Circé: cantata for soprano, flutes, strings, and basso continuo by Collin de Blamont, and: Première suite de pièces de clavecin by Gabriel Dubuisson (review)

This year marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Centre de Musique Baroque Versailles (CMBV). Vincent Berthier de Lioncourt and Philippe Beaussant established the CMBV in 1987 in the wake of the early music revival, and since then the center has become indispensable to both scholars and performers of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French music.

The two editions reviewed here represent a sampling of recent publications from the CMBV's editions catalog, which includes over two thousand works published in more than three hundred fifty editions. Their catalog comprises eight different series: works for solo voice-vocal ensemble, choral works, works for choir and orchestra, solo instrumental pieces, chamber music, orchestral works, opera, and aria collections. In addition to these series, the CMBV publishes critical editions of composers' complete works and anthologies of exemplary French music. Beyond its score publications, the CMBV also regularly releases new books and audio and video recordings. These releases frequently contain work that began with or benefitted from the various symposia and seminars that the CMBV organizes. Researchers and performers often learn from each other in these events, and the resulting collaborative relationships are among the defining strengths of the CMBV's work.

This review discusses recent editions from two different CMBV series (solo voice-vocal ensemble and solo instrumental pieces). Both editions are standalone works of musical and historical interest, yet one has been recently discovered while the other is more familiar to scholars and performers of French music. Both editions feature introductory and critical notes in French and English, with the critical notes appearing after the score in each case. The critical notes are easy to interpret and are presented in the CMBV's standard tabular format. Parts for the editions with orchestra are sold separately from the score.

Graham Sadler's edition of Collin de Blamont's cantata Circéfor high voice and orchestra marks the first appearance of this work in a modern edition. During the 1720s and 30s, Blamont (1690–1760) established himself as one of the most important composers in France, and he represents the type of composer whose engaging and historically significant works might merit little attention today were it not for the efforts of the CMBV. From 1719, when he bought the post of Surintendant de la Musique de la Chambre, until the mid–1740s when illness required him to relinquish most of his professional obligations, Blamont enjoyed high esteem at Louis XV's court. He built his reputation on both his accomplishments as a composer and his skills as a pedagogue, particularly in the training of singers.

One of the values of this edition is that it illuminates both Blamont's skills in composing dramatic music and the development of his musical language across his career. As a composer, Blamont had the most impact in the genres of opera and the orchestral cantata. A decade before Jean-Philippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricieupended the landscape of French music, he invented the genre of the ballet héroïquewith Les Fêtes greques et romaines(1723); other operas and divertissements achieved great success as well. Within these works, he introduced several innovations including his use of an increased number of ariettes and his expansion of the orchestral palette. Both innovations anticipated Rameau, and yet Blamont's sparer style meant that Rameau's partisans unfavorably associated him with Lully when the querrellebetween the...