DA VINCI PUBLISHINGLe beau berger – Airs, Suites and Dances

Additional information

Artist(s)	Mariya Miliutsina, Yuichi Sasaki
Composer(s)	Ernst Gottlieb Baron, Jacques Gallot, Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, Pierre Danican Philidor, Robert de Visée
EAN Code	7.46160920320
Edition	Da Vinci Classics
Format	1 Cd
Genre	Chamber, Instrumental
Instrumentation	Baroque Flute, Lute, Theorbo
Period	Baroque
Publication year	2026

Description

Between the final decades of the reign of Louis XIV and the dawn of a taste already inclining towards galant grace, the transverse flute and the lute, with the theorbo in the background, delineate one of the most subtle landscapes in European music. The programme of this disc, bringing together Robert de Visée, Pierre Danican Philidor, Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, Ernst Gottlieb Baron, Jacques Gallot in the version by Charles Mouton, and Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, follows an itinerary in which courtly dance, pastoral song, memorial portraiture and chamber conversation are gathered within a single idea of eloquence. It is the history of a sonic civilisation that transfers into chamber music the ceremonial of the court, the dream of Arcadia and the taste for a cultivated intimacy, destined for enclosed spaces and entrusted to breath and to the resonance of strings.
Robert de Visée, guitarist, theorbist, viol player, singer and composer, was musicien de chambre to Louis XIV, guitar master first to the Dauphin and later to the King himself. His Pièces de théorbe et de luth belong to that moment in which French writing for plucked instruments attained a supreme polish, capable of uniting dancing dignity and harmonic refinement. The Suite in G major chosen here presents an exemplary succession, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, Menuet, Chacone, in which the order of the suite appears as a small theatre of the affections. Each dance bears within it a sharply defined character, and the concluding Chacone, with its solemn and insinuating tread, broadens the horizon until decorum is transfigured into splendour. The sources further remind us that the Pièces de théorbe et de luth could also assume an ensemble guise, a sign of a flexibility characteristically French, averse to rigid fixity of scoring and attentive instead to the nobility of melodic profile.
Within the orbit of that same court moves Pierre Danican Philidor, member of a dynasty that left a profound mark upon French musical life through royal service, the arts of wind playing and archival practice. His Quatrieme Suitte in A minor belongs to a repertory in which the flute emancipates itself with full assurance, while remaining bound to the language of dance and to the elegance of ornament. One feature that distinguishes the suites of Philidor is the minute care bestowed upon the agréments, often indicated with a precision that still astonishes today, through battements and flattement invoked with unusual frequency. This imparts to the line a continuous vibration, almost an inward tremor of sound. In the Courante such refinement sustains the movement, in the Air en Musette the pastoral allusion becomes explicit, and the pair Sicilienne and Paysanne leads the court towards an idealised image of the countryside, in accordance with a convention that French taste cultivated with tireless predilection. To this Philidor joins a harmonically alert and at times surprising writing that renders his suites more mobile than much of the contemporary flute literature.
With Jacques-Martin Hotteterre one enters the very heart of French flautistic modernity. Hotteterre was the most celebrated member of his family of makers and performers, he served in the Chambre du Roi, and he left the first true method for the transverse flute, a text of capital importance for the understanding of graces, articulation and taste at the opening of the eighteenth century. His name defines a moment in which the flute becomes, in his own words, one of the most agreeable and fashionable of instruments. The Premiere Suitte from the Pièces pour la flûte traversiere op. 2, dedicated to the King of France, offers a sequence of dances that also serves as a symbolic gallery of the court. La Royalle, Le Duc d’Orléans, La d’Armagnac, La Meudon, Le Comte de Brione, and finally the lively La Folichon, construct a constellation of names alluding to patrons, admirers and courtly spaces, fixing the character of each movement with magisterial economy. In this music the flute inhabits a world of nuance, of appoggiaturas, of slight inégalité and of ornaments that belong to syntax itself.
To that same sphere belongs the brunette Le beau berger Tircis. To apprehend its grace, one must recall that late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century France cultivated with passion the myth of country life. The brunettes, derived from the great stock of the airs de cour, translated into miniature form the sweetness of the pastoral, the lexicon of shepherds, musettes, streams and light loves which aristocratic society delighted in contemplating as an elegant fiction of itself. Hotteterre gathered such melodies into a rare collection for two and three flute parts, thus offering precious testimony to the passage from voice to instrument. In the private concerts of royal apartments and of the chief courtiers, the repertory of the flute included precisely brunettes, noëls and airs accompanied by lute and other instruments; within that world Le beau berger Tircis preserves the imprint of song, yet transfigures it into an instrumental design of supreme naturalness. The breath of verse continues to live beneath the surface of the line.
If the brunette preserves the smiling aspect of Arcadia, the Tombeau de Madame de Fontange introduces its shadow. The tombeau is among the noblest and most inward genres of the French lute tradition, a memorial form that entrusts to slowness, to harmonic gravity and to the gathered quality of the writing the task of commemoration. Jacques Gallot, among the foremost lutenists of seventeenth-century France, contributed decisively to the development of this language; Charles Mouton, an eminent figure and among the last great masters of the lute in France, also transmitted pages of his in reworked form. The reference to Madame de Fontange, final official favourite of Louis XIV and a name that became emblematic of a fashion at court, places the piece in that borderland where private memory intertwines with public symbol. Musically, the tombeau suspends the time of dance and converts it into meditation. The lute speaks here in a language that seems to consume itself in the very act of remembering.
With Ernst Gottlieb Baron the itinerary moves towards the German world, yet without relinquishing its thread. Baron was among the most authoritative lutenists of his age, author of an important treatise on the instrument and a musician esteemed by theorists such as Mizler and Marpurg. His music belongs to the galant horizon, and the Concerto a flauto dolci, au luth shows how fully the lute could still aspire, in the heart of the eighteenth century, to a concertante role. In Baron’s ensemble pages the lute at times enters as a true obbligato interlocutor, endowed with technical prominence and a precise thematic physiognomy. The order of the movements, Adagio, Allegro, Siciliana, Gigue, preserves the memory of the suite and bends it towards a freer logic, more inclined to clarity of design and to a melodic utterance already looking beyond the severe ceremonial of France. It is a precious moment in the programme, for it shows how the inheritance of the court could be absorbed and returned in a broader European idiom.
The conclusion with Joseph Bodin de Boismortier carries this itinerary towards a more open luminosity. Active in Paris, Boismortier was among the very few composers of his century capable of living solely by the publication of his music, without the protection of patrons or prestigious appointments. The success of his pen arose from his capacity to unite invention, elegance and a perfect understanding of the amateur market, above all around the flute, an instrument beloved throughout Europe. The 6 Suites de pièces op. 35 already declare on the title-page the possibility of performance even without continuo, and such elasticity says much about their world. The Premiere Suite chosen for this disc retains the opening Prélude. Lentement and then unfolds a series of movements in which French dance grows lighter and is coloured by character pieces. Les Charités and L’Emerveillée belong to that taste for affective titles which summarises in a single word a bearing, a tint, a disposition of the soul. One term recurs often in Boismortier, gracieusement, and it could well stand as the seal of the entire collection.
Heard as a whole, this programme tells, then, a dual history. On the one hand, it follows the progress of the flute, which from emblem of delicacy and conversation becomes a fully autonomous protagonist. On the other, it restores to the centre the world of the lute and the theorbo, a living presence capable of determining the atmosphere, sustaining the discourse and guarding the secret of memory. Between suite, brunette, tombeau and concerto there emerges a France at once real and imagined, Versailles and Arcadia, the aristocratic salon and the private chamber, the elegance of gesture and the melancholy of recollection. The implicit title of this music is perhaps precisely conversation. A lofty and exquisitely refined conversation, in which breath and string mirror and discipline one another, leaving in the air the image of a world in which the civilisation of sound and the civilisation of living still coincided.
Giuliano Marco Mattioli © 2026

Artist(s)

Yuichi Sasaki
Born in Japan, Yuichi Sasaki began his musical journey on the guitar at the age of eleven, studying under Masaki Kikuchi and others. In 2012, he moved to Germany to further his classical guitar studies with Aniello Desiderio and Hubert Käppel.
He subsequently turned his focus to the lute and historical plucked instruments at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, where he studied under the guidance of Prof. Konrad Junghänel from 2015 to 2018. Continuing his specialization with Prof. David Bergmüller from 2018, he completed his Bachelor’s degree in 2021 and subsequently obtained his Master’s degree with the highest distinction in 2023 from the same institution. He also received significant artistic mentorship from Simon Linné at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig, whose influence has been profound in shaping his development as a lutenist, theorbist, and continuo
player.
Sasaki has refined his artistry in masterclasses with such preeminent lutenists as Hopkinson Smith, Nigel North, Jakob Lindberg, and Evangelina Mascardi.
His artistic development in 2020 and 2021 was further supported by scholarships from the Nomura Foundation (Japan).
As both a soloist and continuo player, Sasaki maintains a vibrant international career spanning Europe, Japan, and North Africa (including Tunisia). He collaborates regularly with both modern and Baroque orchestras and engages in diverse ensemble projects across a wide range of genres, from early music to rock and pop.
His artistic focus is dedicated to the 17th-century repertoire. He is particularly passionate about mid-to-late 17th-century French works for the eleven-course Baroque lute, and his interpretations of early Italian Baroque music on the re-entrant chitarrone (theorbo) have garnered widespread acclaim. His recording of works by Johann Sigismund Weiss is featured on the CD L’arte del Virtuoso Vol. 2 (Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm).

Composer(s)

Ernst Gottlieb Baron
(b Breslau, 17 Feb 1696; d Berlin, 12 April 1760). German lutenist, composer and writer on music. Neither Baron’s life nor his works have as yet been fully explored by scholars. His father Michael was a maker of gold lace and expected his son to follow in his footsteps. The younger Baron showed an inclination towards music in his youth, however, and later made it his profession. He first studied the lute from about 1710 with a Bohemian named Kohott (not to be confused with the later Karl von Kahaut). In Breslau he attended the Elisabeth Gymnasium, and from there went in 1715 to Leipzig, where he studied philosophy and law at the university for four years.

Jacques Gallot
(d Paris, c1690). Lutenist and composer, brother of (1) Alexandre Gallot. He was known as ‘vieux Gallot de Paris’. He was a pupil of Ennemond Gaultier. His Pièces de luth composées sur differens modes (Paris, n.d.) includes a brief method for the lute. The inclusion of minuets and the arrangement of pieces by keys and forms anticipate the later suite. In addition to this collection most of the pieces in an untitled lute manuscript (D-LEm II614) are signed ‘vieux Gallot’. These two sources comprise almost all his identified music, but a few other pieces by him are among those signed simply ‘Gallot’ found in other manuscripts (in F-Pn, B, GB-Ob, HAdolmetsch, A-GÖ, KR, Wn, CZ-Pu and S-K). His compositions include several musical portraits – La Fontange and La Montespan among others – and tombeaux – among them those in memory of Turenne, Condé and Madame – inspired by members of the court. Visée in turn composed a tombeau in memory of Gallot.

Jacques-Martin Hotteterre
(b Paris, 29 Sept 1673; d Paris, 16 July 1763). Son of (3) Martin Hotteterre. He was the most celebrated member of the family, and had a brilliant career as a player, teacher and composer. Several years before his mother's death in 1708, Jacques's father gave him 3000 livres to acquire the post of ‘grand hautbois du roy’. He obtained the reversion of the post of ‘flutte de la chambre de roy’ on 26 August 1717 (for 6000 livres) on the retirement of René Pignon Descoteaux, although he is referred to as such on the title page of his Premier livre de pièces, published nine years earlier. In 1747 his court posts passed to his eldest son, Jean-Baptiste Hotteterre (b Paris, 1 Aug 1732; d Paris, 9 Sept 1770), a maker and player of woodwind instruments. On 2 January 1763 Jacques's daughter, Marie-Geneviève, married the organist Claude-Bénigne Balbastre; the many signatures of illustrious musicians and aristocrats on the contract testify to Jacques's high social standing at the end of his life. His estate included several grand houses in Paris, his wealth derived from family inheritance and marriage as well as his popularity as a teacher of amateurs of the fashionable world. The frontispiece of his Principes de la flûte traversière is presumed to be a portrait of him, playing a three-piece flute from his father's workshop (see Flute, §II, 4(ii), fig.13). Titon du Tillet (Orchestre de Parnasse, 1743) placed him among the most important musicians of France. If he did make flutes, as is claimed in the diary of J.F.A. von Uffenbach (1715), it was probably in association with the family workshop on the rue de Harlay; neither the inventory taken at his marriage nor that taken after his death list woodwind instruments or tools for their manufacture.

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier: (b Thionville, 23 Dec 1689; d Roissy-en-Brie, 28 Oct 1755). French composer. He spent his childhood in Thionville, and went to Metz about 1700. In 1713 he was receveur de la régie royale des tabacsfor the Roussillon troops at Perpignan. On 7 November 1720 he married Marie Valette, the daughter of the city treasurer Guillaume Valette. He remained in Perpignan until about 1723, when he settled in Paris. In September 1724 he took out a royal privilege to engrave his works and began the process of publishing them, which ceased only on his death. From 1743 to 1745 he was sous-chef and then chef d’orchestre at the Foire St Laurent, and also, in 1745, at the Foire St Germain. He was a prolific composer of very profitable works, which according to the Mercure de France (October 1747) brought him over 500,000 écus, enabling him to live a life of fame and luxury without holding any official post. His Christmas motet Fugit nox (now lost), on themes from noëls, was popular at the Concert Spirituel from 1743 to 1770, with L.-C. Daquin and C.-B. Balbastre at the organ. His pastorale Daphnis et Chloé, to a libretto by Pierre Laujon, was well received when it was performed at the Opéra in September 1747, and was even parodied at the Comédie-Italienne under the title of Les bergers de qualité when it was revived on 4 May 1752. After his death his daughter continued to sell his available works, and also published several more.

Boismortier wrote a great deal of music. Many of his compositions, intended for amateur ensembles, require only average technical skill and envisage various possible combinations of instruments, as witness the Sonates pour une flûte et un violon par accords sans basse op.51 and the sonatas for two bassoons and four flutes. He also composed for such fashionable instruments of the time as the musette, hurdy-gurdy and transverse flute. This last was his favourite instrument, and he considerably extended its repertory. In his instrumental pieces he devoted equal attention to the various parts, which can consist simply of a series of imitations; in his earliest sonatas for keyboard and flute, op.91 (c1741–2), the two instruments are complementary, whereas it was usual in such works at the time for the harpsichord to dominate. Boismortier adopted the three-movement form favoured by Italian composers. He wrote concertos for many different instruments. Some, such as his VI concertos pour cinq flûtes traversières ou autres instruments sans basse op.15 (1727), are for unusual ensembles. These are not so much solo concertos as works in the French style of François Couperin’s Concerts royaux (1722) and Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin en concert (1741).

Boismortier’s cantatas and motets skilfully mingle French and Italian elements, with ternary form dominating in the airs. The rather lightweight anonymous texts of his cantatas are typical of the period. He was most at ease in short forms, and after 1738 followed fashion by abandoning the cantata in favour of the cantatille. His agreeable melodies were designed to please the taste of his audience, and the virtuoso vocal writing in his motets is strongly influenced by the Italian style. In his stage works he collaborated with the great librettists of the period: Charles-Antoine Le Clerc de La Bruère (who also wrote the libretto of Rameau’s Dardanus), Pierre Laujon and Charles-Simon Favart. He composed to suit the taste of the time, as in his ballet-comique on a fashionable theme, Don Quichotte chez la duchesse, in which the music does not attempt any local Japanese colour but consists of lively, facile melodies.

Boismortier’s pedagogical works (tutors for the flute and the descant viol) are apparently lost, but the fact that he wrote them is evidence of a didactic concern also shown in such instrumental works as his Diverses pièces pour une flûte traversière seule … propres pour ceux qui commencent à jouer de cet instrument op.22 (1728), and his Quinque sur l’octave, ou Dictionnaire harmonique (1734).

Boismortier’s music demonstrates great facility, and one regrets that he wrote so few works on a large scale. It is difficult not to agree with La Borde, who said: ‘He will always be regarded by professionals as a good harmonist … anyone who will take the trouble to excavate this abandoned mine might find enough gold dust there to make up an ingot’.

(b Paris, 22 Aug 1681; d Versailles, 30 Aug 1731). Composer and instrumentalist, son of (2) Jacques Danican Philidor (i) le cadet. He began composing at an early age; a pastorale of his composition was performed at court in 1697. He was granted the inheritance of his father's post among the Grands Hautbois the same year and by 1708 when his father died was also playing for the royal chapel and among the Petits Violons. In 1716 he became a member of the chambre du roi as a viol player, where his colleagues included François Couperin and Marin Marais. In 1717 and 1718 he published three books of suites, half of them intended for two unaccompanied flutes, the others for two treble instruments and continuo. In 1726 he resigned his post in the Grands Hautbois in favour of his younger brother Nicolas, but remained as a viol player until shortly before his death, when he gave that post as well to Nicolas.

Robert de Visée
(b ? c1655; d 1732–3). French guitarist, theorbo, lute and viol player and composer. He was possibly a pupil of Corbetta. He is first mentioned (as theorbist and guitarist) by Le Gallois in 1680, and about that time became a chamber musician to Louis XIV. In the dedication of his first guitar book (1682) he mentions that he was often called upon by the king to amuse the dauphin, and the diary of the Count of Dangeau from the year 1686 states that he regularly played the guitar at the king’s bedside in the evenings. Between 1694 and 1705 Visée frequently performed at the French court, particularly at the evening gatherings of Mme de Maintenon, with the flautists Descoteaux and Philibert, the harpsichordist Jean-Baptiste Buterne and the viol player Antoine Forqueray. In 1709 he was appointed to the post of singer in the royal chamber in recognition of his service to the court, in which he had not until then held a position. In 1719 he was formally appointed guitar teacher to the king, although he had actually been the king’s instructor since 1695; his son François succeeded him in this post in 1721. A letter of Jean Rousseau of 1688 indicates that Visée was a respected musician at Versailles and that he also played the viol.