Le Concert Spirituel — Geoffroy: Music for Choir and Organ, Naxos (Audio CD)

Vadonatúj! Gyári csomagolásban! Fóliázott! Mint a képen! Vásároljon bizalommal! Foliaban!

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Product Details

• UPC: 730099463720
• Label: Naxos
• Composer: Jean-Nicolas Geoffroy (1633?–1694)
• Performers: Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet (organ and conductor)
• Catalogue Number: 8.553637
• Release Year: 1997
• Genre: Classical — Sacred/Baroque (Choir & Organ)
• Country of Producing: [confirm — no "Made in" line visible in provided photos]

Product Features

• Format: Audio CD, factory sealed
• Recording: DDD (fully digital)
• Playing Time: 64'29"
• Recorded at the Église de Seurre, Bourgogne (17–18 October 1995) on a 1699 Julien Tribuot organ, and at Église Notre Dame du Liban, Paris (24–25 October 1995)
• Cover Painting: portrait of François Girardon by Hyacinthe Rigaud (Musées de Beaux-Arts de Dijon)

Overview

Jean-Nicolas Geoffroy is one of the more obscure names on the Naxos French Baroque roster, and that's part of the appeal here — this is music almost nobody has heard, recorded with real care. He worked as an organist in Perpignan through the late 1600s, and what survives of his output blends sacred choral writing with the kind of light, dance-inflected keyboard pieces French composers of the era wrote for private entertainment. This disc puts both sides on display: the Messe pour les fêtes doubles, a full mass setting for major feast days, sits alongside psalm and antiphon settings, then gives way to a run of solo organ dances — allemandes, a chaconne, muzette, canaries — that sound almost like a different composer entirely.

Hervé Niquet, better known for period-ensemble work with Le Concert Spirituel, plays organ and conducts here, recorded on a genuine 1699 organ by Julien Tribuot in Seurre — the kind of instrument this repertoire was actually written for, not a modern substitute. That detail matters more than it sounds: French classical organ music from this period leans on specific stop combinations and tuning that a Tribuot-era instrument reproduces honestly.

For a listener already into French Baroque sacred music — Charpentier, Lully, de Grigny — this is a way to go one level deeper into a name history mostly passed over.

Interesting Facts

• Jean-Nicolas Geoffroy's birth year is uncertain — sources give it only as "1633?" — a reminder of how thin the documentary record is for provincial French organists of the period.
• The Messe pour les fêtes doubles ("Mass for Feasts of the Double") was written for the highest-ranking liturgical feast days in the French church calendar, which called for fuller musical settings than ordinary Sundays.
• The organ used for the sacred works, built by Julien Tribuot in 1699, still stands in the Église de Seurre in Bourgogne — a rare case of a period instrument being used in-situ for a period-appropriate recording.
• Several of the solo organ pieces here — the Canaries, Muzette, and Chaconne — are dance forms borrowed from the French court, showing how thoroughly secular dance rhythms had worked their way into organists' everyday repertoire.
• The cover reproduces Hyacinthe Rigaud's portrait of François Girardon, the royal sculptor to Louis XIV — a stylistic pairing rather than a literal connection to Geoffroy, typical of how Naxos illustrated its French Baroque series.

Track Listing

1. Psalm: Memento Domine David — 8:18
2. Regina coeli laetare — 3:29
3. Ave Regina coelorum — 3:01
4. Magnificat — 7:49

Messe pour les fêtes doubles (Mass for Feasts of the Double)

1. Kyrie — 4:56
2. Gloria — 6:40
3. Offertory — 3:52
4. Sanctus — 2:46
5. Agnus Dei — 3:14
6. Entrée — 1:53
7. Allemande: La confidente — 3:09
8. Menuets I & II — 0:50
9. Chaconne — 2:30
10. Allemande: La sans pareille — 3:02
11. Air de Bergère — 1:02
12. Canaries — 0:54
13. Muzette — 1:22
14. Symphonie pour trois violes — 0:57
15. Dialogue pour le clavecin et les violes — 4:44

Publishers

Released by Naxos, catalogue 8.553637, distributed by HNH International Ltd. Produced by Dominique Daigremont; recording and editing by Manuel Mohino (Musica Numeris); music notes by Hervé Niquet.

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