Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Marc Antoine Charpentier: Te deum

Better known as 'that bit of music they play before the ESC and the New Year's Concert and stuff like that'. Yes indeed. I love the Te deum. Because usually when I hear it, it's the signal that ... finally ... the magic is about to happen. ;-) Plus I think it's a very pretty bit of music ... although of course, to be honest, that's kind of a Pavlovian response, probably. Anyway.

The Te deum has been revamped now; the 'new version' was premiered before the broadcast of this year's New Year's Concert. It is the anthem, so to speak, of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and it's been around forever, so I guess they thought it was time to give it a makeover.

Old version:


New version:


A little info on Charpentier here. Obviously, he didn't compose this for the EBU. They just liked his work I guess :-) so they stole this little bit of it (the prelude). And it's probably the most played and most famous of everything he ever did now. That's the way the cookie crumbles ...

4 comments:

Paz said...

did not see that on the front page, will have to write a letter, also it did not feature on any of the news programs thks for keeping me up to date with the big issues :D

Leisha Camden said...

Write to the editor of your local paper this instant!!

Paz said...

done it and emailed sky/rte/bbc/newstalk.ie/todayfm and many more

Leisha Camden said...

Good work, glad to see you've got your priorities in order.