Vespres à la Vierge (1995)

Uit de liner notes van Naxos (klik op de link voor de complete tekst): Charpentier left a very large quantity of church music, Mass settings, sequences, antiphons, settings of the Tenebrae lessons and responsories, canticle and psalm settings, motets for the elevation and dramatic motets, with a smaller but not insignificant quantity of instrumental and secular music. He composed a number of very important motets on psalm texts, most of them for Vespers. They mark the stages of his whole career. He sometimes even took up again a composition some years after its first performance, making some modifications, notably in the addition of instruments. The Vesper psalms were each accompanied by an antiphon that could be composed in the style of a little motet or be in plainchant. The present recording uses antiphons from the 1696 Antiphonarium Monasticum of Guillaume Gabriel Nivers. Although from different periods, the five psalms and the Magnificat of Charpentier have in common effectiveness and a certain brevity.