Concert donné au soupé du Roi

Concert donne pour la soupé du Roi is believed to have been written by Jean-Baptiste Lully  “Fils”, or “the Younger” who was the second son of his Italian born namesake; that genius figure who defined the parameters of French Baroque music. One can only imagine how difficult it was for the young JeanBaptiste to bear the brunt of this heritage and to live up to the standards of his father. In 1678 at the age of twelve he was given a post by Louis XIV at the Abbey of Saint-Hilaire which he exchanged six years later for a post at Saint-Georges-sur-Loire. In 1696 he became surintendant de la musique du roi (Superintendant to the Music of the King) a position he held together with Michel-Richard de Lalande until 1719. For those two decades Lully and Lalalande provided the musical nurturing of Louis XIV and Louis XV. Concert donné au soupé du roi would have been performed at banquets, court evenings and as popular music. The work begins with a solemn Ouverture and is followed by a series of movements in the beloved dances of the King who was in his youth an experienced dancer. The dance movements are then abandoned in the final Passacaille, a work of Renaissance origin consisting of a repeated melodic ‘ground bass’ line with melodic divisions that flourish over it in different instrumental registers. The suite reveals a good musician capable of racy style and eloquent melody despite the poor image that his contemporaries had of him.