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  • A Thematic Catalogue of the Works of Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726), and: Michel-Richard Delalande ou Le Lully latin
  • Don Fader
A Thematic Catalogue of the Works of Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726). By Lionel Sawkins. pp. lxvii + 700. (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2005, £125. ISBN 0-19-816368-6.)
Michel-Richard Delalande ou Le Lully latin. By Catherine Massip. pp. 160. Mélophiles. (Éditions Papillon, Geneva, 2005, €13.95. ISBN 2-940310-21-1.)

Could there really still be major Baroque composers who have neither a scholarly biography nor a catalogue of their works? Until now, one such composer was Michel-Richard de Lalande (or Delalande, depending on one's view of the composer's orthography). This is all the more startling because Lalande not only wrote music of sublime beauty and majesty, but also played a crucial role in the history of French sacred music. He acquired the appellation 'Le Lully latin' because his career in many ways paralleled that of his older colleague: not only did he catch the imagination of Louis XIV, thereby securing over the course of thirty years virtually every important position at the top of the royal musical hierarchy, but he also achieved long-lived fame through performances of his grands motets at the Concert Spirituel. In contrast to the scholarship on Marc-Antoine Charpentier—who has been the object of more than one biography, a catalogue of works, a facsimile series, many editions and articles, and indeed an entire journal—the process of rediscovery has been a long one for Lalande. The lack of scholarly tools that could provide the basis for a similar flowering of interest in his music has recently been redressed by the volumes reviewed here.

Lionel Sawkins's catalogue is clearly a labour of love: at 700 pages with over 3,000 music examples, it is a testimony not only to Sawkins's abilities as a researcher but also to his tenacity in finding funding for such a large project in this era of publishing cutbacks. Ironically, it is Lalande's very success—and therefore the complexity of the sources—that has been a stumbling block to the cataloguing of his works. Unlike the Meslanges of Charpentier, Lalande's collection of manuscripts never made it to the shelves of the Bibliothe' que royale (now the Bibliothe' que nationale), and very few autographs remain. Lalande's works, and particularly his famous grands motets, survive in multiple sources, which are scattered across Europe and America. Furthermore, each of the genres in which he worked brings with it particular cataloguing problems requiring unique solutions. Sawkins has responded to these various complexities with a tour de force of musical scholarship. The catalogue records 175 works or collections of pieces, including lost works and questionable attributions. It divides into two main sections covering the sacred and the secular works, each with its own bilingual introduction, tables of concordances, and source descriptions, several of which are lengthy scholarly essays. The amount of material and analysis here is so [End Page 322] large that no review could hope to do justice to every aspect.

In the area of sacred music, the catalogue divides by genre into five major sections: grands motets, petits motets, motets on Domine salvum fac regem, Leçons de Ténèbres, and miscellaneous sacred works, including a plainchant mass, settings of Racine's cantiques spirituels, and instrumental Symphonies des Noëls. The first three genres are mostly a product of Lalande's duties as sous-maître of the royal chapel, where he composed music for the messe basse solennelle celebrated in Louis XIV's presence, in which the spoken text of the Mass was almost continually accompanied by music. The service included a grand motet, with elaborate massed forces of chorus, soloists, and orchestra that occupied about twenty minutes up to the elevation, at which point a soloist or small group of soloists sang a petit motet. During the post-Communion, a motet on Domine salvum fac regem was performed—in most of Lalande's works of this kind by the full forces of the Chapelle royale.

Lalande's grands motets are...

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