Year: 2006

On the 10th February 1673, only a few months after their first collaboration, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known as MoliËre (1622-1673), and Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) presented at the Palais Royal’s theater Le Malade Imaginaire, a comÈdie ballet (a comedy with incidental music in the form of interludes built around a secondary plot).

There is an often compelling relationship between early and contemporary music. The relationship grows out of many different things.

Conceived by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) to serve as musical interludes for a revival at the Jesuit college of Harcourt in 1680 of Pierre Corneille’s play, Polyeucte Martyr (originally written in 1642), the ballet Le combat de l’amour divin was composed for string orchestra with trumpets, kettledrums and continuo.