Web Projects by John S. Powell
 john-powell@utulsa.edu

 
  • Vita with hyperlinks to pdfs of published articles
     
  • book:  Music and Theatre in France, 1600-1680 (Oxford University Press, 2000)
     
  • website:  Music and Theater in France in the Seventeenth Century
    • an ongoing project that makes available a select group of 17th-century French plays in facsimile together with the music that accompanied the first performance and subsequent performances. 
       
  • website:  Petits motets for the Season of Epiphany, by Charpentier
    • a concert prepared for performance (Jan. 2008) by Magnificat, dir. Warren Stewart
      • Pour la Feste de l'Epiphanie (Jan. 6th)
        • a lovely little Epiphany oratorio about the visit of the magi;  very interesting harmonically!
      • In Circumcisione Domini (Jan. 1st)
        • celebrates Jesus's submission to Jewish law
      • In Festo Purificationis (Feb. 2nd)
        • the presentation of Jesus at the Temple, and the canticle of Simeon
      • Pour le Jour de Ste Geneviefve (Jan. 3rd)
        • for the feast of Saint Geneviève, patron saint of Paris
     
  • Pastoral operas by Charpentier:
    • La Descente d'Orphée aux enfers
      • a chamber opera in a performing edition prepared for performance by the Catacoustic Consort, dir. by Annalisa Pappano; this site includes a progressive-downloading video in QuickTime format of the September 2003 performance.
    • Il faut rire et chanter: Dispute de bergers
    • La Couronne de fleurs
      • La Couronne de fleurs is an adaptation of the original Prologue to Le Malade imaginaire (1673), which Charpentier arranged for the singers of Mlle de Guise in the mid-1680s.  In fact, of the 19 movements only 2 are borrowed (and are extensively recomposed); the rest of the opera is entirely original (though the text is wholly by Molière).  This is a terrific, very musical work that deserves to be performed.
    • Les Plaisirs de Versailles
      • tout à fait charmante!
    • La Petite Pastorale
      • Another gem, also composed for the Guise singers and, like La Couronne des fleurs, is also based on the theme of the singing contest.  It too borrows a number from the original Prologue to Le Malade imaginaire, and incorporates three of Charpentier's chansons.  One of the numbers is lost; for this I have substituted a lovely air from Les Fous divertissants.
    • Actéon
      • A miniature tragédie en musique, and quite possibly Charpentier's finest piece of musical theater
    • La Feste de Ruel (in progress)
       
  • Psyché
  • Charpentier's Grand Office des Morts
    • Charpentier's Grand Office des Morts, a performing edition of Charpentier's early, double choir Mass for the dead (Messe pour les Trépassés), together with a related psalm setting of the De Profundis, the Dies Irae, and a Motet pour les Trépassés (with text taken from the Office of the Dead); this edition is being used by Les Arts Florissants for performance and recording in 2004.
       
  • Canticum canticorum
    • petits motets by Charpentier, Carissimi, Nivers, Dumont,  Henry, and Campra based on texts from the Song of Songs
       
  • Beatus vir
    • a setting by Charpentier of Psalm 1, which would go nicely on a double bill with Monteverdi's setting of the same psalm
  • Airs de differents compositeurs (1678)
    • an unusual and unique collection of French, English, Italian, and Spanish airs composed by leading composers of the mid-17th Century, and now owned by the Westminster Abbey Chapter Library.  The composers include Michel Lambert, Honoré d'Ambruis, Michel Farinel, Sébastien Le Camus, Robert Cambert, Jean Sicard, Michel-Richard de Lalande, Jacques Paisible, Charles Hurel, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Luigi Rossi, and William Turner.  As the collection includes only vocal parts without accompaniment, I have sought out and transcribed concordant sources for many of the airs.  Among other curiosities, this anthology includes the earliest work by Lalande (a drinking song) and an early source for Io's lament from Lully’s opera Isis.
       
  • Trio de Monsieur Charpentier
    • an unassuming, little bagatelle published online by the Web Library of Seventeenth-Century Music, under the auspices of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music
       
  • Copyists' Hands
    • another ongoing project that provides samples of the handwriting of various late 17th-century and early 18th-century French copyists; it isolates various characteristic features of these hands (clef formation, notes, flags, beams, and script) to aid in identifying the copyists of other French manuscripts.