The Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles publishes the first scholarly edition devoted to the complete works of one of the greatest composers of airs de cour, a genre emblematic of early 17th-century French music. At the heart of the evolution of musical taste at court after the death of Henri IV, the air de cour crystallised all the musical and theatrical experiments that would dominate the height of the Baroque: tonal evolution, Italian influence, illustration of affects, musical theatre.

Pierre Guédron (c. 1566–1620) was born in Châteaudun around 1566 or 1568. He entered the service of Henri IV around 1590 as chantre, then Maître des enfants de la Musique de la Chambre du roi, and was promoted to Compositeur de la Musique de la Chambre in 1601, succeeding Claude Le Jeune, before being appointed Intendant de la Musique de la Chambre du Roi in 1613. For some thirty years, with an acute awareness of his position at the top of the Court’s musical hierarchy, he endeavoured to develop a modern, refined style, based on the popular airs in vogue under Henri IV in particular, which reflected the new sociability that flourished under the reign of Louis XIII.

This volume brings together the composer’s 185 airs de cour – his only authenticated and preserved musical testimony – in the light of the most recent and well-documented research on this vast and multi-faceted corpus. Arranged in alphabetical order, each aria is introduced by a descriptive note providing essential bibliographical and contextual information: genre, poet, dedicatee(s), description of main and secondary musical sources, derivative sources, related repertoires, as well as various historical and analytical remarks. Each air is presented in its main version(s): 4-, 5- or even 6-part polyphony (with the restitution of missing parts, where applicable) and a version for voice and lute (with original tablature and transcription). The linear presentation of these versions makes for interesting comparisons and encourages varied interpretation. Abundant appendices present the most interesting concordant versions. For each air, the musical and poetic variants of versions not published verbatim in the volume are described in critical footnotes.

The book also includes an extensive introduction in French and English, 6 facsimiles, a general description of the musical sources (bibliographical description and composition of the collections, transcription of the introductory pieces including dedications etc.) and tables (poets, airs associated with court ballets, general table of airs). To facilitate performance, the 185 arias have been divided into 19 smaller volumes, available separately and designed according to thematic groupings based on the critical edition.

Professor emeritus at the University of Paris-IV Sorbonne, Georgie Durosoir is also a research associate at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. Her internationally acclaimed work focuses on the 16th and 17th centuries in France and Italy (polyphonic chanson, madrigal, air de cour). She has published extensively on French court music, its poetic universe and sociological context.