The Marquise de Sévigné (1625 96) was a 17th-century blogger, writing letters to family and friends about life at the court of Louis XIV, and in particular performances of Lully during his lifetime, letters that were copied and widely circulated in manuscript. Our quartet of musicians has gathered together a selection of contemporary music, instrumental trio arrangements of popular songs and Lullian airs as well as duo and solo music such as she might have heard or had performed in her Parisian salon. These works – and many others like them – survive mainly in manuscript, though most are available in facsimile or online.

A letter addressed to Mme de Sévigné in the year of her death mentions a ‘joli concert’ of music by Visée, Marais and others as evidence of her taste in music, and forms the hook on which the CD hangs. Without a booklet, the listener is guided by the briefest of jacket references.

The trio arrangements would have provided charming, familiar background music to a social occasion and are impeccably performed here, never more so than in the ‘Simphonie de flutes pour les enchantements’ from Lully’s Amadis and the ‘Prelude du sommeil d’Armide’, or when revealing the declamatory qualities of the ‘Récit of Mr Gautier’. Alone, Eduardo Egüez evokes the climax of Lully’s sumptuous ballet Le triomphe de l’Amour in Visée’s arrangement of the ‘Entrée d’Apollon’. Marc Hantaï and Georges Barthel delight in Hotteterre’s duos for two unaccompanied treble instruments, billing and cooing in ‘Les Tourterelles’, and Philippe Pierlot’s viol-playing is sublime in the early Marais suite.