Discover the composers of Louis XIV (aka the «Sun King»)
through their most intimate arias. In the 17th and 18th centuries, vocal music occupied a central place in the musical landscape. Owing to its rhetorical and expressive qualities, the voice was the model for music, and literary texts served as the medium for the development of the musical language. Only much later would instruments finally break free of this hierarchy. A secular genre that pervaded the whole of 17th-century France, combining poetry and music, the court aria reflects the growing refinement of the salons and of high society.
