Marc-Antoine Charpentier

And so this is episode 71 of the podcast and we are starting week 71 and we're going to start with a little bit of discussion of what we listened to in week 70.

So, what you just heard was the opening of the Sinfonia of Charpentier's Te Deum.

And if you are a European listener, I guess you might find that familiar because apparently this has been used as the theme music for some kind of European news program.

I saw that on Wikipedia and I didn't look too much into it, so...

It was originally, the title Sinfonia was originally used for the orchestral introduction to a major choral and orchestral work.

like an oratorio or even an opera, or in this case, this Todayum by

Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

Now, Marc-Antoine Charpentier was a composer living at the time of Louis XIV, the Sun King in France, and he was not the court composer, but he was maybe the second most important composer in France at the time, and I'm not really considering him a major composer in the scope of this project.

And this might be the only piece we listen to by that particular composer.

Also this week, Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

First time we've listened to this composer.

He's a Baroque composer, roughly a contemporary of Purcell.