The eighth volume in the monumental collection dedicated to the composer Sébastien de Brossard, this new edition from the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles features the complete surviving scenic works. The entire manuscript oeuvre of this prolific and engaging composer is now available in a modern edition.

Sébastien de Brossard, a musician from Normandy, spent his career between the cathedrals of Strasbourg and Meaux. A great collector, he bequeathed a considerable collection of French and foreign music to the royal library. A renowned theorist, his work brought him into close contact with the musical world, and in particular with Christophe Ballard, the only authorised printer of music in France, whom he advised. His surviving work is essentially devoted to sacred music. However, the critical edition devoted to him by the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles also highlights his secular activities: airs sérieux and airs à boire, instrumental music and, in this new volume, his dramatic music.

The present volume brings together the three surviving stage works by Sébastien de Brossard, dating from the 1690s: Typhon et les géants, Intermèdes and a Concert sur l'Alceste by Lully. It is difficult to assess the dramatic output of this fervent admirer of Jean-Baptiste Lully and some of his successors, such as Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Henry Desmarest and Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre. In a lavish introduction, the scholarly editor provides a wealth of new biographical, historical and musical information. For example, he looks at Sébastien de Brossard’s style of writing when proposing a concert based on Lully’s Alceste, in the form of a one-hour entertainment. He highlights numerous elements that can throw new light on the approach to historical performance.

Founder and director (1989-2007) of the Atelier d'études sur la musique française des XVIIe & XVIIIe siècles at the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles (whose research section is associated with the CESR - UMR7323), Jean Duron is currently a researcher at the CMBV and director of the book collections. He works on the music of the Louis XIV period, mainly in terms of its interpretation: scoring, counterpoint, composition, structures, affects and theory. His work focuses in particular on major forms (grand motet, tragédie en musique), court music and the music of the kingdom’s great cathedrals, and in all these fields, the question of the status of sources. His research has also led him to publish several texts on contemporary neo-Latin poetry (Jean Santeul, Pierre Perrin, Pierre Portes). In particular, he has worked on the following composers: Moulinié, Lully, Du Mont, Brossard, Desmarest, Lalande, Campra, D. Scarlatti and Grétry, and, outside this period, on Obouhow and Ravel.