Big French Music Box
In this collection of French masterpieces, we’ve chosen a time frame of several hundred years. We’ve also put in the fullest range of works – from the intimate piano works of Erik Satie to the thundering finale of Saint-Saens’ Symphony No. 3.
From the start of this playlist, the most familiar music composed in France or by French composers reveals the stirring opening notes of Le Marseilles (more on that as we go on), and then leads to a “Most Gorgeous Melodies” contest for the next 30 minutes, as we step from the French Revolution to Carmen, the Can-Can and the afternoon of a faun. Of course, you’ll hear a carnival of the animals, a march to the scaffold and a flower duet along the way.
But between all of those remarkably familiar works is a fine collection of almost a dozen Berlioz overtures, a symphony by Bizet ballet music by Delibes, and an overview of the music of Offenbach proving he wrote more than one catchy tune. (We debated for about 45 seconds whether Offenbach should be included at all – our research showed us that Jacques Offenbach was originally born Jacob Offenbach and was born in Germany.) And in the middle of this playlist is a marvelous vocal recital of French music from the baroque and Renaissance period.
One hard to find nugget that we’ve saved for last is the Hector Berlioz arrangement of La Marseilles, complete with all six verses (normally only the first, fifth and sixth are ever sung at patriotic occasions), performed by full orchestra, chorus and soprano soloist. It’s patriotic bombast at its finest (and we mean that in a good way).
Originally we stayed put in the Romantic and Late Romantic eras for this box, but we couldn’t leave out Marin Marais, and that opened the door for a few more favorites, and now suddenly, we’ve included two recitals of French baroque music. One is all instrumental, originally entitled “Music from the Court of Louis XIV” and the second is a charming vocal recital entitled “I Love Lucette”, which makes its digital appearance on this release – and really deserves your attention.
This box could have been even larger – we released a Debussy box less than a year ago, and we put some well-known French chamber music in our three chamber music releases that we just issued in April and May. As with our English box that we released in April. we’ve attempted to create a ear-pleasing overview packed with the familiar but spiced up with some lesser known works.