Apollo & Flora

Instrumental music by J.-F. Rebel

A prodigy among the King’s 24 Violins and a composer of the Académie royale de musique, Jean-Féry Rebel (1666–1747) embodies the French alliance of dance with a nascent Italianate flair. A pupil and heir of Lully, he extends his master’s majesty while straining the bounds: his “Chaos” of the Éléments—a harmonic audacity that shocks and fascinates—opens new horizons.
Our programme traces this relief: the trio sonata “La Flore” lets the voices converse with a plasticity recalling the texture of the 24 Violins; the Opus 2 solo violin sonatas mingle Italian cantabile, French dance, and a rhetoric of the affects, where suspensions, appoggiaturas, and chromatic inflections chisel eloquence—up to feats of violin playing whose virtuosity is never ostentatious.
Sonata No. 7 in C minor, “Tombeau de Monsieur de Lully,” reinvents homage: a measured tread, noble lament, restrained dissonances, and tonal chiaroscuro compose an exemplary art of mourning conceived as an aesthetic manifesto. In counterpoise, the trio sonata “L’Apollon” illumines the bow—solar radiance, measured dance—where an ideal of harmony governs virtuosity.
Following last year’s concert devoted to Francœur and Sénaillé, this portrait of Rebel stands in continuity: let us recall that François Rebel, the composer’s son, directed the Paris Opéra together with François Francœur. Between grace and daring, Rebel orders tradition and ventures toward the goûts réunis: balance of styles, the clarity of dance, flashes of invention; thus emerges a Paris in which the sonata speaks French without renouncing Italy—wit and gallantry embracing an orchestral imagination.