UP NEXT: Residence at the Swedish Institute in Paris May 13-18 – concert May 16 7.30 pm

Have you heard the story of the French ballet master Antoine de Beaulieu who stole what he thought was the skull of Saint Birgitta during a visit to Vadstena? Did you know that it was a French singer, Marie Louise Baptiste, who was the first to raise the alarm about the fire at the Drottningholm Court Theatre in 1762, or that it took the French opera star Anne Chabanceau de la Barre a full five years to travel from France to Stockholm after being recruited to Queen Christina’s court?

French culture, along with Italian culture, was the absolute ideal for the cultural life of royal courts and high society throughout much of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. The European courts were reshaped according to French and Italian models—art, music, fashion, architecture, and theater were imitated and imported. This was also the case at the Swedish court. Queen Christina attempted, as early as the mid-1600s, to shape her court in the French model and recruited both the French ballet master Antoine de Beaulieu, a group of French violinists, and not least the famous Parisian singer Anne Chabanceau de la Barre. This French influence would continue to flow through the entire 16th and 17th centuries. The mobility among musicians was extensive, and many French and Italian musicians worked, for longer or shorter periods, at the Nordic courts. Recent musicological research has shown how significant the influence of these musicians was on the musical life in Sweden at the time, both in terms of repertoire and practical performance. French compositions were imitated and incorporated into Swedish compositions, texts for French opera prologues were rewritten to suit the political agenda of the current Swedish monarch, and the French musicians instructed their Swedish colleagues in French style and performance practice.

There is a large collection of preserved musical works from the Swedish court’s musical activities in the 16th and 17th centuries, stored in three collections in Uppsala and Stockholm, including the unique Düben Collection, which reflects the musical activities at the Swedish court from 1640 to 1725. In these music collections, one can find a considerable amount of French repertoire, which was most likely conveyed by the French musicians working at the Swedish court. This largely unexplored area has been extensively studied in two large, recently completed research projects by Maria Schildt and Lars Berglund at the Department of Musicology at Uppsala University: “Translatio musicae: French and Italian music in Northern Europe, ca. 1650-1730” and the infrastructure project “Music at the Court and University during the Age of Liberty (1718-1772).”

The Paris-based mezzo-soprano Annastina Malm will perform rarities from the Swedish collections, accompanied by European baroque music specialists. Musicologist Maria Schildt will present the program and talk about her research.

Annastina Malm, mezzo-soprano

Anne Pekkala & Catalina Langborn, violin

Silvi de Maria, viole de gambe

Brice Sailly, cembalo

Maria Schildt, musicologist