MICHEL-RICHARD DE LALANDE (1657-1726) Music for The Sun King Excerpts from the sleeve notes

We should be thankful that Louis XIV disliked High Mass. Indeed, it was the fact that he preferred to attend Low Mass in the royal chapel which led to the motet – rather than the mass – being the principal form of sacred music in the French Baroque repertory. During this service, the celebrant spoke the words of the liturgy while the king’s musicians sang three motets. This arrangement was described in 1665 by Abbé Perrin in the preface to a collection of his own motet texts:

For the king’s Mass, three [motets] are usually sung: a grand, a petit for the Elevation, and a Domine salvum fac regem (‘God save the king’). I have made the grands long enough that they can last a quarter of an hour … and occupy the beginning of the Mass up to the Elevation. Those of the Elevation are shorter and can last up to the Post-Communion where the Domine [salvum] begins.

Lalande became one of four composers assigned to Louis XIV’s chapel in 1683 following a well-documented competition. Much esteemed by the king, he was awarded an increasing number of official positions in the following years, eventually becoming the sole composer of the royal chapel, as well as composer and surintendant (director) of the musique de la chambre (music of the chamber). Although he began to relinquish his responsibilities after Louis XIV died in 1715, Lalande retained a position in the royal chapel until his own death in 1726.

Over the 43 years in which he was associated with the court, Lalande composed and reworked 77 grands motets. These were highly regarded, both in the composer’s own day and beyond; they were performed not only in the royal chapel throughout the eighteenth century, but were also an important part of the repertory at the Concert Spirituel, a series of concerts established in Paris in 1725 with the aim of performing sacred music during periods when the Opéra was closed. Nearly half a century after the composer’s death, Jean-Jacques Rousseau described Lalande’s grands motets as ‘masterpieces of the genre’, and in 1780 Laborde credited the composer with being the ‘creator of a new genre of church music’. Further evidence of the esteem in which the grands motets were held is the fact that they were known outside Paris: copies found their way into libraries elsewhere in France and abroad.

During the reigns of Louis XIV and XV, all royal events such as births, marriages and recovery from ill health, as well as military victories, were celebrated by the performance of a Te Deum. The prototype seems to have been Lully’s Te Deum, first performed in 1677, with subsequent settings by Charpentier, Clérambault and Campra, as well as by Lalande himself. Lalande’s setting originally dated from 1684, but his habit of constantly revising his works leaves us with several different versions. The one performed here is based on the composer’s autograph score which was prepared after the king’s death in 1715, and which underwent further revisions thereafter.

Lalande follows Lully’s lead in creating a celebratory mood from the outset by including trumpets and drums in his orchestra. He uses these in the opening rondeau 1 and three further passages: ‘Te aeternum patrem’ 3, ‘et laudamus nomen tuum’ (part of br) and ‘In te Domine speravi’ bu. As the text dictates, much of the rest of the work maintains this joyful mood. Lalande’s great achievement is that he manages to do this while also providing much variety of scoring, texture and musical ideas. Contrast, for example, the lively duos ‘Tibi omnes angeli’ 4 and ‘Te gloriosus’ 6, both of which tell of the praise bestowed on the Almighty: the former involves a pair of male voices in a mainly syllabic setting with string accompaniment, while the latter is scored for two dessus (sopranos) and continuo, the vocal lines much more melismatic and ornamental in character.

Elsewhere, Lalande takes advantage of the less overtly jubilant moments in the text by writing exquisitely expressive music. Of particular note is the movement ‘Tu ad liberandum’ 9, where the lyrical solo dessus line and string accompaniment capture the gentle image of the Virgin described in the text. And in the following basse-taille (baritone) solo, ‘Tu devicto’ bl, the ‘sting of death’ is depicted from the start by the switch to the tonic minor, a downward arpeggio figure, upbeat semiquavers and a dramatic diminished seventh chord. In the choral movement ‘Te ergo quaesumus’ bn, the plea for mercy is likewise coloured by some expressive harmonies. And in the prayerful duo ‘Dignare Domine’ bs, the vocal lines are underpinned by poignant dissonances. The trio that follows, ‘Miserere nostri’ bt, is no less effective for its simplicity of texture.

A particularly interesting feature of Lalande’s score is the fact that he indicates at the end of movements how long they should last. The full title of the score leaves us in no doubt as to why Lalande took such care over this: Te Deum simple, le feu Roy ayant voulu qu’il ne dura guère plus que sa messe ordinaire (‘A simple Te Deum, the late king having wished that it should not last longer than his usual mass’). Though obviously originating from a desire not to upset the king, Lalande’s timings provide today’s performers with invaluable evidence about tempo. Again then, we are grateful for one of Louis XIV’s foibles.

Scored for a solo dessus, obbligato flute and continuo, Panis Angelicus is taken from Lalande’s grand motet, Sacris solemniis. The composer may well have written the movement with one of his two daughters or wife in mind, since all three were fine and well-known singers. As at the opening of the motet and elsewhere, Lalande bases the music on the plainchant normally associated with the text, elaborating upon it in the vocal line and flute part with both written-out embellishments and ornament symbols.

The subtitle of this piece – Deuxième Fantaisie ou Caprice que le Roi demandait souvent (‘Second Fantasy or Caprice which the king often requested’) – is testament to the fact that Lalande’s popularity was not restricted to his grands motets. Indeed, instrumental pieces by the composer were regularly performed during the suppers of Louis XIV and XV, and the present work would have been played in that context. Its six continuous movements are distinguished from each other both in tempo (Un peu lent – [Vite] – Doucement – Gracieusement – Gaiement – Vivement) and in character. Written for strings, oboes and continuo, the latter group of players includes a bassoon, which emerges on a number of occasions with a strikingly independent melodic line.

Like the Te Deum, Lalande’s setting of the psalm Venite, exultemus was also subjected to extensive reworking in the two decades following its initial appearance in 1700. In the revised version performed here, Lalande finds numerous opportunities to mould his music to the text.

The opening movement, which makes use of an associated plainchant melody, effectively captures the optimistic mood of the text (‘O Come let us praise the Lord: let us joyfully sing to God our saviour’), with its combination of homophonic (chordal) and melismatic writing. In the second movement co, Lalande is inspired by the reference to the singing of psalms; the beginning of the phrase ‘et in psalmis jubilemus ei’ (‘and make a joyful noise to Him, with psalms’) is set using long notes in the manner of a plainsong cantus firmus. This idea occurs not only in the vocal lines but also in the accompanying string parts. The extent of God’s greatness is the subject of the following verses ‘Quoniam non repellet’ cp and ‘Quoniam ipsius est mare’ cq, and is underlined by Lalande’s decision to score these respectively for a solo and duo of basses-tailles. In the middle section of ‘Venite, adoremus’ cr, where Lalande introduces the text ‘Ploremus coram Domino qui fecit nos’ (‘Let us weep before the Lord, our maker’), he paints the text expertly by a careful choice of scoring (a vocal trio accompanied by duo of flutes) and harmony laden with dissonance. In ‘Nos autem populus ejus’ cs, Lalande draws on the traditional association of the oboe with things pastoral in his accompaniment of the words ‘We are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand’. ‘Hodie si vocem’ ct is an elaborate dessus aria with obbligato violin accompaniment, the style here demonstrating the influence of Italian music on Lalande’s later writing.

In the closing chorus cu Lalande draws on the same plainsong as the opening movement at the text ‘si introibunt in requiem meam’ (‘they shall not enter into my rest’). The use of a stepwise, slowly moving idea at this reference to peace contrasts effectively with the more lively, jerky figure used for the expression of anger in the phrase ‘quibus juravi in ira mea’ (‘unto whom I sware in my wrath’).