The funeral ceremony of Maria Leszczyńska and its music-related aspects
Krystyna Pasquier
(France)
Abstract
This article describes the funeral ceremony of Queen Maria Leszczyńska, wife to Louis XV of France, who died on 24 June 1768 and was buried in the Basilica of Saint Denis on 11 August 1768. The author’s account is based on a ceremonial held in the archives of Seine-Saint-Denis department in Bobigny (220J/16/3). The musical setting of the ceremony consisted mainly in liturgical chants, but the document mentions 120 musicians participating in the funeral. They performed the motet De profundis (1740) by Antoine Blanchard (1696–1770), who conducted the performance. No information is given about any instrumental accompaniment. What is more, there is mention of the symbolic silence of some instruments, e.g. the organ. As the coffin was being carried into the basilica, military instruments were played (trumpets, drums, timpani), as well as other instruments not specified in the document.
Keywords:
Queen Maria Leszczyńska, funeral ceremony, eighteenth-century music
Authors
Krystyna PasquierFrance
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Copyright (c) 2018 Krystyna Pasquier
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Articles from 2018/1 to 2022/3 were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted the publisher a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in "Muzyka", retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
