On the palace steps
The 17th century in France was a century of dance. Would this still have been the case without the influence of Spain? When he married the Spanish Infanta Anne of Austria, Louis XIII not only infused the royal line with Spanish blood through his son Louis XIV, he also brought folias, sarabandas, españolas and españoletas north of the Pyrenees. Illustrious strolling players, the two monarchs ushered in a golden age of ballet in which Spanish dances and motives had a role to play. When Briceño wasn’t asked to produce an aria, Le Bailly was called on to invent a Locura for the Ballet de la Folie. Guest musicians or characters in royal spectacles, the Spanish took their place in the salons of the day. The city, in imitation of the court, demanded its share of this Spanish magic, which included vocal and instrumental music, and contemporary concerts might feature the tono humano rather than the air de cour or the guitar rather than the lute. With his audiences under the spell of Spanish poet Calderón, composer Moulinié swallowed his French pride and tried his hand at the style then in vogue with El baxtel esta en la playa.
© Valters_Pelns
With their childlike freshness and their roots stretching back to time immemorial, traditional French songs are the source of a popular sensibility and are passed down from generation to generation. Whether widely known or more obscure, they evoke images of timeless landscapes and folkloric scenes, whose poetry—both mysterious and familiar—accompanies this pilgrimage
to the origins of this form.