Burlington Baroque presents Requiem for a King - Jean Gilles & Marc-Antoine Charpentier

presents REQUIEM FOR A KING 
Messe de morts (Funeral Mass)  
JEAN GILLES (1668 – 1705)  

Ensemble L’Harmonie des saisons (Montréal)
Burlington Baroque Festival Singers  
Eric Milnes, Director 

With soloists
Len Torrie, soprano; Nicholas Burns, alto;
Philippe Gagné, tenor; Cole Marino, baritone; William Kraushaar, bass

 Tickets:  
$80/$70/$60/$40
$10 student tickets and free entry for children under 18

The name of Jean Gilles, forgotten for more than a century and a half, emerged from obscurity in the 1950s, largely thanks to the rediscovery of his Funeral Mass (Messe des Morts). Yet this musician, whom his contemporaries considered to be "a man no less to be recommended for the harmony of his musical composition than for that of his manner of living", enjoyed fame throughout the whole of the 18th century.

Little is known of the all-too-short career of this composer who wrote nothing but sacred music and who spent all his life in the south of France. He was born in  Tarascon on 8 January 1668 and began his musical life at the Cathedral of Saint-Sauveur in Aix-en-Provence as assistant to the maître de chapelle (Director of Music) Guillaume Poitevin, to whose post he later succeeded. In 1697, he settled in  Toulouse, where he was to hold the post of maître de chapelle at the Cathedral of Saint-Étienne until his untimely death on 5 February 1705. Gilles was only 37, and it is reasonable to suppose that had he not been struck down so young, he could well have gone on to secure an important appointment at the court of Versailles. In 1752, in his Lettres sur les hommes célèbres du reègne de Louis XV (Letters of famous men during the reign of Louis XV), Pierre-Louis d'Aquin, son of the harpsichordist Louis-Claude Daquin, wrote: "Victim of death when he was in the prime of life [Gilles] causes us to regret his loss through those pieces of his which remain to us. He was endowed with genius of exceptional facility…”  

We do not know at what date and in what circumstances Gilles composed his Messe des morts, but it is an established fact that it was well and truly thanks to this work, one of the most-played pieces of sacred music in the 18th century, that he came to fame after his death. As a commentator in the Sentiment d'un harmonophile sur différents ouvrages de musique (Feelings of a music-lover concentrating on various pieces of music) was to write in 1756, "of all the Requiem masses, the one written by  Gilles has always been looked upon as the best." The Mass was used on the occasion of many official funeral services. It was heard, for instance, in Paris in the church of the Oratory on 27 September and 16 December 1764 during the memorial services for Jean Philippe Rameau, who had died on 12 September, and also at Versailles in the royal and parish church of Notre Dame at the end of May 1774 during the service of prayer for the rest of the soul of Louis XV, who had died on 10 May. It featured in the repertoire of the Concert Spirituel from 1750 onwards, where it was always welcomed,  according to the Mercure de France, "with satisfaction in spite of its being from an earlier time and of the brilliance of the  works which have been written since."

This glorious work, which was the most frequently presented Requiem in 18th-century France, will receive its regional premiere Friday, October 30th, 7:30 p.m. at Holy Angels Church in St. Albans, and on Sunday, November 1st, 4:00 p.m. at College Street Congregational Church in Burlington. For more information, visit www.BurlingtonBaroque.org.

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*The Burlington Baroque Festival is a grateful recipient of a grant from the Concert Artists Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation.