A page at the court of Louis XIV where he followed the teaching of personalities such as Pierre Robert, Henry Du Mont and Jean-Baptiste Lully, Desmarest could envisage a brilliant future and hope one day to obtain a prestigious position as sous-maître at the royal chapel of Versailles. An incident turned this promising career upside down: involved in an affair of morals, Desmarest had to face justice and flee France to avoid the gallows. From then on, all career prospects in France collapsed for Desmarest, who had to seek his salvation outside the kingdom. In the context of a symposium devoted to the "European journey of Henry Desmarest", the authors successively take an interest in the context of his exile in Madrid, Brussels or in the Duchy of Lorraine, in the composer’s literary entourage, in Henry Desmarest in relation to his contemporaries, in the reception of his work in France as well as in Germanic countries, and finally in the musical aspects of his work.

Desmarest is one of the few French composers of the time to have travelled so much and to have been nourished by Italian, Spanish and Germanic influences, influences whose synthesis is magnificently found in his work. As part of a policy of partnership with the regions, the organisation of this symposium was supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Conseil régional of Lorraine, the European Union and the University of Nancy 2.