ABSTRACT
This chapter continues the process of investigating the extent to which the collection reflects Pechon’s circumstances, of setting these diverse repertories in context and of confirming the hypothesis. Details of the liturgical and musical life of the church during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries remain unclear. The most likely role for Pechon’s high-voice works is in the office of the Benediction (or Adoration) of the Blessed Sacrament, a practice known as Salut in France. According to its directions, hymns were one of the most frequently performed genres of polyphony. Gathering 1a contains a number of works in Bouzignac’s style and several with texts relating to a ceremony which took place in Tours in 1641. A substantial work which Brossard thought had been composed for a competition, it sets an unidentified translation of Psalm 139, the same translation which also appeared in La pieuse Alouette.
