Louis de Boncourt - Lovesick, dying of love

Met Lovesick, mourir d’amour, Louis De Boncourt brings a concert around songs and airs de cour from the seventeenth century, in which love is central as an intense, often contradictory experience. Desire, surrender, longing, and distress are given a direct and subdued form in this music, in which text and sound are closely intertwined. The airs de cour originated in a culture in which poetry, music, and rhetoric complemented each other. The melodies are seemingly simple, but rich in nuance, and follow the emotional world of the text closely. Precisely in that sobriety lies their strength: small musical shifts are enough to evoke deep emotions and let meaning resonate. In this performance, love is not idealized, but shown in all its vulnerability and intensity. Lovesick, mourir d’amour lets you hear how seventeenth-century composers and poets used words and music to make the inner life tangible. The result is a concert in which intimacy and expression are central, and in which a refined repertoire shows its power of expression again. Programma John Blow – Lovely Selina Robert de Visée – Prélude (Manuscript Vaudry Saizenay) Henry Purcell – If Music be the food of love (3rd version) Marc-Antoine Charpentier – Tristes déserts, sombre retraite Henry Purcell – There’s not a swain in the plain Christopher Simpson – Divisions in a minor Matthew Locke – My lodging is on the cold ground Michel Lambert – Pourquoy faut-il belle inhumaine Sébastien le Camus – Laissez durer la nuit Michel Lambert – Goutons un doux repos