The two books of volume 4 of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s petits motets have just been published by the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles. They contain 38 works for 3 voices and instruments, edited by Shirley Thompson.

This second book (b) includes 13 motets exclusively for male voices, composed between 1670 and 1690. Some of them may have been written for the music of Mademoiselle de Guise, others for the royal family, in particular.----

Shirley Thompson closely studies the question of the use of texts, such as the motet Læta sileant organa for example, on a poem by Pierre Portes, for a funeral service in memory of Queen Marie-Thérèse. She also endeavours to put into perspective and apply the large quantity of recent research on Charpentier’s work. Performers will find in the introduction a complete synthesis that will allow them to put into practice an informed interpretation: notation of the figures for the positions of the right hand, doubling of the instruments on the organ, flute making, ornamentation, tempi, all completed by a bibliography, very useful for performance.

Shirley Thompson is Vice-President of the Royal Birmingham Conservatory. After her doctoral thesis, The Autograph Manuscripts of Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Clues to Performance (University of Hull, 1998), she published numerous scientific essays on Charpentier’s music. Her book, New Perspectives on Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Farnham, Ashgate, 2010), was republished in 2016. She has prepared numerous editions of Charpentier’s works for both performance and publication.