“Rendez-moi mes plaisirs”

Few sovereigns loved music as much as Louis XIV. During his reign the « air sérieux » became a real social phenomenon, as can be seen through the enormous quantity of fashionable airs published in the periodicals and gazettes of the time.
The main music publishers like Ballard printed many anthologies of these lively popular tunes which were sung in « salons ». This music of high literary quality revealed the subtelty, the virtuosity and the refinement of the French art of singing which shone over baroque Europe for a long time.