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Music at the Maison royale de Saint-Louis at Saint-Cyr (Hardcover)
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Music at the Maison royale de Saint-Louis at Saint-Cyr (Hardcover)
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The history of music at the Maison royale de Saint-Louis at
Saint-Cyr - the famous convent school founded by Madame de
Maintenon and established by Louis XIV in 1686 as a royal
foundation - is both rich and intriguing; its large repertory of
music was composed expressly for young female voices by important
composers working within significant contemporary musical genres:
liturgical chant, sacred motets, theatrical music, and cantiques
spirituels. While these genres reflect contemporary styles and
trends, at the same time the works themselves were made to conform
to the sensibilities and abilities of their intended performers.
Even as Jean-Baptiste Moreau's music for Jean Racine's biblical
tragedies Esther and Athalie shows a number of similarities to
contemporary tragedies lyriques, it departs from that more public
genre in its brevity, generally simpler solo writing, and the
integral use of the chorus. The musical style of the choral numbers
closely parallels that of other choral music in the repertory at
Saint-Cyr. The liturgical chant sung in the church was composed by
Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, and is an example of plain-chant musical,
a type of new ecclesiastical composition written during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, primarily for female
religious communities in France. The large repertory of petits
motets (short sacred Latin pieces for solo voice), mostly composed
by Nivers and Louis-Nicolas Clerambault, are simpler and more
restrained than works by their contemporaries. A close study of the
motets reveals much about changes to musical style and performance
practices at Saint-Cyr during the eighteenth century. The cantique
spirituel, a song with a spiritual text in the vernacular French
language, played a significant role in both the education and
recreation of the girls at Saint-Cyr. Cantiques composed for the
girls vary widely in terms of their style and difficulty, ranging
from simple strophic melodies to more sophisticated works in the
style of contemporary airs. In all cases, the stylistic features of
the music for Saint-Cyr reflect a careful consideration of the
needs and capabilities of the young singers of the school, as well
as an awareness of the rigorous requirements of Madame de
Maintenon, who kept a close watch over the propriety of all things
relating to the piety, behavior, and image of her charges.
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