Václav Luks conducts Lully's Te Deum and Biber's Missa Salisburgensis

In this festive concert, two magnificent works of sacred baroque music for choir and orchestra bring a joyful noise to Rome’s historic Archbasilica of St. John Lateran! Václav Luks leads the prestigious Pages of Versailles’s Centre de musique baroque and the acclaimed Prague-based Collegium 1704 and Collegium Vocale 1704 in Lully’s Te Deum and Biber’s Missa Salisburgensis.

In September 1677,  the illustrious Superintendent of the King’s Music Jean-Baptiste Lully gave the premiere of his Te Deum—composed for the baptism of his son—in the presence of King Louis XIV. An enormous success, the work would be performed dozens of times during Lully’s own lifetime, creating a new ceremonial musical genre in the process. Indeed, the Te Deum held sway for a century, being performed at every kind of ceremonial occasion: from princely weddings to military victories to celebrations of the King’s deliverance from illness.

Just five years later in 1682, the powerful Archbishop of Salzburg commissioned a work of monumental proportions for the sumptuous celebration of more than a millennium since the founding of the Salzburg Archbishopric. The brilliant Bohemian-Austrian composer Heinrich Biber took on the task with aplomb, creating a mass setting for large orchestra and 53 different voices divided up into six choirs spaced out around the cathedral. Seldom performed because of the unusual spatial needs and large instrumentation, this performance is rare treat to experience the work in its full splendor!

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Photo: © Conrad Allain

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Sous le Haut Patronage de :

Son Excellence Miloš Zeman
Président de la République Tchèque

S.E. Jan Tombiński, Ambassadeur de l’Union Européenne auprès du Saint Siège
S.E. Václav Kolaja, Ambassadeur de la République Techèque auprès du Saint Siège

Dott. Yves Teyssier d’Orfeuil, Chargé d’affaires a.i. de la France auprès du Saint-Siège