London

What is it? A style of European music from before the Classical period, notable for the idea that harmony (all the parts together) was as important as polyphony (having several parts).

The experience The lady next to me gives me a little prod: ‘Ooh! We’re going to be famous.’
Her friend agrees: ‘Yes, live on Radio 3, they’ll be able to hear us clapping.’ Feature continues

They look at me and start giggling. I shift in my seat, feeling a little uncomfortable. You know baroque. You’ve been listening to one of its key works for years, every time you’re put on hold. But the ‘Four Seasons’ is late baroque. If you want to be of the moment, you have to get into early baroque, the stuff before Vivaldi, before Bach, before, even, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. And ideally you need to listen it being played on period instruments: strange lutes, elaborate recorders and viols of various tunings and sizes. Which is why I am sitting next to two giddy pensioners at the Cadogan Hall waiting for La Simphonie du Marais, a French group dedicated to music that would have been heard at the French court of Louis XIV, the Sun King. As the inventor of absolute monarchy, Louis regarded himself as important enough to have music wherever he went. Much of the work that will be played today – quiet pieces by Marais, Lully, Phillidor and La Barre – was meant for the King’s private quarters.

Inside the main hall, a fat man has fallen asleep on the balcony, his face slumped down on to his chest. La Simphonie come onstage behind their leader, an angular man with grey Gallic hair and a recorder. The Radio 3 announcer introduces them and a lady with very long legs wedges a viol between her knees and us. When the first selection ends, the leader tells us about the Australian craftsman who died while he was working on this very recorder. He then points out that the flute and the recorder are traditionally instruments of death and sleep. The band play the music Lully wrote for the royal bedchamber. This sends the fat man back into oblivion but everyone else is wide awake and worried.

The pieces are short – it doesn’t take that long to go to bed, even if you are a king – and no one outside of the band is sure when each piece finishes. Is that a pause or the end? The ladies get it wrong and nearly clap on a pause. They blush, horribly aware of just how close they come to being famous for all the wrong reasons.They don’t talk to me on the way out.

What to say
‘Lully abandoned the recitativo secco style that the Italians favoured, and established the form for the French overture.’

What not to say
‘Will they play “Land of Hope and Glory”?’

Where to start
‘Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music’ (1923) by Walter Willson Cobbett is authoritative.