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A Day In The Life of King Louis XIV


Details

Bruce Teter full profile / Baroque chamber ensemble / 7 musicians

Other players: Marischka Olech Hopcroft directs from the harpsichord, with Addy Sterrett, soprano, Robert Wang, lute and theorbo, Shanon Zusman, viola da gamba, Bruce Teter, musette bagpipe and recorders, Curtis Berak, hurdy gurdy, Mark Walter, recorders, and Alex Barrios as Louis XIV.


Full program notes

Baroque Bliss presents a salon concert of French Baroque music featuring sublime songs of the air de cour and representations of the events in the ritualized day of King Louis XIV. Music includes works by Lambert, Mouline, Couperin, Chédeville, Hotteterre, Forqueray, and Marais. The sublime song genre of air du cour reached its pinnacle in Louis XIV's court. Its elegant simplicity, clear declamation of French poetry with its elite codes, and restrained musical style reflected ideals of universal order, clarity, and refinement, a French aesthetic and cultural identity that itself was an instrument of political power servicing Louis XIV’s absolutism. The highly ritualized day of the king will be portrayed by musical representations, including the awakening, the hunt, religiosity, war, sleep and dreams, and worship of gods and goddesses, with educational talks by Dr. Hopcroft about each.
King Louis XIV glorified his divine right to rule, modelling himself after Apollo, god of the sun and music. He used the arts, through his state cultural machinery, to discipline and domesticate the nobility. His funding and control of composers and musicians ensured that their works served as public spectacles of his political agenda - enforcing absolutism through captivating demonstrations of wealth and authority. In this way he forced courtiers to be distracted with protocol and court etiquette, vying for positions and petty quarrelling, competing in dress and manners, and demanding artistic abilities including dance and music. This manipulation produced plaisir, or pleasure, anesthetizing the courtiers into submission, and preventing them from plotting a revolution, as Les Frondes had done during his father’s reign.


Historical context

This program musically illustrates a day in the life of France's King Louis XIV and shows how music served his absolutism.


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