Born in 1655–1660, Pierre Bouteiller was Maître de Chapelle at the choir school in Troyes, then at Chalons-sur-Marne, before moving to Paris in 1698 as "maistre joueur de violle et autres instruments de musique" ("master player of the viol and other musical instruments").

These motets, which have come down to us through the intermediary of Sébastien de Brossard, are unusual in that they feature two concertante viola da gamba parts. The collection comprises:

two motets for dessus(O Felix et dilecte conviva, Consideratio de vanitate mundi) and

three motets for taille (O Fidelis et dilecte commensalis, O Salutaris hostia, Tantum ergo).
However, as Jean-Charles Léon points out in his preface, the possibilities of interpretation remain open in terms of instruments, voices and tonalities.

Pierre Bouteiller has a particularly fine sense of musical phrase. The texts used are set to music with finest rhetorical and declamatory effect, and the whole makes this music some of the most moving of the end of the reign of Louis XIV.