01	Symphonie - Te Deum						10:37
	02	Patrem Immensae Majestatis						09:12
	03	Symphonie - Te Ergo Quaesumus						10:43
	04	Symphonie - Dignare Domine						09:31
	05	Dies Irae						01:56
	06	Tuba Mirum						01:01
	07	Mors Stupebit						00:49
	08	Liber Scriptus						00:42
	09	Quid Sum Miser Tunc Dicturus						00:46
	10	Rex Tremendae						01:53
	11	Quaerens Me Sedisti Lassus						01:07
	12	Juste Judex Ultionis						00:42
	13	Ingemisco Tanquam Reus						04:13
	14	Confutatis Maledictis						01:50
	15	Oro Supplex Et Acclinis						01:15
	16	Lacrymosa Dies Illa						03:24
	17	Pie Jesu Domine						02:38

Jennifer Smith, Francine Bessac - sopranos
Zeger Vandersteene - countertenor
Louis Devos - tenor
Philippe Huttenlocher - bass

Ensemble Vocal "A Coeur Joie" De Valence
Orchestre De Chambre
Jean-Francois Paillard


Jean-Baptiste Lully
Country France
Birth Nov 28, 1632 in Florence, Italy
Death Mar 22, 1687 in Paris, France
Period Baroque

Biography
Clearly the most successful musician of his time, in terms of power and financial wealth, Jean-Baptiste Lully was almost singularly responsible for the shape of French opera during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Born Italian, he died a wealthy Frenchman at the early age of 54. Although most remembered for his opera compositions, he was also a talented violinist and dancer. His business sense and, some say, unscrupulous manner, made him one of the most powerful musicians in all of France, if not Europe. His patron and friend King Louis XIV further cemented Lully's position at the top of Europe's musical elite. Lully's operas remain his legacy, but he also composed over 30 ballets, motets, incidental music, dances, and marches.
Lully was born the son of a miller, who lost custody of him after his mother died. While in his early teenage years, Lully was taken to France by the Chevalier de Guise in March 1646. He served as a musician and page in Mlle de Montpensier's court until she was exiled, in 1652, to her estate at St. Targeau for her role in the Fronde. During his service with the Montepensier court, Lully was schooled in guitar, violin, and dance. His talents brought him to the attention of the young King Louis XIV. After his release from the Montepensier court, Lully joined the King's court, as a composer and dancer. He became the leader of Les Petits Violins, a small ensemble formed by the King. Lully's prestige at the court, as well as throughout France, grew even more when he was appointed the Superintendent of Music and subsequently, the Master of Music for the Royal Family.

When Lully began composing opera in the 1670s, Italy was the center of great opera. Opera in France was in its infancy. Lully's operas, which were based on Italian models but with French libretto, helped popularize the art form. He composed one a year between 1673 and 1680, and then again between 1682 and 1686. Besides being the premier opera composer in Paris at the time, Lully ensured his exalted position by securing patent rights which would ultimately allow him to determine what opera could be performed and severely limiting performances of operas he himself had not approved of. These patent rights, obtained from librettist Pierre Perrin who had been jailed for debt problems, were for the sole right to form the Royal Academy of Music. Lully bargained with Perrin for those rights, paying off his debts and providing him with a lifetime stipend. Lully formed the Royal Academie in March 1672. A year later, in April 1673, restrictions were passed that limited productions performed outside of the academie's auspices to no more than two singers and six players.

Lully was naturalized a French citizen in December 1661. On July 24, 1662, he married the daughter of his mentor and royal chief musician, Michel Lambert. King Louis XIV attended Lully's wedding to Madeleine Lambert and became the godfather of their eldest son. In 1681, Lully was granted Lettres de Noblesse and named one of the Secretaires du Roi. During a performance celebrating the recovery of the King from an illness, Lully accidentally hit his foot with his conducting staff. An infection resulted, and it ultimately killed him. When Lully died in 1687, he left his wife, six children, and an estate with an estimated value of 800,000 livres, a value more than 500 times the annual salary of an average court musician. -- Bruce Lundgren




Sacred Music
Composer Jean-Baptiste Lully

Description
The young Florentine Giovanni Battista Lulli arrived in Paris in 1646, taking up a position at Louis XIV's court at Versailles six years later. Over the next 35 years Lully (he changed his name on taking up French nationality in 1661) established himself as the most powerful musician serving under the king, ruthlessly gaining over French music control as absolute as that of the Sun King himself. The focus of his work during these years was on dramatic music, initially on the sung and danced ballets that stood at the heart of magnificent court display, later on tragedies lyriques, the form of French opera invented by Lully and his favored librettist, Philippe Quinault.
In addition to his dramatic works, Lully also composed a substantial, but far less known body of sacred music for the chapel of the French court and religious establishments in Paris. These fall almost exclusively into one of two categories, the grand motet and the petit motet. Both draw on either complete settings of psalms, or texts assembled from various psalms. Although vastly different in scale, Lully's two types of motet share in common a far greater reliance on his Italian roots than is the case with his stage music, for which he established a style that has come to be recognized as quintessentially French.

All the surviving 11 petit motets are chamber works composed for three voices and simple basso continuo accompaniment (two also call for a solo violin). Most call for three soprano voices, lending credence to the belief that they were composed for the nuns at the Dames de l'Assomption convent, in the rue St.-Honore in Paris -- a convent known for the quality of its singing. In these short pieces, cast in two or more sections, Lully's skillful imitative writing shows a clear debt to the sacred works of the important Roman composer Giacomo Carissimi, who was also probably the teacher of Lully's contemporary, Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

By contrast, the grand motets are large-scale ceremonial works composed for important feast days (the only times high mass was performed at Versailles). In contrast to his role of innovator in opera, Lully inherited the grand motets, a form which depends on a sequence of contrasting movements that include orchestral "symphonies" and ritornellos (passages for both small [chamber] choir and full choir), and solo airs and ensembles. These follow each other without interruption, thus creating a tapestry of ever-changing color, sonority, and weight. Lully composed some 20 grands motets, the first of which, a Miserere composed in 1664, immediately displays his mastery of the form and became a particular favorite of the king's. Other particularly impressive examples include the splendid Te Deum of 1677, written to celebrate the victories that preceded the Peace of Nijmegen, and the powerful and intensely moving Dies Irae of 1674, a work that alone destroys the image of Lully as a cool, dispassionate composer. -- Brian Robins