Now available on compact disc:

"Versailles : French Music of the 17th & 18th Centuries"

	"Dr. Palmer's knowledge of early 18th century French agrements is comprehensive and refined...She is clearly among the few current performers on any instrument to fully understand the nature of this music. It speaks so exotically to our modem ears that are more accustomed to the conventions of Italian and German Baroque sensibilities."                                                                         - New York Concert Review, Summer, 2001

Released on the Stillwater Sound label (SWS005)

About the Compact Disc:

Dr. Palmer presents her own arrangements and transcriptions of French music spanning the early baroque period to the early classical period. She performs on a modern wood flute, an instrument that crosses the divide between a baroque flute and a modern orchestral flute. With the combination of a wood body and a silver mechanism, it has the tone qualities of a baroque flute, but with the stable pitch, mechanical improvements, and powerful delivery of a modern flute. Already the author of a book on eighteenth-century ornamentation, Palmer demonstrates her knowledge of the highly specialized French baroque style.

Track Samples (click on the links below for selections in MP3 format):

Four Airs de Cour:

        Des mes soupirs, de ma langueur                                Jean-Baptiste de Bousset (1662-1725)

        Rochers, je ne veux point que votre echo fidèle          Bénigne de Bacilly (1625-1690)

        Ah! Vous ne voulez pas entendre                                 Michel Lambert (1610-1696)

        Si c'est un crime que l'aymer                                        Antoine Boësset (1586-1643)

Les Folies d'Espagne                                                           Marin Marais (1656-1728)

Two Violin Caprices from Opus 18,                                     Louis Gabriel Guillemain (1705-1770)
with cadenzas by Dr. Palmer

        Number 11 in E Minor

        Number 8 in E Major

About the Music:

France experienced a period of great artistic enlightenment during the 17th and 18th centuries. King Louis XIII (1601-1643) maintained the royal court's musical establishment set up by his father, consisting of the Musique de la Chambre (which included the 24 violons du roi), the Musique de la Grande Ecurie, and the Musique de la Chapelle Royale. King Louis XIV (1638-1715) oversaw the expansion and conversion of the Palace of Versailles from a hunting retreat into the court's official residence in 1682, where his musical patronage yielded celebrated court spectacles of music and dance. And musical productions continued to play an active role in the official and unofficial court life at Versailles during the rule of King Louis XV (1710-1774).

It was particularly through Louis XIV's support that the uniquely French baroque musical style evolved during the 17th century, leading to a proliferation of treatises on performance practice. This French style of musical performance that we now associate with the 17th and 18th centuries was largely germinated through his efforts. French ornamentation, a system of stenographic symbols or extra notes in very small type integrated into the melody by the performer, reached its fullest bloom in the first half of the 18th century.

The four Airs de cour presented here abound in French baroque ornamentation. Originally written and sung by the finest singer/composers of the day for the entertainment of the royal court, the Airs de cour were the most popular secular vocal music in France during the 16th and 17th centuries, with their freestyle expressions of love and tender emotions. It is quite likely that the composers performed these four particular Airs in private for Louis XIII or Louis XIV, an indulgence that both kings favored. Although it is unclear exactly when these four Airs were composed, three of them were probably written near the turn of the 18th century, while Si c'est un crime que l'aymer dated from the first part of the 17th century. Palmer's renditions of these Airs are a combination of their ornamented renditions of 1723 for unaccompanied flute by Jacques Hotteterre (1680-1761) and their 1980 renditions by David Lasocki, who reconstructed basso continuo accompaniments from the Airs' original vocal song versions. Palmer has created versions for the unaccompanied flute that retain Hotteterre's beautiful ornamentations, while using arpeggios to fill out the harmonic outline from Lasocki's accompaniments, thus implying a basso continuo voice underneath.

Marin Marais provided further exquisite examples of French baroque ornamentation in Les Folies d'Espagne, written in 1701. Although composers like Marais wrote out many of these ornaments themselves, evidence suggests that performers often improvised additional simple one- or two-note ornaments, called agréments. Palmer has chosen to do so in this performance of Les Folies d'Espagne, which uses Hans-Peter Schmitz's flute transcription of 1956. Marais originally wrote Les Folies for the viol da gamba (the precursor to the cello), which was one of the most popular instruments in Europe in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The French viol school was considered the best in Europe , and as the lead viol player in Louis XIV's court, Marais was the best of the best. Although he was gifted with a remarkable technique, he always used his virtuosity to serve his musicality, and his compositions, including Les Folies, epitomize the essence of the French baroque style: grandeur without ostentation, virtuosity without vanity, and sensitivity without exaggeration.

The music of Louis-Gabriel Guillemain is rarely performed, and the only available scores of the Opus 18 Caprices are facsimiles of his original autograph scores from 1762. This is unfortunate, for his music abounds in the dramatic, almost schizophrenic exuberance that was evident in his personal life. For although he was one of the most popular and highest-paid musicians in Louis XV's court, he suffered from extravagant spending habits and alcoholism and ended his own life with no less than fourteen knife wounds. His Opus 18 Caprices make virtuoso demands on the violinist - on the flutist these demands prove even more challenging being written in the idiom of another instrument. There is an opportunity for a performer's cadenza in each caprice, and Palmer has composed her own in my transcriptions of the Caprices Number 11 and 8.

Credits:

Executive Producer: Dr. Kris Palmer

Co-Producers: Dr. Kris Palmer and Colin Farish

Recording, Mixing, Mastering: Colin Farish & Stillwater Sound www.stillwatersound.com

Photography: Huth & Booth Photography

Graphic Design: Jill Johnson at Command Productions

Recorded in the Main Post Chapel at the Presidio of San Francisco, using a Sanken Stereo Microphone, Crane Song Flamingo Microphone Preamp, T.C. Electronic Finalizer, & Digidesign Pro Tools System.