Although Lully never held any post in the Chapelle du Roi, his influence on the development of the grand motet, so emblematic of the Grand Siècle, was of decisive importance. He wrote imposing motets celebrating the glory of God and the King for the great ceremonies at court. Of the many royal funerals, that of Queen Marie-Thérèse in 1683 was among the most grandiose. Lully’s Dies iræ and De profundis were sung there. But his most celebrated motet was undoubtedly his Te Deum, which rang out for the first time in 1677 and became the king’s favourite.

For English-speaking audiences who don't mind their Handel sung by sometimes heavily accented non-native speakers, this version of Judas Maccabaeus is hard to beat. Argentinean conductor Leonardo García Alarcón leads the exemplary ensembles Choeur de Chambre de Namur and Les Agrémens in an exceptionally spirited account of the score that effectively erases any taint of its reputation as starchy favorite of amateur Victorian choral societies. His rhythms are crisp and his tempos impetuous, as is appropriate for the martial subject matter, but his phrasing is also gorgeously shapely and the lyrical numbers are rendered with sumptuous sensuality and flexibility. The brilliance of the performance is amplified by the very resonant and richly ample sound quality, which allows the voices, both choral and solos, to be heard to their best advantage, bright yet warm, with a ringing, exhilarating clarity.

Given that not one of the Masses by Jacques Arcadelt was included in our boxed set that revealed his immense musical personality to the world, we now remedy this situation with an indispensable addition. Leonardo Garcia Alarcon chose the Missa Noe Noe, which is presented here in the context of the Christmas liturgy. We have also included motets not only by Arcadelt but also by Josquin Desprez, as he was the great model for musicians of his generation. The recording ends resoundingly with Josquin's imposing Benedicta es coelorum regina for six voices, although in an expanded version for twelve voices by Jean Guyot de Chatelet (1512 - 1588): another Walloon composer to be discovered!

The virtuoso Venetian diva of the 17th century, Barbara Strozzi, Monteverdi's heiress, journeys the passions of the soul through a daring mosaic of styles and rhythms. Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, who is one of the rising generation of baroque conductors, is leading a major research project on the specific parameters which make up musical performance, paying particular attention to improvisation techniques and the relationship between text and music. His work at the Ambronay Festival has focused on the performance of 17th-century Italian music including rich and little-known repertoire of motets and madrigals by Barbara Strozzi, Isabella Leonarda and Antonia Bembo.

Ulisse all’isola di Circe was the first opera to be staged in the Southern Netherlands. It was first performed in Brussels on the occasion of Philip IV of Spain’s wedding to Maria-Anna of Austria on 24 February 1650, although we know that the spectacle was revived in 1655 at the express wish of Queen Christina of Sweden. Gioseffo Zamponi was most likely born in Rome between 1610 and 1620. He made his career in the Southern Netherlands, entering the service of Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm, governor of the Netherlands, in 1648, for whose establishment he composed sacred music and also played.

Julie Roset, a young French soprano from Avignon, immediately attracted attention with her first recital for Ricercar (Nun danket alle Gott with Clematis) and went on to record a recital of works by Sigismondo d'India with Mariana Flores that met with great critical acclaim. In this new recording she tackles several of Handel's masterpieces on religious themes: his Salve Regina, Gloria and the motet Silete venti were all composed at the time when the young Handel had been inspired to new heights by his discovery of Roman musical life.

The opening of Venice’s first opera house, the Teatro di San Cassiano, in 1637, was one of the major events in the history of opera. The protagonists of these new operas henceforth represented all the social categories making up this public and who, in fact, had to be able to find themselves onstage. The gods were no longer the only ones to lay down the law, challenged by the Vices and Virtues who preached in the Prologues.

In the Europe of the first half of the seventeenth century, instrumental music became a source of sonic and expressive experimentation. Influenced by vocal rhetoric, composers sought to replace words with a new musical language. The virtuosity of the instrumentalists developed, as did invention, improvisation and the search for surprising sonorities. Along with the organ or the harpsichord, the violin was the instrument of choice for experimenting with these new techniques. Italian and German composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Farina, Schmelzer, Mealli, Buxtehude, Biber, Pisendel and Bach vied with each other in imaginativeness… The violinist Chouchane Siranossian and the harpsichordist Leonardo García Alarcón – both loyal Alpha Classics artists – have chosen to explore this repertory, here including Bach’s sonatas BWV 1019, 1021 and 1023 among other pieces.

The title of the two-disc album, Vivaldi: Vespro a San Marco, implies that the composer wrote a set of pieces comparable to Monteverdi's Vespro della beata Vergine, but the title needs to be interpreted somewhat loosely. The program notes describe the collection of psalms, canticles, motets, and prefatory chants recorded here as an evocation of a service of vespers Vivaldi might have assembled rather than a reconstruction of one he actually ever did. These vespers are distinctly Vivaldian in idiom, but they resemble Monteverdi's in the use of some common texts and in the diversity of musical styles, genres, and performing forces assembled; there is not much of a sense of unity in the traditional sense, but a profusion of delightfully varied musical vignettes, including a cappella chants, solos, ensembles, choruses, and instrumental pieces.

Following on from and designed along the same lines as the Guide to Period Instruments, this boxed set includes an exhaustive introductory text as well as a great quantity of music excerpts on the set’s eight CDs. These extracts have been taken from the extensive repertoire recorded by Ricercar over many years, with excerpts from recordings kindly provided by our colleagues from Harmonia Mundi, Gimell, Accent, Alpha and Sony supplementing our programme where necessary. The Lutheran repertoire of the Renaissance has remained for all intents and purposes unrecorded up until now; the tracks illustrating this repertoire together with other excerpts have been recorded specially for this compilation by Vox Luminis.

Julie Roset, a young French soprano from Avignon, immediately attracted attention with her first recital for Ricercar (Nun danket alle Gott with Clematis) and went on to record a recital of works by Sigismondo d'India with Mariana Flores that met with great critical acclaim. In this new recording she tackles several of Handel’s masterpieces on religious themes: his Salve Regina , Gloria and the motet Silete venti were all composed at the time when the young Handel had been inspired to new heights by his discovery of Roman musical life.

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is naturally an iconic work for Leonardo García Alarcón. The Argentinian conductor has performed and matured his interpretation of Monteverdi’s masterpiece throughout his life. Together with his group of soloists, the Namur Chamber Choir and the Cappella Mediterranea ensemble, he now presents his vision of L’Orfeo: Monteverdi’s opera is as much the apotheosis of the Renaissance as a testimony to the nascent Baroque style. This is what strikes us when we listen to this new recording, which so eloquently emphasises the contrasts between sometimes nostalgic glances towards the past and the most innovative expressions of operatic language.

Born in Liège, Matheo Romero was in the service of the Spanish court; his secular works show that he had perfectly assimilated the characteristics of his adopted country’s music. Composed at the very beginning of the baroque era, these romances, folias and canciones also show the influence of the Italian madrigal style and of its effects; just as in the madrigals proper, Nature is the prime inspiration for the texts’ professions of love and amorous deceptions. For the first time, the talented Argentinean conductor Leonardo García-Alarcón brings together his two ensembles: the voices of Capella Mediterranea and Ens. Clematis. This combination revives the tradition of Spanish chapels around the reign of Charles V in Madrid. A meeting of the Capilla Flamenca and Capilla Spagnola.

The successor to Music in Europe at the time of the Renaissance, this second volume in our History of Early Music is devoted to the music of the first part of the Baroque period in Italy, from the Florentine Camerata and the first operas to the heirs of Monteverdi; it was at that time that the freedom of structure characteristic of the beginning of the 17th century began to give way to the first traces of formalism. This period covers almost an entire century, beginning with the performances of La Pellegrina mounted in Florence in 1589 and ending with the final operas of Francesco Cavalli in the early 1670s. The sacred and the profane mingled and met during this period, which also saw the birth of accompanied monody, opera and oratorio, virtuoso performance and the sonata; it is precisely this same mix that we see in the Nativity by Caravaggio that appears on the cover of this set. The musical expression of this Baroque aesthetic is the subject of Jérome Lejeune’s accompanying dissertation.

Semele is a masterpiece. For what else can one call a drama in which the perfect symbiosis of text and music conjures up such suggestive power? ‘To hold the mind, the ears and the eyes equally spellbound’: this recommendation by La Bruyère (Les Caractères: ‘Les ouvrages de l'esprit’) refers to the ‘machine plays’ so adored by the public in the Baroque period. But even without machinery or indeed without sets or real staging, Handel’s oratorio involves us in the tragic fate of his heroine with supreme skill.