Customer Reviews

Mondonville - Grand Motets / Daneman, Wieczorek, Agnew, Piolino, Konigsberger, Bazola, Les Arts Florissants, Christie

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...why everybody hasn't become a rabid fan of French Baroque music, especially in the last decade with performers of the quality of Bill Christie's Les Arts Florissants! It's lively, it's direct to the senses, it's rich in variety, and even when it's deeply spiritual it's never lugubrious or ponderous. If YOU are one of the unconverted, this CD of the Grands Motets of Jean-Joseph de Mondonville (1711-1772) might be the performance that will open your ears. In addition to the usual charms of French Baroque, Mondonville's music is at times brilliantly colorful, fall-down funny, gracefully balletic, sensual, and staunchly noble, all in good turn.

Mondonville was always a crowd pleaser by choice, far more popular in his time than more "elite" composers like Rameau, but these Grands Motets are not fluff by any means. They are as deeply rooted in the theory and tradition of the music of the French royal chapel as any of the scores of Grand Motets stretching back to the youth of Louis XIV and continuing to the French Revolution. Essentially, to be a "Grand Motet", the sacred Latin text had to be set in grand style, with chorus, orchestra, and soloists, almost always in six or more contrasting sections avoiding the repetition of da capo forms. The text was supreme and had to be set intelligibly as well as expressively. The great model was always Lully, even 100 years later. The orchestra of Les Arts Florissantes has been augmented for this recording, with 13 violins, 6 violas, 6 cellos, 2 double basses, flutes, oboes, bassoons, organ, and harpsichord - grand forces indeed for music to be performed in a chapel! The six vocal soloists, led by soprano Sophie Daneman, are all Christie stalwarts and singers of superb technique. By the middle of the 18th C, the Grand Motet had in fact emerged from the chapel to compete with the opera for large public audiences in Paris, on the program of the "Concert Spirituel", where Mondonville became music director in 1755.

Mondonwille was apparently fond of musical word-painting, and ready to stretch his orchestrations to accomplish special effects: flood sounds, earthquakes, descents and ascents of angels. The first motet on this disk, Domis regnavit, throws formality to the winds in its boisterous portrayal of waves crashing at the Lord's command. And just imagine what Mondonville makes of this text from the motet In Exitu Israel: "The mountains skipped like rams / and the little hills like lambs."

Everything that needs to be said about the quality of this performance is expressed in the name William Christie. In Bill We Trust!

Les Arts Florissantes, by the way, is partially but critically supported by funds from the French Ministry of Culture, the Regional Council of Basse-Normandie, and the city of Caen. Governmental support of the arts is age-old and proper, the best use the state can make of public money in long-term investment. Bill Christie is an American, but he has spent his career enriching the lives of Europeans because of the dire failure of American governments to support music and the other arts significantly.

Mondonville is quite unknown, but he became one of my favorite composers because of Grands Motets. If you like Mozart's requiem or Brahms' German requiem this is an absolute must.

Christie once said in an interview that he was no great admirer of Mondonville's operas. However, he was full of praise for these Grand Motets and his enthusiasm for this fine music is reflected in a superlative performance. There's plenty of drama and exquisite beauty to be heard on this CD and, if you know and like Christie's wonderful recording of Rameau's motets, you'll surely be happy to discover this CD. The vocal performances are particularly strong and the instrumental work reflects Christie's invariably fine taste perfectly.
Not to be missed.

If you want a short exemplary performance of a typical French baroque composition, look no further. The singing, especially the solo singing, is truly exceptional. Paul Agnew's fluid high tenor fills the alto line with the beauty and nuance that no countertenor could possibly muster. You may have never heard of Mondonville, but his music will surprise you with unforgettable melodies.

William Christie is a remarkable talent.In concert,you witness an array of exravagent gesticulations -imploring,beatific,jumps in the air - which for once aren't some artificial sheen having no impact on the music making.it's all of a piece, and the musicians under his command are at once alert, yet full of fantasy.
'In exitu Israel' contains many spectacular effects which will have you on the edge of your seat but i was most entranced by the limpid beauty of the tenor solo set to a weird sentence 'the mountains skipped like rams'

Comments not about Mondonville... he is a truly great composer, worthy of his predecessors in the field of the Grand motet (Delalande especially).
Comments about the previous reviwer, whom I should inform that there are no mispronounciation here: he should have known, before writing this, that latin-language music in France used this pronounciation a la Versailles - and Christie doesn`t sing a French motet in Ist century AD Latin, you know...
A wonderful album, don`t miss it. And if you liked it, try some Delalande, Campra and, of course, Lully and Charpentier.

These works were a very pleasant surprise, and every bit as exhilarating as everyone else here has described. If you enjoy the more familiar German, British, and Italian choral masterpieces of the Baroque era, but have not yet experienced the tendresse of Charpentier or the heaven-storming drama of Mondonville, you are in for a treat. These composers, (as well as Dumont, Desmarest, and others) offer much more melodic, harmonic, and contrapuntal interest in their choral music than is usually the case with Lully and De Lalande.

Stop here first: I cannot imagine a better performance or recording of this music.

Then go on to the gentle world of Charpentier's Christmas music, with the following caveats about the Messe du Minuit:

* the performance by Guest on Chandos is neither good nor idiomatic
* Willcocks on EMI performs accurately, but is so far from the proper style and inflection that the music is barely recognizable
* Christie is an expert in Charpentier's music and has produced near-definitve performances of the "In nativitatem" and "Pastorale" settings, but turns in a surprisingly edgy and tentative performance of this lovely work.

My favorite recording of the Messe du Minuit was by Joel Cohen on Desmar, which is sweeter and clearer in sound, as well as better sung, than his later recording for Nonesuch, which is nonetheless still quite good. Colleaux recording on Arion is also quite good. The best buy for Charpentier's Christmas music at present is the series of discs produced by Kevin Mallon for Naxos.

No such reservations or hesitations apply to the present wonderful disc of Mondonville's Grands Motets.

I can definitely say that this CD takes me back in time. Unfortunately, the territory can be a bit repititious. It's not the performers' fault; it's just that I'm not sure how enlightened Mondonville was, since he spends about two minutes on "Dominus Regnavit", and, although interesting musically, it almost defeats the purpose of a sacred text set to music. I respect his musical intuition far more than his textual. As far as the performance, I commend the group. Perhaps there are a few mis-pronunciations here and there, but it's an overall decent recording. I do like the French touch!