LOUIS LE PRINCE Missa Macula non est in te (1663) Including motets by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Jean-Baptiste Lully
GCD 921627
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Le Concert SpirituelHervé Niquet, direction
Production details
Total playing time: 63:48 Recorded at Notre Dame du Liban, Paris, in October 2012 Engineered by Manuel Mohino Produced by Dominique Daigremont Executive producer: Carlos Céster Booklet text: Fannie VernazEnglish - Français - Deutsch
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LOUIS LE PRINCE Missa Macula non est in te Dédiée à la Vierge, pour voix de femmes (1663)
01 Marc-Antoine CharpentierGaudete fideles (H.306)
02 Louis Le Prince Kyrie, Missa Macula non est in te
03 Louis Le Prince Gloria, Missa Macula non est in te
04 Marc-Antoine CharpentierGratiarum actiones pro restituta Regis christianissimi sanitate (H.341)
05 Louis Le PrinceCredo, Missa Macula non est in te
06 Marc-Antoine CharpentierOuverture pour le sacre d’un évêque (H.536, instr.)
07 Jean-Baptiste LullyO dulcissime Domine
08 Louis Le PrinceSanctus, Missa Macula non est in te
09 Marc-Antoine CharpentierO pretiosum (H.245)
10 Louis Le PrinceAgnus Dei, Missa Macula non est in te
11 Marc-Antoine CharpentierDomine salvum fac Regem (H.299)
12 Marc-Antoine Charpentier Magnificat (H.75)
About this CD
Hervé Niquet once more returns to the gloriously rich world of 17th-century French sacred music with his musicians from Le Concert Spirituel. On this occasion, he is bringing to our attention a scarcely-known composer – in Louis Le Prince – who worked in Lisieux in Lower Normandy, interspersing the maître de chapelle’s Missa Macula non est in te with a mighty handful of motets by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (a figure much better known to us today in part through Hervé Niquet’s own frequent stylistically-masterful renditions of Charpentier’s music).
Mass and motets are given in this new recording from Glossa in versions for female voices and instruments. Whilst some of the pieces sung here were written specifically for high voices, it was a regular practice in the Baroque era to perform polyphonic masses with forces locally available and, thus, convents could well have sung Le Prince’s six-part mass – a homage to the Virgin Mary – making use of female singers. This practice is outlined by Fannie Vernaz in her accompanying booklet article and follows in the line of Hervé Niquet’s exploration of the Requiem Mass by Pierre Bouteiller (a work which he adapted for a choir consisting only of male voices).
The gorgeous sonorities of Charpentier’s motets (and a petit motet by Jean-Baptiste Lully) contribute to an Office constructed by Hervé Niquet around the Ordinary of the Mass by Louis Le Prince, to demonstrate with great clarity the variety of the musical glories of Louis XIV’s grand siècle.