Grands Motets

"The performances themselves are stylish, accomplished and heartfelt, enough to make an auspicious introduction to an unjustly neglected composer." Gramophone Magazine, March 2010

Chosen by Louis XIV in 1663 to conduct the music of his Chapel, Pierre Robert spent the next twenty years, in alternation with Henry Du Mont, composing the works that accompanied the daily services of the court of France. The creator with Du Mont and Lully, of the grands motets the emblematic genre of a 'French style' admired by all Europe, Robert was one of the last heirs to the great French polyphonic tradition which he brought to a high degree of contrapuntal complexity and rhetorical refinement, as can be seen in his 'Motets pour la chapelle du Roy' published in 1684. Olivier Schneebeli is Director of Les Pages and les Chantres de la Chapelle, the choir of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. Prior to joining the Centre in 1991, he and William Christie founded the choir of Les Arts Florissants for the modern debut of Lully's Atys.