Charpentier and Christmas

Lucie Skeaping's thoughts turn to Marc Antoine Charpentier who wrote some of the most engaging Christmas music of the French Baroque including the celebrated Messe de Minuit - a midnight mass for Christmas Eve based on popular French carols.A remarkably gifted composer from the reign of Louis XIV, Charpentier spent much of his life pushed into the shadows by the all-powerful and controlling Jean-Baptiste Lully. Much of his life was spent in the service of Mlle de Guise and for the Jesuit College in Paris for whom he wrote many of his wonderful Christmas pieces inspired by popular French carols.