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Editorial Reviews

This 1987 recording of Lully's "Petits Motets," or small motets, was among those that established the sterling reputation of American-French conductor William Christie and his handpicked group, Les Arts Florissants. The historical-performance movement was well under way at the time, but it hadn't yet had definitive encounters with the forbidding repertory of the French Baroque. Christie changed all that with performances that relied in equal measure on meticulous research and musical sensitivity. Consider this recording of very atypical works by Jean-Baptiste Lully. These motets are for groups of three solo voices (mostly high), plus continuo. They are in Latin, not French, and their musical language is Italianate, with expressive, melodic lines that evoke the early operatic language of Carissimi in the previous generation. Lully, as Cathérine Massip put it in her excellent notes, "seized every opportunity offered by the words to introduce contrast: here we see the strict architect we have come to know elsewhere." Christie, directing from the organ, puts this all together, with wonderfully light, agile singers who react to the text but work together seamlessly as they split off into solos and then come together in trio passages that, despite the small scale of the work, bespeak the composer who mirrored the magnificence of the French court. Each motet has its own emotional flavor, but there is a gravity that connects them all. These performances bring out both aspects. One word of warning: although the booklet notes are in French, English, and German, the Latin motet texts are translated only into French. This isn't so much of a problem with mostly familiar sacred texts, but it's still penny-wise and pound-foolish. James Manheim, All Music Guide

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