Charpentier: Litanies de la Vierge, Motets pour la maison de Guise

In their first release on harmonia mundi France, Sébastien Daucé and his musicians present a sumptuous interpretation of the six-voice motets composed by Marc-Antoine Charpentier for the House of Guise. These works, headed by the Miserere, constitute an unexpected parenthesis in the music of the Grand Siècle. The creative genius, the inwardness and the intense fervour of a composer surrounded by his faithful company of singers and instrumentalists speak to us all the more intimately because Charpentier appears here as both copyist (the surviving scores are in his handwriting) and performer – he sang the haute-contre part.