It was as a specialist in female voices that Delalande composed these lessons, which were a real event during Holy Week.

When Michel-Richard de Lalande left this valley of tears, his fame was at its peak; between 1725 and 1730, he was the most programmed musician in Paris. People flocked to hear his motets, especially the three Leçons de Ténèbres and the Miserere à voix seul intended for the Holy Week services. Many composers had already proposed their vision of the Leçons in the France of the Sun King, making the Office de Ténèbres a true worldly event. Faithful to this aesthetic, Lalande knew how to exploit this art of ambiguity, while turning away from the tradition.

The Grand Siècle was a time of unprecedented musical creation. Music sounded in the street, in the salons, in the church, in the opera, but also in places where its place was not obvious: the convents where nuns and the young girls whose education they supervised lived together were usually reserved for plainchant only. Nevertheless, when financial means permitted and the mother abbess – often from the upper class – showed a particular taste for singing, music was presented in a more sophisticated, sometimes even clearly seductive light. In the 17th century, the Offices of Darkness became a worldly event: courtesans and opera singers flocked to them, to the point of causing scandal among the devout.

Far from these excesses, the Leçons composed by De Lalande on the Lamentations of Jeremiah show an extremely seductive and theatrical music, while preserving a depth and an interiority in perfect mirror with the power of the text. Performed by the soprano Sophie Karthäuser, this program has been unanimously acclaimed in France and internationally by the critics.

Music:
Plange quasi virgo
Tristis est anima mea
IIIrd Lesson for the Wednesday
Salve Regina
Ecce vidimus eum
IIIrd Lesson for the Thursday
Vinea mea electa
IIIrd Lesson for the Friday
Canticle on the Happiness of the Righteous and the Misfortune of the Forsaken
O Bit
Miserere

Direction: Sébastien Daucé (Music Conductor)
Cast: Sophie Karthäuser (Soprano), Ensemble Correspondances