As part of its Chamber Cycle, the Auditorio de Tenerife presents Barroca de cine, by the Orquesta Barroca de Tenerife, a recital of movie stills of Tous les matins du monde, Le Roi Danse and Vatel, with compositions by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marin Marais, Jean-Philippe Rameau and Jean de Sainte Colombe.

Barroca de cine

In the early 18th century, French musical taste separated from the prevailing Italianisation trend in Europe, which gave rise to fascinating differences in French music that continue to captivate today’s audiences. One example of this is the popularity of programmes of the French Baroque repertoire in the current revival of early music. Cinema has contributed largely to the consolidation of this fanciful image of the sad, glorious past on the other side of the Pyrenees.

The rich ornamentation of the French style and the combination of timbres give rise to distinctive textures. The blending of the viol with other bowed instruments and recorders with oboes are examples of this. As a result of the sophistication deriving from contrasts-melancholy and euphoria, darkness and light, homophony and counterpoint, etc.-, cadence-laden melodies, rhythms, dances and contradances are moulded to the tastes of the opulent court or the everyday simplicities of France in 17th-century Baroque.

Although this is not the first programme presented by the OBdT, it has much to do with cinema, or ‘de cine’, that Spanish expression that describes something so perfect it seems to exist in a film. The selected compositions, which will accompany a selection of images, are much more than a soundtrack, a common musical thread or a pretext. They are the cultural result of a society that created its style, which we acknowledge with this programme and may be better understood through the French films Tous les matins du monde, Le Roi Danse and Vatel.