Une journée à Versailles

In this recital, the students invite audiences on a journey into the court of Louis XIV, where music accompanied every moment of royal life. Moving between ceremonies, entertainments and salons, the programme showcases the baroque flute and the elegance of a repertoire that marked the golden age of French music.

At the court of Louis XIV, music was at the heart of political life. At Versailles, where the court settled permanently in 1682, the daily life of the king and the aristocracy was marked by ceremonies, festivities, performances, outings and hunts. Music accompanied each of these moments and played a full part in the art of living at court.

At court, music was not merely entertainment: it helped to stage power and to structure the king's day. Under the influence of composers such as Jean-Baptiste Lully, musical forms developed in close connection with ceremonies, ballets, operas and court entertainments. Each occasion thus had its own language, its own rhythm and its own musical colours.

The baroque flute held a distinctive place there: soft, warm and expressive, it lent itself as readily to the intimacy of the salons as to dances, pastorals and open-air scenes. In the eighteenth century, French instrument makers refined the instrument, and composers entrusted it with an increasingly rich repertoire built on ornaments, inflections and contrasts characteristic of French taste.

This recital offers a musical journey through court society, from the pomp of ceremonies to the pleasures of the salons and entertainments, and on to the excitement of the great royal hunt. Along the way, the students explore phrasing, ornamentation and baroque rhetoric: in the France of the Grand Siècle, playing music also meant making the instrument speak and telling a story about a world.

Coordination: Johanne Favre-Engel