ABSTRACT
The impetus for embarking on a project of realizing two secular works from the early 1680s - Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Les plaisirs de Versailles and Michel-Richard de Lalande’s Les fontaines de Versailles – was a simple case of curiosity about the composers and their creative context. The first performance of Les plaisirs de Versailles can be dated with some confidence to November 1682, during the inaugural jours d’appartement at Versailles. In contrast to Les plaisirs, the premiere performance of Lalande’s Les fontaines de Versailles is very well documented. A number of additional observations can be made about the instrumental scoring. Comparison with Charpentier’s other works which give an independent line to the bass recorder strongly suggests that the two unspecified treble instruments are ‘flutes’ of some kind; the librettist perhaps provides confirmation of the intended scoring in the line of text in the finale: ‘nos flûtes et nos voix’.
