BROOKLYN — New York’s holiday concert season began Dec. 5 with the welcome return to Brooklyn of William Christie and his Baroque ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, a founding force in the revival of 17th- and 18th-century French music. The modest concert program, devoid of the imaginative theatrics that animate the organization’s opera productions, gave us a dose of pure French sound.
At the beginning of 2025, Christie marked his 80th birthday with something of a victory lap, touring a program of selections from French opera of the Grande Époque: mostly Rameau, with a smattering of Lully, Charpentier, and Handel, the repertoire that made Christie’s fame. Since 1979, the Buffalo native, who moved to France back when Mozart scores were sometimes published as musique ancienne, has earned his place as a French cultural institution, essentially helping the French to rediscover their pre-Revolutionary musical heritage by revitalizing performance practices.
Much has been published about Christie’s founding of Les Arts Florissants, his subsequent establishment of an enchanting country outpost in the west of France, and his pedagogical work with and discovery of young artists. His recent New York performances have been in Manhattan, where he regularly teaches master classes at the Juilliard School.
But his return to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where in 1989 he presented his groundbreaking production of Lully’s Atys, felt like a homecoming. For this program, he brought some 40 musicians to perform a Christmas-themed concert of music by Marc Antoine Charpentier, the composer whose 1685 chamber opera inspired the ensemble’s name.
Charpentier (1643-1704) is sometimes billed as composer to Louis XIV, but he only held an official court position toward the end of his life, after Lully’s death. For much of his life, he was essentially a freelancer. After a brief stint in law school, he went to Rome, where he studied with Giacomo Carissimi; not long after his return to Paris he began working for Marie de Lorraine, known as Mademoiselle de Guise, the widow of a duke and a great Italophile and friend of the Medici family.
Marie’s niece by marriage was Louis XIV’s first cousin; under her influence Charpentier became tutor to the the king’s son and had opportunities to compose for the court. For 17 years, he worked primarily for this influential aristocratic family, who permitted or even arranged outside commissions, and for religious orders (the organization of high culture in France, then and now, is a fascinating subject for another time).
While he worked in many genres, including the theater, most of his output was religious music; he often sang tenor for his own compositions. After Marie’s death in 1687, he worked for the Jesuits and several other orders. In 1698, Charpentier became music master for the children of the Sainte-Chapelle, the royal chapel and reliquary in Paris. While manuscripts of the music he wrote under the King’s employ were seized by the court upon his death, the 500-odd works (of over 800) whose manuscripts survive in the Bibliothèque Nationale are a testament to an industrious creativity. Probably the most famous of his compositions was the Te Deum from around 1692, or at least its prelude, which is used as the theme music for the Eurovision Song Contest. But there is undoubtedly gold in the vast trove of unpublished work.
The first half of Christie’s Brooklyn program was devoted to the Pastorale sur la naissance de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ. This is one of three Pastorales written around 1683-1684, when Charpentier’s patroness was mourning the death of her beloved nephew Louis Philippe, the last de Guise heir. It’s a charming retelling of the Christmas story from the point of view of the shepherds, mourning the sinful state of the world and their wonder at the birth of a saviour. After a choral plea, a kind of non-liturgical Kyrie, a messenger (the luminous soprano Emmanuelle de Negri) steps forward to reassure the people that they should not fear, but rejoice in the miracle.
Quizzed by one of them (the sonorous bass Alex Rosen), she answers his anxious questions with a reassuring message of joy. A string of choral and small ensemble verses of praise alternate with instrumental interludes; dramatized storytelling mixes with oratorio-like commentary. The pastorale’s harmonic simplicity contrasts with the sophisticated declamatory techniques of opera. It offered 40 minutes of hope, comfort, and joy in a world filled with fear and sorrow.
The Messe de minuit à 4 voix, flutes et violons, pour Noël is a more complex work, but because of its simple melodic material and the familiar framework of the traditional Catholic mass, it is the more compelling piece. Charpentier wove 11 popular Christmas songs into the efficient Mass setting and its accompanying “Noëls pour les instruments,” instrumental interludes. During the 16th century, the use of popular, even bawdy, tunes as building blocks for Mass settings was so widespread that the Council of Trent banned the practice. But this work, written around 1690 when Charpentier’s was employed by the Jesuits, unabashedly reused popular Christmas carols, which themselves were often repurposed secular songs. The papal establishment may have disapproved, but the familiar material surely provided the faithful with a point of connection.
The Mass follows the standard six liturgical movements, interspersed with four instrumental settings of carols. The Kyrie, based on “Joseph est bien marié” (Joseph has truly gotten married), sets the tone with a sprightly and serene orchestral introduction, followed by the full chorus singing the opening text. The Mass is top-heavy in that the Kyrie-interlude-Christe-interlude-Kyrie, normally a relatively short introduction to the later portions of the service, is musically the most fully developed part of the Mass, incorporating several carol tunes and taking up almost half of the piece’s duration. Charpentier was clearly writing for a different audience than for the Pastorale, using imitative counterpoint and more sophisticated harmony.
The wordier sections of the Gloria and Credo employ soloists and small ensembles for efficiency, while the full chorus provides grandeur for the most important utterances. Without the instrumental interludes, the Mass was a trim liturgical setting, likely meant for church use; the inclusion of the Noël interludes knit the service movements into a lyrical and satisfying whole, tuneful and tender.
Along with understanding of the performance techniques of French Baroque music, Christie has clearly transmitted to his musicians his love for Charpentier, which was palpable. I left the theater feeling cleansed and uplifted, almost ready to face the holiday rush.
Watching this program, I was struck how these 40 musicians represented at least two generations of Les Arts Flo, with many more musicians touring elsewhere or in reserve (the website boasts of 130 concerts per year, with 290 musicians). Concertmaster Emmanuel Resche-Caserta ably provided cues and tempos for the 22-member orchestra, with Christie overseeing like a beatific presence.
Soprano soloist de Negri, a member of the 2009 Jardin des Voix training program, herself coached young singers for the most recent Jardin des Voix summer session, which included the fine tenor soloist Bastien Rimondi featured in the Messe. Bass Rosen, forging an opera career in Europe, came on board through Christie’s work at Juilliard, which has funneled several members into the ensemble.
Meanwhile, under the direction of the up-and-coming violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte, another formation of the ensemble recently completed a second 10-city North America tour of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, while yet a third team in Europe reprised the production premiered in 2023 of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. Thanks to Christie’s hand-picked collaborators, most notably musical co-director Paul Agnew, and supported by Foundation and Friends’ organizations, the future of Les Arts Florissants looks bright, even as his “children” are off founding their own ensembles to ensure that the Baroque music revival will not die off in the 21st century.
