Charpentier: Te Deum - Prelude

Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643 - 1704) foi um compositor francês. Fato incomum para um compositor francês de sua época e talento, Charpentier nunca alcançou um posto na corte de Luís XIV. Por outro lado, produziu ampla variedade de música para teatro e igreja, colaborando com Molière e criando diversas missas, motetos e dramas sacros, incluindo seu Oratório de Natal. Visto como "italiano" demais à época, seu estilo único vem sendo revalorizado.

Ao contrário de Jean-Baptiste Lully, italiano que se tornou a epítome da música francesa, o parisiense Charpentier foi para a Itália estudar composição, trazendo de volta consigo não apenas obras de autores italianos, mas também um estilo híbrido e peculiar. Desfrutou do patrocínio de Mlle de Guise, bem-relacionada nobre francesa com amplo séquito musical privado. Sua fama como compositor de música sacra ajudou-o não apenas a arranjar um posto na igreja jesuíta de Saint-Louis em Paris, e depois na Sainte-Chapelle, como propiciou-lhe encomendas da capela do delfim.


Marc-Antoine Charpentier fue un compositor del Barroco francés.
Fue un compositor prolífico y versátil, produciendo música de la más alta calidad en distintos géneros. La maestría de su composición en la música religiosa vocal fue reconocida por sus contemporáneos.
Curiosamente, llegó al gran público del siglo XX a través del "Te Deum" H 146 (En tonalidad de Re Mayor), cuyo preludio, un rondó, ha servido de cabecera o sintonía para los programas televisivos distribuidos a través de la red de Eurovisión y especialmente conocido por ser precisamente la apertura del Festival de Eurovisión
"Nació en París y en un principio su vocación fue la de pintor. Se trasladó a Italia para estudiar y allí conoció al compositor Giacomo Carissimi, que influyó en él de tal manera que decidió dedicarse a la música. Permaneció en Roma durante varios años estudiando composición. Cuando volvió a París a principios de la década de 1670, trabajó con Molière y Corneille en varias obras de teatro. Había una rivalidad patente entre Charpentier y Jean Baptiste Lully, que ejercía una abrumadora influencia en la corte, especialmente en el campo de la composición teatral y la operística. Vista desde nuestra perspectiva, la obra de Lully era más dinámica y original, mientras que la de Charpentier poseía mucho carácter y encanto. En la década de 1680 fue compositor y director musical para la princesa de Guisa. En 1698, a sus 55 años fue nombrado director de música en la Sainte Chapelle de París. Compuso óperas, misas y canciones, y fue admirado por la elegante estructura de sus obras, influidas por sus primeros estudios en Italia. Su obra más conocida e interpretada en la actualidad es su Te Deum, en la que desempeñan un importante papel las trompetas. (Arte musica e ideas.WilliamFleming)

Entre as obras mais notáveis de Charpentier estão: Oratório de Natal Frigidae Noctis Umbra e Messe de Minuit Pour Noël.


Charpentier was born in or near Paris, the son of a master scribe who had very good connections to influential families in the Parlement of Paris. Marc-Antoine received a very good education, perhaps with the help of the Jesuits, and registered for law school in Paris when he was eighteen. He withdrew after one semester. He spent "two or three years" in Rome, probably between 1667 and 1669,and studied with Giacomo Carissimi. He is also known to have been in contact with poet-musician Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy, who was composing for the French Embassy in Rome. A legend claims that Charpentier initially traveled to Rome to study painting before he was discovered by Carissimi. This story is undocumented and possibly untrue; at any rate, although his 28 volumes of autograph manuscripts reveal considerable skill at tracing the arabesques used by professional scribes, they contain not a single drawing, not even a rudimentary sketch. Regardless, he acquired a solid knowledge of contemporary Italian musical practice and brought it back to France.
Immediately on his return to France, Charpentier probably began working as house composer to Marie de Lorraine, duchesse de Guise, who was known familiarly as "Mlle de Guise." She gave him an "apartment" in the recently renovated Hôtel de Guise — strong evidence that Charpentier was not a paid domestic who slept in a small room in the vast residence, but was instead a courtier who occupied one of the new apartments in the stable wing.
For the next seventeen years, Charpentier composed a considerable quantity of vocal works for her,among them Psalm settings, hymns, motets, a Magnificat setting, a mass and a Dies Irae for the funeral of her nephew Louis Joseph, Duke of Guise, and a succession of Italianate oratorios set to non-liturgical Latin texts. (Charpentier preferred the Latin canticum to the Italian term, oratorio). Throughout the 1670s, the bulk of these works were for trios. The usual trio was two women and a singing bass, plus two treble instruments and continuo; but when performance in the chapel of a male monastic community required male voices, he would write for an haute-contre, a tenor and a bass, plus the same instruments.
Then, about 1680, Mlle de Guise increased the size of the ensemble, until it included 13 performers and a singing teacher. (Étienne Loulié, the senior instrumentalist, probably was entrusted with coaching the newer instrumentalists.) Despite what is often asserted, during his seventeen years in the service of Mlle de Guise, Charpentier was not the "director" of the Guise ensemble. The director was a gentleman of Mlle de Guise's court, an amateur musician, Italophile, and Latinist named Philippe Goibaut, familiarly called Monsieur Du Bois. Owing to Mlle de Guise's love for Italian music (a passion she shared with Du Bois), and her frequent entertaining of Italians passing through Paris, there was little reason for Charpentier to conceal the Italianisms he had learned in Rome.
During his years of service to Mlle de Guise, he also composed for "Mme de Guise", Louis XIV's first cousin. It was in large part owing to Mme de Guise's protection that the Guise musicians were allowed to perform Charpentier's chamber operas in defiance of the monopoly held by Jean Baptiste Lully. Most of the operas and pastorales in French, which date from 1684 to 1687, appear to have been commissioned by Mme de Guise for performance at court entertainments during the winter season; but Mlle de Guise doubtlessly included them in the entertainments she sponsored several times a week in her palatial Parisian residence