Midnight Mass - Ensemble Correspondances

The Ensemble Correspondances will perform Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Midnight Mass on December 16 at the Cologne Philharmonic. 

If Charpentier found his way back to posterity with the first notes of his Te Deum H.146, chosen to illustrate the credits of Eurovision programs in the 1950s, the Messe de Minuit is probably the second work that has made him known the world over. It is an invitation to immerse oneself in a musical world where scholarly and popular traditions are not opposed, quite the contrary: all Charpentier's art and science are illustrated in this invitation of Christmas carols within a mass composed for Christmas Eve. These melodies are familiar to all, peasants and gentlemen alike, who recognize them, interwoven within a subtle counterpoint and renewed harmony. The pleasure of music is available to everyone: to recognize a familiar tune, or to grasp its extraordinary arrangement. The simplicity of the original hymns also lends the whole mass a candor and simplicity that is not without depth when one considers that it spoke universally at the time.