the everlasting first place of France | EUROtoday
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MEven if France has not gained Eurovision since 1977 (Marie Myriam) – this 2024 version, which already guarantees to be punctuated with controversies, might see its candidate, Slimane, win –, the nation is nonetheless yearly on the high of this system… Indeed, the credit of the present, indicative of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which organizes the present, are the work of a French baroque composer: Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
The European Broadcasting Union, created in 1950 to deliver collectively broadcasters from throughout Western Europe, selected the prelude to its Te Deum (H 146) to determine its packages.
Coronation, music and sport
This group will then give beginning to the community… Eurovision, which marks a significant milestone for its beginning with the primary occasion to be broadcast reside on a world scale, on June 2, 1953: the coronation of Elizabeth II.
The alternative for a primary broadcast, earlier than an occasion wealthy in baroque music, for this callsign. Which will quickly be taken up once more when, within the pleasure of European building, the leaders of the European Broadcasting Union think about a gathering to exalt fraternity between peoples. Inspired by the Italian San Remo Festival, it will likely be the Eurovision Song Contest, the primary version of which befell on May 24, 1956.
This sound theme nonetheless frames different occasions broadcast by the community immediately, such because the New Year's live performance in Vienna. This well-known prelude to Te Deum additionally serves because the anthem for the Six Nations rugby match.
A return to grace
Several causes led to the selection of those eight measures as sound id. First of all, Marc-Antoine Charpentier is French, subsequently coming from one of many founding international locations, his music has the benefit of getting been within the public area for a very long time and he’s in tune with the occasions. Indeed, after utterly disappearing after his dying in 1704, the composer benefited within the Fifties from the rising curiosity in baroque music.
In January 1953, a model new French report firm, Erato, printed the recording of a then completely unknown work, exhumed by the non secular and musicologist Carl de Nys with the Pasdeloup Chamber Orchestra of Concerts below the route of Louis Martini : THE Te Deum by Carpenter.
Triumphant trumpets and good cymbals, the report is successful and its prelude, stuffed with fanfare and pomp, will get pleasure from everlasting posterity because of tv, eclipsing the work, the life and sometimes the identify of its creator.
An virtually unknown life
It should be stated that the lifetime of Marc-Antoine Charpentier is filled with mysteries… Born in 1643 within the diocese of Paris, to a father who was a grasp author, he left for Italy on the age of 24, maybe to review portray, however c It was in the end Italian music that seduced him. In 1670, he returned to Paris and entered the service of Mlle de Guise as music grasp, he remained there for 18 years.
But presently, one other musician of Italian origin reigned supreme on the French creative scene: Jean-Baptiste Lully, superintendent of music to King Louis XIV and music grasp to the royal household. In 1672, he obtained a royal privilege which forbade “any entire piece to be sung in France, whether in French verse or other languages, without the written permission of the said sieur Lully, with a penalty of ten thousand pounds fine, and confiscation theaters, machines, decorations, clothes…” These restrictions caused his falling out with Molière, pushing the playwright to look for a new composer in the person of… Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The two men will collaborate in particular on the musical parts of the Imaginary illness.
The dying of the royal composer in 1687 allowed Charpentier to think about composing for a wider circle than that of personal performances. In 1690, he created an opera: Medeafor the Royal Academy of Music on the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, on a libretto by Thomas Corneille (youthful brother of Pierre), however the failure of this lyrical tragedy satisfied the composer to dedicate himself to sacred music till his died February 24, 1704.
A protean work
A prolific composer with a really wide selection of registers, Charpentier composed a substantial physique of labor, a part of which was misplaced, the fault of a piece which was primarily handwritten and little printed throughout his lifetime. It is assumed, for instance, that he composed six Te Deums however we solely know of 4, together with the well-known H. 146, which celebrates a victory with out figuring out exactly the event of its composition. Taking the shape of a giant motet, it was written between 1688 and 1698, when Charpentier was music grasp on the Saint-Louis Jesuit church.
Since its rebirth as a Eurovision theme tune, Charpentier's prelude has undergone varied orchestrations and makes an attempt at modernization, a few of that are quite outrageous. The newest model returned to extra classicism (strings, flutes, oboes, trumpets, timpani), all in solemnity and barely kitsch pleasure, an ideal picture of the competitors it frames. On Saturday night, you might be subsequently certain to listen to a minimum of one musical masterpiece of French Baroque. France, 12 factors.
https://www.lepoint.fr/musique/eurovision-l-eternelle-premiere-place-de-la-france-14-05-2022-2475591_38.php