The Bastille Day, 2025
This Week in Classical Music: July 14, 2025. Bastille Day. Right this moment is the French nationwide vacation, and we’ll play some music from that nice nation, with none pretense of a complete survey. France has an extremely lengthy file of what we name “classical” music, relationship again to medieval occasions: Leonin and Perotin lived in Paris within the second half of the twelfth to early thirteenth centuries and labored on the lately constructed Notre-Dame Cathedral. They left a written file of their music, which may nonetheless be heard as we speak carried out by the old-music ensembles.
The Renaissance that adopted introduced us a number of vital composers who had been both French or Franco-Flemish, from what’s now Belgium. Amongst them had been Guillaume Dufay, thought of by many the “founding father” of Renaissance music, and Gilles Binchois; each labored within the mid-15th century. A few generations later got here Josquin des Prez, an important composer of the final quarter of the 15th – first quarter of the 16th century. This vibrant milieu produced a plethora of composers, many on the French aspect of the border with Flanders.
The Baroque interval was additionally wealthy in expertise: we may point out simply three stars: Jean-Baptiste Lully, François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau. Right here’s a piece of a collection from Les Boréades, Rameau’s final opera. Les Musiciens du Louvre are performed by Marc Minkowski.
Considerably surprisingly, the French composers weren’t very productive through the Classical period (that was the area of the Germans and Austrians), however they flourished within the following years throughout what we name the Romantic interval. Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod, César Franck (a Belgian by start, he lived most of his productive life in Paris), Camille Saint-Saëns, Georges Bizet, and Jules Massenet are simply the best-known names; there have been many others. Berlioz stands considerably alone, contemplating each the dimensions of his expertise and the audacity of a few of his compositions. Right here’s a symphonic interlude from his opera Les Troyens, which normally runs shut to 5 hours. It’s referred to as Chasse royale et orage (Royal hunt and thunderstorm); it’s carried out by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera Home below the path of Colin Davis.
For the reason that finish of the 19th century, French composers have been on the forefront, whereas Paris has become a veritable Mecca for musicians from everywhere in the world. The good Debussy was adopted by the quirky Eric Satie after which the ever-popular Ravel (now we have giant samples of their works in our library). Les Six (Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre) adopted. Then got here Olivier Messiaen, a terrific expertise and the inspiration for a gaggle of younger composers who utterly deserted tonality and even went past the twelve-tone music of Schoenberg and his pupils. Pierre Boulez was considered one of their leaders.
On the finish of WWII, in 1944, Messiaen composed a set of twenty items for solo piano titled Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (Twenty Contemplations on the Toddler Jesus). It was devoted to his scholar, the pianist Yvonne Loriod, who later grew to become Messiaen’s second spouse. Right here‘s one of many Regards, Regard de la Vierge (Contemplation of the Virgin). It’s carried out by Pierre-Laurent Aimard.
