Tea at Trianon: Coronation Mass of Louis XVI by Giroust

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, January 30, 2020

Coronation Mass of Louis XVI by Giroust

François Giroust (10 April 1737 – 28 April 1799) was a French composer. From Gramophone:

Francois Giroust was a French contemporary of Haydn who enjoyed considerable success as a composer of sacred music. In 1756, at the age of 18, he became maitre de musique at Orleans Cathedral where he stayed for 13 years. Then he returned to his native Paris, eventually becoming a sous-maitre at the royal chapel at Versailles in 1775 and surintendant de la musique de chambre in 1780. Giroust was chiefly admired for his grand motets, many of which were performed at the Concert Spirituel in Paris. In 1768 his grand motet, the Super flumina Babylonis won first prize in a competition run by the Concert Spirituel. The remaining works on the disc are a Coronation Mass for Louis XVI and a Prose des morts.

The earliest piece is the Prose des morts, a setting of the Dies irae which Giroust composed at Orleans in 1765. There are several interesting points of style which hark back to Rameau on the one hand and look forward to the classical idiom on the other. Some passages recall scenes in Rameau's operas while others are closer akin to later eighteenth-century vocal music. This Janus-like stance makes for interesting if not ultimately satisfying listening, and lovers of French baroque music especially will find something here to fascinate them. (Read more.)

More HERE.