Before 1800, the western societies are traditional.
Bach, Vivaldi, Rameau are some highly erudite repertoires but also traditional. Their learning and performing are based on imitation and also on the oral inheritance. Classical Chinese and Japanese music are for instance mostly written, the musicians use some scores but are traditional.
At the time of the Ancien Régime the music has a meaning and a function. It was not just decorative as it often is nowadays when it tends to become consumer orientated. That is why it is vital, in our opinion, to keep this traditional music alive. Why? We don’t want to play a gigue by Bach like an Irish gigue, or a bourrée by Rameau like an Auvergnat bourrée; we want to comprehend and to feel from inside what early and traditional music has in common and how they share permanence and universality.
With a thorough research and the control of musical values like the movement, the structure, the beat (measure), the ornamentation, the variations, we can really give a meaning at contemporary performances of this music.
When developed, these values take us to the following basic notion: flexibility in discipline and discipline in flexibility, in a word: the feeling of the movement. The movement of a walking man, conjured up by Rameau in his Traité de l’Harmonie (1722), is exactly the same everywhere and for all time: raise/lower, exertion/relaxation, inhalation/exhalation: universal and timeless duality we experience each questioning moment of the life.
" Experience shows that the ones who develop in a band of common musicians, and who have been playing a lot for dancers are better Ripienistes than those who have only played in the galant manner in one sort of music."
Johann Joachim Quantz, Essai (1752).
More than a musical ensemble, we wish that Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien are a melting pot where all these questions can be resolved and shared by the individual and for the joy of the public in general.