Luogo e data di registrazione		Beethoven-Saal, Hannover (Germania) - gennaio 1978 & ottobre 1978 (Leclair)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Andreas Holschneider - Gerd Ploebsch / Wolfgang Mitlehner - Klaus Scheibe - Hans-Peter Schweigmann (Leclair)
	Prima Edizione LP		- Archiv - 2533 408 - (1 lp) - durata 49' 34" - (p) 1978 - Analogico - (Le Parnasse français - intero) - Archiv - 2533 414 - (1 lp) - durata 59' 24" - (p) 1979 - Analogico - (Leclair - parziale)
	Edizione "Collectio" CD		Archiv - 437 086-2 - (1 cd) - durata 73' 49" - (c) 1986 - ADD
	Note		-

TREASURES OF THE FRENCH BAROQUE The last years of the life and reign of Louis XIV (died 1715) were overshadowed by his ill-health, numerous deaths in the royal family, political failures, and famine and epidemics among the French population. The Roi-Soleil retired into the everdiminishing circle of his family. Almost every evening in the apartments of Madame de Maintenon he attended a recital, generally of chamber music, and from time to time concert performances were given of scenes from operas by Lully. The splendid and costly productions of operas and ballets in the inner courtyard of Versailles, on the Grand Canal, in the Trianon or at Marly were things of the past. Within less than 30 years Jean-Baptiste Lully had evolved an independent French operatic form, that of the “tragédie lyrique”, and he had contributed greatly to the musical aesthetics and style of presentation known as the “goût français”, which was to survive until the end of the 18th century. After Lully’s death (1687), however, the musical autonomy of France soon began to be threatened: at important concerts given privately in Paris, e.g. those presented by the guitarist Médard, by the harpsichordist and composer Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, and by the Duc d’Aumont - from about 1690 onwards works by Italian composers, proscribed since the death of Mazarin (1661), began to be heard once more. The young generation of French composers - among them François Couperin and Jean-Féry Rebel - were so fascinated by such pieces that they began to write Sonatas in the manner of Corelli. Nevertheless the court music at Versailles remained largely orientated to the style of Lully. Public concerts are known to have been imitated in Germany and Italy about the middle of the 17th century, but in France they originated as late as 1725 with the founding of the Concert Spirituel. In addition to the foremost figures in the musical life of Paris, travelling virtuosi and child prodigies took part; their performances, however, more often than not served as interludes between motets by Delalande, Campra and Lully, which took pride of place at the presentations of the Concert Spirituel until the Revolution. This fact is indicative of French musical taste during the 18th century: music was still bound up with the “Grand Siècle”, and there was a tendency to reject everything considered unduly novel and unconventional. The first concertos by a French composer appeared in 1727: Boismortier, like Michel Corrette, an enthusiastic exponent of the Italian goût, brought out 6 Concerti for five flutes without bass, Corrette following in 1728 with 6 Concerti à 4, During the same year Blavet and Leclair played concertos of  their own composition at the Concert Spirituel. Appearances are, however, deceptive; Fontenelle’s well known aphorism “Sonate, que me veux-tu - Sonata, what are you talking about?” could also be applied to the concerto, because its purpose and nature were even more foreign to the academic musical understanding of the French, for whom neither the emotional content nor the outward effect of the concerto held any great appeal. The desire to retain cultural autonomy was also expressed in the concept of the “Parnasse français”, a monument which the highly cultivated and committed man of letters Evrard Titon du Tillet (1677-1762) planned to erect in one of the Paris squares in honour of Louis XIV and of French literature and music. The project never materialized, and we know of the proposed monument only from a bronze model, copperplate engravings, and above all a detailed account of his intentions written by Titon du Tillet (original publication: Paris, 1727). In this account he gave biographies and appreciations of 259 French writers and musicians who were regarded as the élite in their particular fields, and who were to have been immortalized on the monument. These included the composers François Couperin, Jean-Féry Rebel and Marin Marais. Louis XIV as Apollo, would have presided over the “Parnasse français”. ····· François Couperin came of a family of musicians active at the Court of Versailles and at the Church of St.Gervais in Paris. He entered the King’s service as organist in 1693, received a title of nobility in 1696, and from 1701 onwards took over to an increasing extent the responsibilities of the Court harpsichordist d’Anglebert, whose eyesight was failing; he later played a leading part in the “Concerts du Dimanche” of 1713-14, for which he wrote his Concerts Royaux. In 1694 he became “Maître de Clavecin des Enfants de France”; his pupils included the Dauphin (Louis XIV’s grandson) and his wife Marie Adelaïde, Duchesse de Bourgogne. The title “La Sultane” refers to her. A contemporary account by the Marquis de Sourches indicates that the Duchesse appeared in a mask at a ball given in 1700: “The ball began in Marly at 8 o’clock. The Duchesse de Bourgogne was there, enchantingly disguised as a sultana... Then two other sultanas entered, then the sultan, to the sound of a Janissary march played by all the instruments of the orchestra.” This explains - in our opinion - what the composer was aiming to express when he wrote La Sultane: the Sonata in question was an act of homage to the Dauphine Marie Adelaïde, who died in 1712. Its introductory Gravement, easily recognizable as a lament, is based on the same “sighing figure” as the Stabat Mater of Agostino Steffani and the Tombeau de M. Meliton by Marin Marais. In the second movement this motif is used as a fugue subject. The Air in the style of Lully - analogous to the first movement the duet of viols is here contrasted by a duet of violins - is followed by a Gravement in the manner of an overture, then by a stylized Janissary march. A loosely-woven fugato concludes this work, whose composition can be dated between 1712 and 1714. Jean-Féry Rebel also came of a family of musicians active at Court. He worked as violinist, harpsichordist and “batteur de mesure” with various ensembles in Paris and Versailles. His oeuvre includes an opera, two books of sonatas, shorter vocal pieces and numerous symphonic works. The Tombeau in homage to his (presumed) teacher Lully dates from 1695, but it did not appear in print until 1712/13. This work has nothing in common with the affections embodied in tombeau-allemandes by harpsichordist and lutenist composers, or with the free forms of the tombeau for viols. Rather its models are to be found in the lamento scenes of contemporary operas. It contains an abundance of musical-rhetorical figures and symbols, whose succession points to a dramatic programme. The first movement opens with the lamento motif of the descending tetrachord which - in altered form - twice appears as a canon in all the parts. Following the expression of imploring lamentation and mute despair there appears at the end of the movement, above a bass line descending through two octaves, a bell effect of the two violins. The second movement consists principally of further development of thematic material introduced during the first movement; the descending passage appears in all three parts, the fugue subject being in essence a descending hexachord. After a three-bar bell motif has been heard for the third time, a theatre curtain seems to go up. The Récits which follow may be understood as a symbol of the lamentation of mankind. “Baptiste!”, the first voice (viol) seems to exclaim, followed by the “chorus” of the two violins and continuo. The Récit of the two violins is again accompanied by downward scale passages of the continuo. But it is not only human beings who mourn Lully’s death: in the second Récit the viola da gamba and the first violin depict “fire”; this is succeeded by the “winds”, whose eightbar passage takes up the lamento motif of the first movement. In the second violin’s Récit, after the broken triad which here suggests a motif of death, and two exclamations of “Jean-Baptiste!” in the first violin, the symbol of fire turns up again. The further course of the music can be interpreted as follows: an earthquake (continuo) sets the waters in motion. The wind brings a temporary lull in the turmoil, then the earthquake becomes more intense, the waves more animated, the wind again comes to the fore, then the scene ends with an immense earthquake. A recapitulation of the first movement, entitled Les Regrets, concludes the work. Marin Marais was - along with his rival Antoine Forqueray, his junior by 16 years - the foremost master of the viola da gamba, which in France was not superseded by the violoncello until about 1740. Marais left, apart from four operas and five books of Pièces de Viole, a book of Pièces en Trio for flutes, oboes or violins and continuo, and the collection La Gamme, published in 1723, which contains three “morceaux de simphonie”. In his concern with the “goût étranger” - the Italian taste which was steadily gaining ground - Marais was not unaware, with a deep sense of irony, of the “affectation, contrivance, and unnaturalness” of the new style, which during the regency of Philippe of Orléans (1715-23) and then under Louis XV (from 1723 onwards) overshadowed the French style. Along with the Suite d’un Goût Etranger from his fourth book of Piéces de Viole of 1711 33 pieces - which are laid out in an overall key sequence unorthodox by classical French concepts - the Sonate à la Marésienne from the publication of 1723 is especially noteworthy as a product of its composer’s concern with the features and characteristics of Italian musical taste. The first two movements are laid out in a manner following the example of the sonata da chiesa with the two parts participating almost equally in the unfolding of the thematic material. The next two movements belong to the genre of the suite: Un peu gai is a true corrente of Italian provenance, Frenchified by its tempo indication and by the indicated “pointer”; the Sarabande emphasizes with its clear-cut construction the rhetorical element of a “sonnate en solo”. The fifth movement, Très vivement, consists of two groups of eight eight-bar phrases. The first half of the movement is fashioned as a “sujet de Basse” (here the violin takes over the role of accompanist), then the same themes and key sequence are used as “Sujet de Dessus”. Such construction - like the abrupt change to the pronounced chromaticism of the conclusion of this movement, Gravement - was considered to be typical of the Italian style. The French Gigue which ends the work establishes a balanced inner structure which therefore consists of three sonata movements on the Italian model and three movements which belong to the genre of the French suite. A masterly example of the art of Baroque ostinato variation is the Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont de Paris, in whose viola da gamba part Marais explored in depth the technique of “travailler sur un sujet”; except in a few short phrases the “jeu cle mélodie” is entrusted exclusively to the violin. Jean-Marie Leclair “the elder” (so called to distinguish him from a younger brother of the same name who was also a violinist and composer) was born in Lyons in 1697. The details of his early education are unknown, but he later studied in Turin with Corelli’s pupil, Giovanni Battista Somis. He was renowned in his lifetime as a brilliant violinist and composer of music for that instrument. In an age of Telemanns, Vivaldis and Boismortiers - whose works seem almost beyond counting - Leclair is notable for the small number of his compositions. Between 1723 and 1753 he published his opp. 1 to 13 in Paris. All but one of these collections were devoted to violin music, and all but one of them were engraved by his wife and published “chez l’auteur”. The contents of the 13 collections - solo sonatas, trio sonatas, duets, concertos and the opera Scylla et Glaucus - constitute virtually the complete surviving works, totalling fewer than one hundred. If we consider the size of Leclair’s œuvre, his emphasis upon instrumental music and his classical formulation of a national school of violin playing, then his position in French music appears comparable to Corelli’s in Italian music. And even in his lifetime he had been dubbed “the French Corelli” (Blainville). The Ouvertures et Sonates en Trio, op. 13 (1753), contain three works in each genre. The sonatas are trio-sonata arrangements of solo sonatas from opp. 1 and 2. Each “ouverture” consists of a French overture - a slow introduction in noble dotted rhythms followed by a lively section in fugal style - with two contrasted movements. This music originated in the theatre. One of the three overtures was taken by Leclair from his tragic opera Scylla et Glaucus, op. 11 (1746), while the other two, and the six additional movements, are believed to have been written for the private theatre of the Duc de Gramont in the Parisian suburb of Puteaux. Leclair served as “premier violon” of the Duke’s theatre from about 1748 until his death in 1764. The editor of Le Mercure de France, in announcing the publication of Leclair’s op. 13, found it to be “equal, even superior, to all the most esteemed things that he has already done. We judge the matter thus after the strong and lively impressions which the performance of several pieces from this collection made upon us...” The Overture no. 2 in D major serves to confirm that judgment. The opening overture is in a rather Handelian vein. The rigorous counterpoint of this movement is contrasted by the following Andante, in which a fully ornamented cantabile melody in the first violin completely dominates the proceedings - in true galant fashion. The finale is a binary sonata movement, based upon minuet-like melodic materials.