Bach sans frontières

Eighteenth century has known some of those “universal” composers who have no national boundaries, but play with the various musical styles of their time, shaping and crafting them to be in keeping with their own genius. In this multi-coloured programme, Christophe Rousset presents this famous European music in an original light.

Thus, Leclair’s Deuxième Récréation en musique, op. 8, with its overture and dance suite in a mixed French and italian style, and Bach’s secular cantata BWV 209, setting the Italian text Non sa che sia dolore, frame another marvellous cantata for solo soprano, Orfeo, by the Italian Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, and excerpts from works by two other French masters of the art of “les gouts-réunis”, François Couperin and André Campra. These excerpts illustrate in turn the purity of Germanic counterpoint, the lightness of Italian vocal music, and the nobility of Spain. Finally, all of these works bear witness to the effervescence and enthusiasm that such confrontations of different national musical styles aroused among musicians and their audiences in Europe throughout the eighteenth century.

“There’s a real European dimension to this program: a German writing in a French or Italian style, a French person writing in an Italian style, etc. It’s a true European melting pot, which shows that at the time, the borders weren’t tightly closed at all, and music circulated quite a bit.”

– Christophe Rousset