The Winter Term Concert on Sunday night, which consisted entirely of works by the French Baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1645/50 – 1704), may have been the most pleasurable surprise I’ve ever had at a concert. I’m not overly passionate about Baroque music in general (except for Bach, some Handel and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas), and have never heard a single work by Charpentier, an important composer whose music had languished unperformed until his rediscovery in the 20th century. I didn’t really know what to expect from this concert.

The first half of the concert was devoted to the Messe de Morts à 4 voix et symphonie, H. 10, a piece of sacred music. The choral writing in this piece is less weighty and complex than Bach’s. Charpentier does not respond to this text (a mass for the dead) with the same level of subjectivity and overt intensity that later composers like Mozart, Berlioz and Verdi often bring. To modern ears, this dies irae is unlikely to evoke the flames of hell.

Nevertheless, the contrapuntal writing is as masterful as you would expect from any great Baroque composer and the piece is full of gorgeous, seamless major-minor transitions; it casts a beautiful, solemn spell and deserves to be better known.

The performance itself was nothing short of stupendous. The choir was flawlessly blended — not once did I hear individual voices sticking out of the overall sound, which was remarkable, considering that the choir consisted of merely 11 singers. There were two brief solo parts in the Prose des morts; they were both handled beautifully.

A great deal of meticulous practice had clearly gone into this performance. The orchestra, like the choir, never wavered in intonation and the choir’s diction was crystal clear. They even sang the text with a French accent, presumably because that’s how it would have been sung in Charpentier’s day.

But nothing sounded over-controlled. In fact, it was possible to read the choristers’ passionate involvement on most of their faces, though it must be mentioned that a few of them looked a little uninterested.

The conductor, Associate Professor of Harpsichord Webb Wiggins, adopted what sounded like sensible speeds to someone who’d never heard the piece before; he gave the music enough time to breathe.

The second half of the concert was given over to a secular piece called Les Plaisirs de Versailles. This comedic work must be one of the earliest treatments in existence of the ongoing question of words versus music in opera. The plot, such as it is, involves a quarrel between Music (senior soprano Sarah Klauer) and Conversation (junior alto Elisabeth Shoup), which ends with Conversation admitting how wrong she was to have mocked Music.

Charpentier obviously had a very pre-Wagnerian perspective on this issue. His characterization of the two opposing forces is masterful: Music is given soaring, beautiful melodies, while Conversation’s longest monologue consists of entirely brief, clipped phrases that sound, well, conversational.

The singers clearly relished this opportunity to have some fun. Not only did they show the right amount of comic spirit, but they also sang with clear, beautiful tones and displayed perfect timing in the ensembles.

Special praise, however, should be reserved for Klauer, who handled Music’s long-breathed, high-lying phrases with apparent ease and flawless intonation.

The production also featured an onstage spectator in the form of Louis XIV himself — the piece was presented as courtly entertainment — impersonated by none other than conductor Webb Wiggins. He sported a purple feather wig and sunglasses, suggesting a stoned rock star. 

Charpentier never, in fact, held a position in the court of Louis XIV; still, I would bet that the tribute to the “Great King,” which concluded the piece, was probably intended to be a little less ironic than it appeared in this performance.