Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726) succeeded Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of Louis XIV and was in charge of dinner music, where he provided oodles of deliciously entertaining baroque muzak. Good as that music is, if you want to turn it up a notch, go seek out de Lalande’s Grand Motets, where you will notice that greater things come of praising the Lord than trying to accompany roast pheasant with candied bacon-apples on a purée-of-gooseberry sauce velouté.
If this whets your appetite – the idea of French baroque motets, not roast pheasant – the musicians of the Versailles Baroque Music Center and the Collegium Marianum have just the thing: a most palatable live recording of three such motets, starting with Venite, exultemus Domino. The name-giving first movement of said motet opens with a few dance-inducing instrumental bars before letting the chorus lunge into the “Come, let us praise the Lord / let us make a joyful noise to God, our salvation” (Psalm 94). And de Lalande (alternatively spelled Delalande) does just that: he makes a very joyful noise indeed. There is nothing austere about this motet; if anything, it sounds more like something from Rameau’s wildly entertaining opera Les Indes galantes.
