Mondonville’s grands motets were enormously popular for many years at the Concert Spirituel in Paris. They follow the pattern laid down by Lalande and continued by Rameau, but with more independent instrumental parts and incorporating Italian influences (e.g. da capo arias) and operatic elements. These three on psalm texts are deeply impressive. Dominus regnavit (1734) was perhaps the earliest of Mondonville’s grandsmotets and, besides its polyphonic opening chorus, is notable for two verses entirely for high-register voices and instruments, an operatic tempête, and a stunning complex ‘Gloria patri’. De profundis (1748), written for the funeral of a Chapel Royal colleague, is by its nature sombre, and ends not with the usual ‘Gloria patri’ but with ‘Requiem aeternam’ and a fugue. The initial chorus was praised to the sky by contemporaries: other highlights are a baritone aria over a free chaconne bass, and a chorus illustrating ‘morning’ and ‘night’ by high and low voices respectively. There’s even more illustrative music in the 1755 In exitu Israel: what amounts to a dramatic scena, with agitated strings and rushing voices for the ‘fleeing sea’, dotted figures for the mountains ‘skipping like rams’, and tremolos and vocal melismas for the ‘trembling earth’. The performances are vivid, with very good soloists, an alertly responsive chorus and a neat orchestra. Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010
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