Nils Mönkemeyer: My French Baroque Top Five
We might all be familiar with Baroque music from Italy and Germany, says Nils Mönkemeyer. Here instead the German violist offers a personal selection of music that showcases the French Baroque at its most intimate. Surrender yourself to five exquisite works that revel in the mournful, the melancholic and the reflective.
Read more…"What I love about French Baroque music is that there are actually two different sorts. There’s that which maybe reflects what we have as an image of the Baroque: festive, played at court when there were grand ceremonies with courtly pomp. But there’s also – and this was especially the case in France – something like the birth of chamber music, of 'Musique de chambre'. This was music that belonged to small groups, and it’s pieces that mainly have a melancholy character, designed for a private moment of the listener. This melancholy: it’s a sadness, but not a sadness that breaks you. It’s something that can be enjoyed to a certain degree, which carries within it a beauty and a moment of nostalgia. That’s why I find it particularly beautiful for us today: everything’s very public and everything happens at such a pace, and it’s as if this music gives us a moment for ourselves.
Marin Marais (1565–1728) was one of the most famous Gamba players of his time and there are two pieces by him that I’d like to include. One is called 'Le badinage', which I find unbelievably beautiful – time stands still, and you just don’t want it to stop. The other is 'Folies', one of those 'Folia' variations that there were so many of in the Baroque period. Corelli wrote some, for example, and there you can hear quite clearly how virtuosity was important in Italy; in France it was more often about melancholy and about the silence out of which the music comes, and you can hear that very well here.
Then on my new album there’s a premiere recording of a work by Robert de Visée (1650–1725). He was actually a lute player, and the lute was similar to the Gamba in that it was an intimate instrument – and an instrument that the French loved in particular, because its sound was so noble and fine, and because it could produce a broad spectrum of colours, from something very deep to something tender. On the one hand it was used a lot to accompany song, but De Visée was also one of the main representatives of the lute as a solo instrument. His solo suites were so successful that he produced a later volume where he brought them out for a melody instrument and harmonised bass.
The next choice is the 'Leçons de Ténèbres' by François Couperin (1668–1733). They’re pieces that were sung at Easter, for one or two female voices to a Latin text. In principle they’re about coming from darkness into the light and are traditionally sung, therefore, in the church at night, without light. I once heard it in that way and it was really extraordinarily moving. It’s beautiful music that’s really not that well known, and which one doesn’t get to hear often – because it’s not performed often.
Then comes a "hit", from 'Castor et Pollux' Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764): the opera scene "Tristes apprêts, pâles flambeaux" ("Mournful apparitions, pale flames"). In France there was a lot of music that was all about parting from a beloved. In this opera there are two brothers and two women. Castor, one of the brothers, dies. His beloved laments his death and that’s this aria, one of the most moving from the Baroque period, for me, and a showpiece for any singer of this repertoire."