Estrées: Branle Les Bouffons

Jean Salomon (stage name Tabarin) was one of Molière’s predecessors.

With their usual playful spirit, Les Boréades offers a varied sampling of the theatrical music heard in Paris at the beginning of the 17th century. The composers featured include Beaulieu and Praetorius.

'Humori' is a Renaissance celebration of Carnival, the period between the twelfth day of Christmas and Lent. Performed by the excellent early music ensemble Les Voix humaines.

Dancing their way across Europe since 1994, Ensemble Buon tempo have established themselves as both, a top-notch Early Music ensemble and masters of authentic interpretation of dance music from the Renaissance to the Rococo. Working in close cooperation with the Ensemble Historischer Tanz Berlin, Ensemble Buon tempo provide an authenticity and verve rarely found in other period instrument performances: this is toe-tapping stuff!

Many of the 'composers' on this recording (Robert d'Aubat Saint-Flour, Raoul-Auger Feuillet, Louis-Guillaume Pécour, Edmund Pemberton, John Playford) were choreographers, arrangers, and publishers of dance music rather than the original composers of the music.