Renaissance and baroque

Sing new songs to the Lord

Claude Le Jeune's books of psalms

Claude Le Jeune did not quite know the recognition of history that his immense talent should have deserve. Under the protection of two Protestant lords (François de la Noue and Charles de Téligny), he dedicated – in 1564– his Ten Psalms of David to them. In 1590, his Protestant sympathies forced him to flee to La Rochelle, and it was thanks to his contemporary Jacques Mauduit that many of his works were preserved from the flames of the religious war.

Timor Mortis

For the dead, for the living

In the former times, the funeral were often led by brotherhoods which organized the rites in the community of the city or village. Once in the church, a specific rite and a specific music accompanies the living in their resignation of the separation and the dead’s soul to find its way to eternity.

Missa Virgo Prudentissima – Heinrich Isaac

This masterpiece is a synthesis of his artistry and a stunning example of Isaac’s inventiveness in its use of the cantus frmus. The words of the antiphon are skilfully distributed alternatively between the diferent voices and manages to create a richness of sound in which the words of the antiphon and the Ordinary of the Mass blend together.

Le Printemps – Claude Lejeune

Artistic testament of the composer, “Le Printemps” became emblematic of a new esthetics related to the humanistic current of the Academy of poetry and music, at the end of the 16th century. Claude Le Jeune masters with a consummate art the contrepoint as well as the polyphony ans his unequalled sense of prosody makes his work one of the most beautiful musical settings of the French language.

Forgotten polyphonies

French faux-bourdons (16th-19thc.)

Already in the middle-ages but mostly from the Renaissance, the chant in the french Church dressed in polyphony to magnify the solemnity of a celebraton. This vocal pieces were called «Faux-bourdons» or simple contrapunct and they enlightened the melody and the text of the chant.