Passacaille d'Armide | Jean Baptiste Lully (lyrics) скачать в хорошем качестве

Passacaille d'Armide | Jean Baptiste Lully (lyrics)

📜Complete classical music playlist:    • Best of Classical Music | De Carli   Jean‑Baptiste Lully’s Passacaille d’Armide, one of the most celebrated moments from his 1686 tragédie lyrique Armide, stands as a radiant example of the French Baroque at its most opulent, refined, and emotionally charged. The passacaille appears in Act V of the opera, at a moment when the drama reaches a point of psychological and emotional tension, and Lully responds not with violent orchestral gestures but with a grand, hypnotic dance built over a repeating bass pattern. This musical form, inherited from earlier Italian and Spanish traditions, becomes in Lully’s hands a vehicle for both sensuality and majesty. The Passacaille d’Armide unfolds with a sense of inevitability, each variation growing organically from the last, creating a tapestry of sound that is at once stately and deeply expressive. The orchestra, with its characteristic French strings and richly ornamented lines, moves through waves of intensity, alternating between tender lyricism and triumphant grandeur. Lully’s mastery of orchestral color is unmistakable: the interplay of violins, violas, and continuo creates a shimmering texture that seems to suspend time, drawing the listener into the emotional world of Armide’s enchanted realm. To understand the significance of this passacaille, one must understand the extraordinary figure of Jean‑Baptiste Lully, the man who shaped French music more profoundly than any other composer of the seventeenth century. Born Giovanni Battista Lulli in Florence in 1632, he arrived in France as a teenager and quickly adapted to the language, culture, and artistic expectations of the French court. His talent as a dancer, violinist, and composer caught the attention of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who became his lifelong patron. Lully’s rise was meteoric: he became Surintendant de la Musique de la Chambre du Roi, then Maître de la Musique de la Famille Royale, and eventually secured a monopoly on French opera through his control of the Académie Royale de Musique. Under his leadership, French opera took on a distinctive identity, one that emphasized clarity of declamation, expressive restraint, and the integration of dance as a central dramatic element. Armide, created in collaboration with the playwright Philippe Quinault, is often considered the pinnacle of Lully’s operatic achievements. The story, drawn from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, centers on the sorceress Armide, who captures the Christian knight Renaud and finds herself torn between hatred and love. The opera explores themes of passion, enchantment, and inner conflict, and Lully’s music gives voice to these emotions with remarkable subtlety. The Passacaille d’Armide appears near the end of the opera, at a moment when Armide’s magical powers and emotional turmoil converge. The dance serves both as a spectacle and as a psychological mirror, reflecting the grandeur of her illusions and the fragility of her heart. Lully’s use of the passacaille form is particularly striking. Built on a repeating bass line, the passacaille allows for continuous variation, a technique that Lully employs with extraordinary finesse. Each iteration of the bass pattern brings new melodic ideas, new textures, and new emotional colors. The music seems to breathe, expanding and contracting like a living organism. The elegance of the French Baroque is present in every phrase: the refined ornamentation, the graceful rhythmic patterns, and the careful balance between restraint and expressiveness. Yet beneath this elegance lies a powerful emotional current. The passacaille’s steady pulse creates a sense of inevitability, as if Armide’s fate is unfolding before the listener’s ears, each variation drawing her closer to the moment when she must confront her own despair. Lully’s influence on French music cannot be overstated. He established the French overture, shaped the structure of French opera, and set the standard for courtly dance music. His works were performed throughout Europe, and his style influenced composers from Charpentier to Rameau. His collaboration with Quinault produced some of the most enduring masterpieces of the French Baroque, works that combined dramatic clarity with musical richness. Lully’s death in 1687, caused by an infected wound he inflicted on himself while conducting with a staff, cut short a career that had already transformed the musical landscape of France. Yet his legacy endured, and Armide remained one of the most admired operas of the eighteenth century. 🔥Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed, please, subscribe!