Passacalle de la Follie

Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky joins the instrumentalists of L’Arpeggiata, led by Christina Pluhar, for a colourful album that focuses on the air de cour. This ‘courtly song’, much in favour in France during the reign of Louis XIII, is accompanied by lute or theorbo and gives soulful and refined expression to love, regret and spiritual reflection. Passacaille de la Follie takes its title, from Yo soy la locura, a song written to a Spanish text by the court musician Henri Le Bailly. Among the other composers are the principal exponents of the air de cour: Pierre Guédron, Antoine Boësset, Étienne Moulinié and Michel Lambert. When Jaroussky, Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata performed this repertoire in New York in Autumn 2022, Concerto.net found that the performance “offered nothing less than enchantment … All of the songs, without exception, transported us back three centuries, the dulcet sounds and tender vocal lines, never sentimental or overly-emotional ...

The players were superlative, the notes were inspired …”