanies de la Vierge, Ensemble Correspondances, Sébastian Daucé, Harmonia Mundi 902169, CD, 2013.
- H. Wiley Hitchcock, “Charpentier, Marc-Antoine,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 21, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000005471.
- Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th ed., s.v. “Overture” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).
- J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Paliska, A History of Western Music, 7th Ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 361.
- Catherine Cessac, trans. Chrales Johnson, “Motets for the House of Guise,” liner notes to Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Litanies de la Vierge, Ensemble Correspondances, Sébastian Daucé, Harmonia Mundi 902169, CD, 2013.
- H. Wiley Hitchcock, “Charpentier, Marc-Antoine,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 21, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000005471.
Cut IDs
19315