Chapelle Royale - Janus 2025 : d'hier et d'aujourd'hui

Cultural

With a new work by Adrien Trybucki, the Pages and Chantres of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, conducted by Fabien Armengaud and Clément Buonomo, offer a panorama of double-choir works from across the centuries, to mark the new partnership between the CMBV and Ircam.

In the image of Janus, the Roman god with two faces, one turned towards the past and the other towards the future, the CMBV has joined forces with Ircam, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture, to commission four new works for its choir school from four young European composers.

This third season sees the premiere of La Maladie de l'âme by French composer Adrien Trybucki, based on a text by Jacques Roubaud, for double-choir a capella and double direction. Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Motet pour les trépassés, subtitled Plaintes des âmes du purgatoire (Complaints of the Souls in Purgatory), is set against this work, reminiscent of the circles of Hell in Dante's Divine Comedy. The programme also includes works by Nicolas Formé, Louis XIII's favourite composer, and Pierre Robert, chosen by Louis XIV to be one of the assistant masters of the Chapelle Royale. Frank Martin's Messe à double-chœur, composed between 1922 and 1926, will also illustrate this theme.

An encounter in the present, spanning the centuries from yesterday to today.