We already knew about the sovereign’s taste for dance, thanks to contemporary accounts of his performances. But little was known of the monarch’s musical talent. The Simphonies du ballet de la merlaison are the instrumental pieces of a court ballet created at the Château de Chantilly in 1635, composed by Louis XIII on the theme of blackbird hunting. The piece, written entirely by the king, features short tableaux of all the participating characters: the Flamands, Pages, Mr le Premier, the Scerpier, three Nobles, the King, Farmers... All this culminates in a grand ballet.

This edition of the instrumental pieces, the only surviving remnant of the ballet, features a restoration of the orchestra’s middle-voice parts. The 5-part nomenclature "à la française" thus conforms to the prestigious institution of the 24 Violons du roi: dessus, haute contre, taille, quinte and basse de violon. The introduction, in French, also reproduces the original scenario, which opens and closes the ballet with two recitatives for Winter and Spring.