Michel de Lalande

Michel-Richard de Lalande was a French Baroque musician and composer, born in Paris on 15 December 1657 and died in Versailles on 18 June 1726. He became one of the central figures of sacred music under Louis XIV and is especially known for his grand motets written for the royal chapel. Alongside other major French court musicians, he came to embody the French Baroque style, and later generations regarded him as the master of the French grand motet.

Born Michel-Richard Delalande, later known as de Lalande, he was the fifteenth and last child of Michel Delalande and Claude Dumoustier, Parisian master tailors established in the parish of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. Between 1667 and 1672 he served there as a choirboy, receiving a full musical and general education that included plainsong, choral singing, keyboard playing on harpsichord and organ, as well as French, Latin, and arithmetic. His musical gifts were noticed by François Chaperon, who entrusted him with solo passages because of his remarkable voice. Orphaned at fifteen, he was taken in by one of his sisters and continued his training largely as an autodidact.

After unsuccessfully trying to enter the Académie royale de musique as a violinist, he began a career as an organist. He served notably at Saint-Gervais, where he deputized until the young François Couperin could succeed his father, and also held organ posts at the church of the Grands-Jésuites of Saint-Louis and the convent of the Petit Saint-Antoine. In 1678 he was presented to Louis XIV during a competition for an organist's post at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, but the king considered him too young. Even so, his reputation grew quickly, and he became harpsichord teacher to the household of the duc de Noailles and to two daughters of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. The king granted him lodging at the Château de Clagny.

By the early 1680s Lalande was already composing for important occasions. A work of his performed at the Sainte-Chapelle was mentioned in 1680, and in 1682 he replaced the organist of Saint-Jean-en-Grève with the support of Louis XIV. The same year he collaborated with the Italian composer Paolo Lorenzani on a successful serenade in operatic form. In 1683 his pastoral opera L'Amour Berger was performed during Carnival, and that same year he won one of the positions of sous-maître of the Chapelle royale at Versailles in the competition organized by the king. He was initially responsible for the October quarter and from 1 July 1715 effectively succeeded his colleagues alone, carrying the full responsibility of the post.

Lalande's entire mature career unfolded in royal service. In 1689, at only thirty-one, he became Surintendant de la Musique de la Chambre. His principal task as sous-maître was to provide music for the daily liturgy and for the major feasts falling within his quarter, and the core of his output consists of grand motets composed for the king's Mass. His Versailles career coincided with Louis XIV's effort to make the royal chapel the privileged center of sacred music in France. In this environment Lalande became the leading composer of the court's sacred repertoire, while also writing divertissements, pastorals, and ballets.

In 1684 he married Renée Anne Rebel, a singer from a prominent musical family and sister of Jean-Féry Rebel. The marriage was closely tied to court circles and was marked by the presence or signatures of leading royal and aristocratic figures. The couple had two daughters, Marie-Anne and Jeanne, both carefully trained by their father and later noticed by the king for their singing in the royal chapel. Their abilities influenced Lalande's sacred writing, leading him to compose music for female voices despite prevailing French custom. Some of his Leçons de Ténèbres and the solo-voice Miserere were associated with performances by his wife and daughters. The deaths of both daughters in the smallpox epidemic of 1711 deeply affected him and seem to have shaped some of his later sacred works.

After the death of Louis XIV in 1715 and the transfer of the court to Paris during the Regency, Lalande revised and improved many of his earlier works, though he did not permit his motets to be published during his lifetime. He continued to enjoy royal esteem and wrote ballet music again for the young Louis XV. While the Symphonies des Folies de Cardenio did not succeed, Les Élemens, composed with André Cardinal Destouches in 1721, remained in the repertory of the Académie royale de Musique until the end of the eighteenth century. In 1722, after the death of his first wife, Louis XV named him a knight of the Order of Saint Michael. He directed the music for the coronation ceremonies of Louis XV at Reims that same year.

Also in 1722 and 1723 he gradually gave up three of his four quarters at the royal chapel, while receiving a pension from the king. In 1723, at the age of sixty-five, he married Marie-Louise de Cury, a musician who played the viola da gamba. They had a daughter, Marie-Michelle, born in 1724. Lalande fell ill in 1726 with a chest inflammation and died in Versailles on 18 June of that year. He was buried in the church of Notre-Dame de Versailles.

After his death, his widow worked actively to preserve his memory and secure the future of his music. She oversaw the publication of forty motets, accompanied by a biographical notice. The publication of his works was completed by 1728 under royal privilege. His music retained exceptional popularity throughout the eighteenth century: the Concert Spirituel gave hundreds of performances of his pieces, especially the grand motets, and his Dominus regnavit remained in circulation long after his death. His sacred music was admired for generations, and his motets were seen as models whose influence extended beyond France.

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