Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643 - 1704)

Marc-Antoine Charpentier never held any official position at the court of Louis XIV. Nevertheless he attempted in April 1683 the open contest for the recruitment of assistants at the Chapel Royal. After success, with fifteen other candidates, in the first test, which consisted of each candidate singing a motet, he fell ill and could not continue. This was obviously a great disappointment for him, but it did not prevent him from becoming the most important composer of sacred music of the reign.

In spite of a career outside the coveted royal institutions, Charpentier was appreciated by the King. One sign of this esteem is the invitation extended to him, at the end of the 1670s, to write music for the services of the Dauphin, only surviving child of the marriage of Louis XIV and Queen Marie-Thé