The French Galant is one of these concepts that is difficult to translate – maybe like the English gentleman? It includes too many aspects… Of course visually beautiful, harmonious, and rich; with delicate body movements (as in the court dances); with a refined, well-educated and imaginative language; gently talking about love, without taking it all too seriously, more as a society game or event, but also not without depth or emotion (though mostly somehow hidden); with an artful and effortless nonchalance; without great noise or exaggerated movements; everything seeming to be part of a complex illusion, detached from the “real” world, as on a stage, where you are simultaneously spectator and actor. The great 17th-18th century composers like Lully, Campra or Rameau managed to have their music perfectly fit into this “alternative” world. No wonder that the Ballet was a favorite genre, making it possible to dream away to far countries, under the guidance of Amour or Les Plaisirs. Even if the opéra-ballet was called L’Europe Galante (Campra) or Les Indes Galantes (Rameau), the real subject is the – obviously exquisite – French taste and Galanterie.

Campra will let us travel from France to Spain, Italy, and Turkey; Rameau tells us that Amour and Mars quarrel so much in Europe, that Amour needs to escape to even further continents: Turkey, the Incas of Middle-America, Persia, and in “Les Sauvages” finally to North-America. But rest assured: Amour has the final victory! (The piece ballet was originally called Les Victoires Galantes).

I selected from both opéra-ballets the overtures, some descriptive airs and dances and of course the chaconnes, the long and rich finale of an act or of the whole composition.

Why did I put Blavet’s flute concerto in this context? Blavet was for many years the acclaimed principal flute of the Paris opera, where for many seasons the older compositions of Lully, Campra and their followers were still performed, and where Rameau presented his masterworks. The middle movement of the concerto is a Gavotte that could come straight out of one of these operas, and in the other movements, he displays a virtuosity that his contemporaries considered elegant and “good taste” – in contrast to the Italian style which they judged exaggerated and bizarre.