MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


 
REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline


Joseph Nicolas Pancrace ROYER (1705 - 1755)
Harpsichord Works:-
La Majestueuse in d minor [03:48]
La Zaïde in D [05:38]
Les Matelots in d minor [02:27]
Tambourins I and II in d minor [01:36]
L'Incertaine in g minor [03:39]
L'Aimable in g minor [06:58]
La Bagatelle in G [01:30]
Suite de la Bagatelle in g minor [01:58]
La Rémouleuse in G [03:06]
Les Tendres Sentiments in g minor [07:02]
Le Vertigo in g minor [05:03]
Allemande in c minor [05:03]
La Sensible in c minor [04:46]
La Marche des Scythes in c minor [06:12]
Christophe Rousset (harpsichord)
rec. February 2007, Musée de la musique, Centre de la musique, Paris, France. DDD
AMBROISIE AM 151 [58:56]

Experience Classicsonline

Joseph Nicolas Pancrace Royer is one of the lesser-known French composers who was active in the second quarter of the 18th century. Today he is almost exclusively known for his compositions for harpsichord, which were printed as Premier Livre de Pièces pour Clavecin in 1746. He was also a prominent composer of operas and ballet music, part of which heritage has been lost.

In 1730 he became maître de musique at the Paris Opera, and that same year his first opera was performed: Pyrrhus, a tragedy in a prologue and five acts. In 1734 he was appointed maître de musique des enfants de France, which meant that he was responsible for the musical education of the children of King Louis XV. Several of them were musically gifted, and the first book of harpsichord pieces was dedicated to them.

This collection bears the traces of Royer's activities in the musical theatre. La Zaïde and La Marche des Scythes are arrangements of instrumental pieces from Royer's own opera Zaïde (1739). Les Matelots, Tambourin I and the Allemande are based on pieces from Le pouvoir de l'amour, a ballet héroïque, first performed in 1743. This was a pretty rare practice: Royer's colleague Jean-Philippe Rameau was almost the only other composer who transcribed pieces from his operas for the harpsichord. One has to go back to the late 17th century to find comparable transcriptions, when Jean-Henri d'Anglebert (1629-1691) included some transcriptions of works by Jean-Baptiste Lully in his Pièces de Clavecin of 1689.

The pieces in Royer's collection are grouped by keys: D major and minor, G major and minor and C minor, but without giving them the form of a suite. No less than seven are in the form of a rondeau, which reflects the taste of the time. Nevertheless, as Royer states in the preface: "The pieces are open to great variety, passing from the tender to the lively, from the simple to the tumultuous, often successively within the same piece".

To the tender belongs La Zaïde, which also has the indication 'tendrement'. It is dominated by long trills, and explores the central and upper part of the keyboard. Les Matelots reflects its operatic origin. The Tambourin I, with its drone, belongs to the 'tumultuous'.

L'Incertaine has the indication 'marqué', meaning that the melody is the focus of the piece. L'Aimable is 'gracieux', an elegant and quiet piece. Next follows La Bagatelle, a restless piece with short, pungent chords. La Remouleuse seems to refer to the knife-grinder, and the repetition of a single motif probably depicts the continuous turning of the grindstone.

With Les Tendres Sentiments another rondeau of a tender character follows, which - like La Zaïde - concentrates on the middle and upper part of the keyboard. Le Vertigo means 'the capricious', and that is well expressed in the music, which contains strong contrasts in tempo and Affekt. It is also one of the most 'tumultuous' pieces of the collection, with heavy and frequently repeated chords at high speed.

The allemande is a traditional dance, which was part of virtually every keyboard suite of the 17th and 18th centuries. But Royer's Allemande in c minor has little in common with the allemandes of the past, being much more forceful and theatrical. La Sensible is, as the title suggests, much more tender and lyrical in character.

The collection ends with another opera transcription, La Marche des Scythes, also 'tumultuous', with virtuosic scales and noisy chords.

Christophe Rousset uses a splendid historical harpsichord. It was built in the first half of the 18th century by the Parisian harpsichord maker Jean-Claude Goujon, and was extended in 1784 by Jacques Joachim Swanen. Rousset delivers brilliant performances in which the features of the various pieces is very well captured. The tempi are convincing, with the exception of Les Tendres Sentiments, which seems to me too slow, at the cost of the musical flow. The sound engineer has done an outstanding job as well.

The programme notes - in French and English - are adequate, but the English translation is difficult to read as the print isn't very clear and the letters are grey instead of black. Even worse are the pages with the information about the harpsichord: black letters on a pink background. Who comes up with something like that? It is also regrettable that the track-list omits to give the keys and the character indications.

Johan van Veen

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.