„Noël de Pologne” was directly inspired by the life of Queen Marie Leszczyńska (1703–1768), wife of King Louis XV. Leszczyńska came to France from the Silesia region of Poland to marry the young Louis XV, bringing with her to Versailles both Polish customs and a love for music. We in the early music ensemble „Echo” attempt to continue her tradition in the modern day with a Christmas concert dedicated to Queen Leszczyńska.
We will discuss three elements of „Noël de Pologne” in this article: the influence of Queen Leszczyńska, how certain pieces from the French baroque repertoire were necessarily adapted for our ensemble, and how the audio-visual recording techniques played a role in our interpretation of these pieces.
„Noël de Pologne” was performed by the early music ensemble „Echo”, consisting of the following musicians:
The program includes a guest performance by prof. dr hab. Urszula Bartkiewicz, who played the second harpsichord part in a selection of pieces.
The full performance of „Noël de Pologne” is available online through the link below:
We would also like to thank the Feliks Nowowiejski Music Academy in Bydgoszcz for all the provided resources, prof. Urszula Bartkiewicz for joining the project, Prorektor dr hab. Mariusz Klimsiak and dr hab. Dorota Zimna for all their organizational help, and Kinga Pękala for her help transcribing Oj Maluśki. „Noël de Pologne” was funded by the KPO for Culture 2025 stipend.
Leszczyńska, a daughter of the dethroned King of Poland Stanisław Leszczyński, became Queen of France in 1725. In 1738 she is said to have introduced the first Christmas tree, the first sapin de Noël, at Versailles. Leszczyńska hosted salon concerts, called “les concerts de la reine,” in a manner similar to the Sun King. These concerts, often held in the Salon de la Paix, commonly included opera excerpts, sonatas, and other chamber pieces, as well as intricate individual arias or solo pieces.
Leszczyńska herself played on the harpsichord, and each of her nine children who survived infancy played on a variety of instruments — often playing in consort. Leszczyńska throughout her life heard the famed castrato Farinelli as well as a young Mozart.
Her Polish heritage also made an impact on the court: she brought with her her Polish traditions, as well as connected with other Poles at the court. These two facets of Queen Leszczyńska — her support of music and bringing Polish and Christmas customs into Versailles — form the inspiration for „Noël de Pologne”.
The album’s program combines traditional French Noël music with a more diverse French baroque repertoire. One can imagine a group of musicians sitting in a circle at a salon or private concert: each takes turns playing or singing a piece of their choosing, sometimes in honor of others in the group, sometimes more folk-inspired popular Christmas carols. This “mix-and-match” approach has its historical roots. The CMBV notes that royal chamber music could be as intimate as “concerts for 1–5 players, medium-sized ensembles for 10–50 players.” Because this “concert” is imagined as an informal gathering of friends and patrons at the court of Versailles, our small ensemble consists of nine solo musicians rather than a large orchestra. Performing opera excerpts in chamber arrangements is consistent with French Baroque practice, even seen in the concerts organized by Queen Leszczyńska.
French baroque music was full of transcriptions and arrangements. Composers and performers freely rearranged works for different contexts. For example, a suite for viola da gamba might be adapted for the harpsichord (like J-B. Forqueray’s transcription of his father’s, A. Forqueray’s, viol suites). F. Couperin’s instrumental trios were meant for any available instruments, including two harpsichords. In this spirit, for „Noël de Pologne” we chose pieces ranging from opera and instrumental suites to popular Christmas carols.
Working with a reduced number of musicians means some original scores and parts must be adapted. Our ensemble “Echo” is composed of two sopranos, a traverso flutist, two violinists, a gambist, a cellist (also playing the basse de violone),, and two harpsichordists.
As an aside, it is important to note that the choice of basse de violone follows French practice: in the French court, the basse de violon (bass violin) was the preferred bass instrument, not the newer Italian cello.
Below is a select list of pieces from the program to which important changes were made. A short description of these “arrangements” is provided, along with some commentary where applicable. Scores for the mentioned pieces are available as PDF douments at the bottom of this article.
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Pigmalion: Overture
Originally orchestral (opera-ballet Pigmalion, 1748). We alternate between Rameau’s orchestration, adapted for our ensemble (the oboe parts are played by the flutes) and Claude-Bénigne Balbastre’s solo-keyboard transcription. This creates an effect of the musicians “playing around” with the piece while playing it as a chamber ensemble. During the repeats, we keep only the full orchestral version, with the harpsichord playing the continuo line.
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Pigmalion: Sarabande
The original score does not contain a written-out figured bass. I have fully written out, onto the original score, the bass line with figured-bass notation: this allows me to easily play from the original score, without having to play from a transcription in a more modern notation.
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Les Indes Galantes: Tremblement de Terre
Another figured-bass notation was written.
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Pigmalion: “L’Amour triomphe”
In Rameau’s score, this aria has two sections: the first is a solo for Pigmalion (in our case performed by a soprano). The second introduces a choir and contains a fuller orchestration. In our version, the first aria retains its instrumentation, but the choral section requires an adaptation: the first soprano keeps singing the Pigmalion part, the second soprano sings the choir soprano part, and the flute plays the choir tenor line an octave higher. The viola da gamba also plays the short choir bass part in the last verse. This way, we can play each separate voice in the choral texture with our limited number of musicians.
François Rebel & François Francoeur: “Air pour les Esprits Malfaisants”
We have the flute play the viola line an octave higher, to keep the part within the flute’s range.
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Dardanus: “Monstre affreux”
Our viola da gamba plays the viola part as written.
Noël Nouvelet (traditional French carol)
I have transcribed this traditional French Christmas carol, arranging it for our ensemble and writing out all parts.
François Couperin: Les Amusements
Les Amusements is originally a solo harpsichord piece. Inspired by Jean Rondeau’s album Barricades, where Thomas Dunford plays a lute counterpoint to the solo harpsichord, I composed a bass-line counterpoint. This single-voice mainly outlines Couperin’s harmony, only occasionally becoming a more melodic counterpoint.
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Nouvelles Suites de clavecin: Allemande in a minor
This allemande is for solo harpsichord. Prof. Urszula Bartkiewicz created a second-harpsichord accompaniment so that the piece can be played as a duet.
Oj Maluśki: traditional Polish carol
This pastoral carol we transcribed for three voices: basse de violone, violin, and voice.
We occasionally rewrote parts in different clefs or octaves to suit our ensemble. For example, there is no viola player, so some “alto” parts must be played by a different instrument — in our case, this is usually the second violin or flute. We sometimes rewrote the part an octave higher in treble clef — not just so that the flute, for example, can play all the notes, but also to enter a stronger register than the lowest notes.
J-M. Hotteterre writes in his Principes de la flûte traversière how the breath “must be managed in such a way that the sound is neither harsh nor dead.” He also writes about a specific technique needed in the lower register — the flutist must not force the tone, using a “gentler breath” than on higher notes. This “gentler breath” would not always fit the pieces where we use the flute instead of the viola. For example, the Air pour les Esprits Malfaisants is a louder, fast, and powerful piece. Transposing the flute an octave higher than the original viola part gives the piece “more meat.”
As an aside, period composers did mention octave transpositions: this was a technique common in harpsichord continuo playing — both F. Couperin (“The bass must be […] placed on that part of the harpsichord where it produces the best effect”, in L’Art de toucher le clavecin) and J-H. d’Anglebert (“One should not bind oneself slavishly to the notes of the bass […]” in Pièces de clavecin) encourage transpositions on the bass line as the harpsichordist sees fit.
During my last harpsichord lesson before my bachelor’s diploma recital, prof. Bartkiewicz, in order to stabilize my wavering tempo, played an improvised basso continuo on a second harpsichord while I played Rameau’s Allemande in A minor from the Nouvelles suites. An idea was born to refine this improvised basso continuo and perform the piece on two harpsichords — in a manner inspired by François Couperin’s Allemande à deux clavecins (also performed in „Noël de Pologne”).
Turning Rameau’s solo harpsichord Allemande into a two-harpsichord duet has historical precedent. F. Couperin published only one piece explicitly written out for two harpsichords, the Allemande. However, in his Concert instrumental sous le titre d’Apotheose de Lully, Couperin states that the trios in that book as well as other trios he wrote can be performed by two harpsichords, and that he has played them in such a way with family and students “with very successful results.” He writes how the bass line is played in unison by the two harpsichords, and the two upper voices are split between the two harpsichords.
Gaspard Le Roux’s 1705 collection of harpsichord pieces contains several pieces where, under the solo harpsichord piece, he writes out a trio version of the piece. Furthermore, in the preface he encourages these trios to be played by two harpsichords — using the trio as a basis for an improvised contrapartie accompaniment to the solo harpsichord. Le Roux then includes some fully written-out contraparties to some of his pieces as examples of what is possible! What is of most importance is the improvisatory nature of these contraparties: the bass line is very often changed and embellished. The upper voices of these contraparties also do not directly follow the notation from the trios — this suggests that such harpsichord contraparties were very “free” pieces, improvised according to “good taste,” as Couperin would have put it, and not rigidly adhering to the written trio or solo harpsichord notation.
With this in mind, we feel justified in creating a similar contrapartie to Rameau’s A minor Allemande. Prof. Bartkiewicz’s contrapartie is only a sketch — more so than Le Roux’s contraparties. It is to be treated freely, similar to a basso continuo realization, and the actual performance may differ significantly from the notation.
In a similar vein, the basse de violone contrapartie for Couperin’s Les Amusements is an extrapolation of the harpsichord duet; meant to be an example of what might very well have occurred at the French court – improvisatory contraparties played by instruments other than a harpsichord or lute.
The only explicitly Polish song on the album is the carol Oj, maluśki. This carol is traditionally found in the Polish highlands, but also appears in 18th-century Franciscan manuscripts near Kraków. Leszczyńska herself was born in Silesia, and there are no available records of her ever travelling to Kraków.
However, her father was the King of Poland until his deposition in 1709, and Kraków was one of the most important cities in Poland at the time. It is conceivable that Leszczyńska could have at one point, early in her life, traveled south and heard this carol somewhere along the way. Another, perhaps more likely, possibility is that Leszczyńska might have heard the carol from someone else in her family: her parents were married in Kraków in 1698. The reality, unfortunately, is that we cannot state with certainty that Leszczyńska ever heard Oj Maluśki. Including the piece in our program, however, provides us with an example of what Queen Leszczyńska might have brought over to the French court.
Recording „Noël de Pologne” in spatial audio required more individual microphones than a project recorded in a standard two-channel stereo. While it would seem that more microphones would add more obstructions, worsening the contact and ability to see visual cues between musicians, the additional microphones needed for this project were not placed close enough to the musicians to make a meaningful difference. A large number of spot microphones was still placed among the musicians, but, thanks to a careful setup, this did not meaningfully hinder the musicians’ contact with each other.
Certain registers of instruments like traverso and the second violin can be masked by nearby basse de violone or harpsichord. Directional spot microphones (with cardioid capsules) improve isolation, while the main spaced pair, outrigger mics and surround sound mics capture the entire ensemble as well as the room ambience. Recording with separate spot microphones for each musician greatly reduced the problem of balance.
In a live performance, musicians must often adapt their dynamics to achieve a pleasing “global” balance — most often, this requires certain instruments to reduce their overall volume. This can have negative effects for an individual instrument’s timbre and sound production. In a concert, this negative aspect plays a minor role, because the positives of a good overall balance far outweigh the negatives of a particular instrument sounding a bit weaker. On a recording, however, with the microphones placed much closer than a typical concert hall audience, the sound of each individual instrument plays a bigger role. Furthermore, a substantial portion of balance control can be addressed in post-production. This frees players from having to artificially suppress their natural dynamics, because level adjustments will be applied later.
For example, the harpsichord’s relatively quiet sound is often less problematic in a recording session than it would be in a live concert. In pieces like J-P. Rameau’s Third Concert, the harpsichord plays the main solo part. This would normally require the violin and gamba parts to be played much quieter, to avoid covering up the harpsichord. In a well-produced recording, this problem largely disappears.
Unfortunately, this reliance on post-processing can, in theory, encourage a different kind of playing: musicians may assume that the engineer will “fix” balance and other issues, placing less focus on shaping dynamics within the ensemble. To mitigate that, we took special care to talk through and decide on the interplay between parts, often playing separate parts solo in group rehearsals and talking through ideas.
Another important element that this post-production balancing helps with has to do with our situation specifically. Because „Echo” is a small chamber ensemble, not a large orchestra, intrinsically well-balanced orchestral pieces can lose their sense of balance when played by our smaller group. In a large orchestra, the amount of musicians playing each specific part is different — for example, there will most likely be more violinists than flutists, balancing out the louder flutes. We, with our one-musician-per-part “orchestration,” cannot do that. To achieve a balance like this in a live concert, the sound quality of certain instruments in our ensemble would suffer even more than in typical chamber repertoire.
By working closely with our sound engineer, we were able to create a pleasing balance in the orchestral pieces without sacrificing each instrument’s timbre. What this means in practice is rather simple: the flutists are able to play in their strongest registers while the bowed instruments don’t have to strain their instruments to keep up with the volume. Also, perhaps more importantly, as the harpsichord continuo player, I do not have to play in an “orchestral” manner — I do not have to “bang” out as many notes as possible just for a slight tinkling to be heard in the background; I can develop a more complex and nuanced continuo realization that can be heard in the final mix.
“POV” cameras were placed close to the musicians — one beside the harpsichordist, showing his view of the ensemble while he leads it; another behind the vocalists, presenting a view from the middle of the ensemble towards the audience. Knowing that small motions will be visible on close-up footage encourages performers to make gestures more intentional: communication becomes clearer, extraneous motion is suppressed. The cameras don’t necessarily induce a stiffer playing in the ensemble, but they can make the musicians slightly more self-conscious — more so than in a typical concert, as in a concert small movements are not typically seen by the audience, while the camera picks up everything.
In „Noël de Pologne”, we explore a facet of the French baroque shaped by Queen Marie Leszczyńska. By treating transcription, octave displacement, and improvised contraparties as integral parts of our performance rather than modern compromises, we seek to reclaim the in-the-moment splendor of music-making at the French court. At the same time, spatial audio and close-range video documentation allow these historically grounded choices to be heard and seen with modern clarity by a far greater audience than a small court room would allow. The result is perhaps not a reconstruction of a chamber concert in the concert chambers of Queen Leszczyńska, but rather a living interpretation.
