Deux Coeurs Aimants (CD)

We know very little about Paschal de L'Estocart. Only a few traces of his life have come down to us. Born in Noyon, Picardie, around 1537 — according to his portrait — we know nothing of his early musical training. His name appears in Lyon in 1559, in connection with some unimportant administrative matters, and again in 1565 on the occasion of his marriage. After this, nothing is heard of him until 1581, when he enrolled at Basel University. There can be no doubt that Lestocart's sympathy for the ideas of the reformation contributed to his settling in Calvinist territory, and to having his work published in Switzerland, then a busy printing centre — particularly Geneva, with its many music presses.
The rest of his life is completely lost in obscurity, aside from two dates that offer some point of reference: he appears on the 1584 list of prize winners in the Puy de Sainte-Cecile, an annual competition, and on the 1587 register of petitions presented to Henry III, asking for a lay position in the abbey of Frémont, which was rejected. Could it be that he converted back to Catholicism, or even that he never fully embraced Calvinism?
This duality is clearly reflected in the collection of the Sacrae Cantiones, with its dedication to Count Palatine Johann Casimir — a well-known Calvinist during the Wars of Religion — on the one hand, and on the other its latin pieces, albeit a small part of the bundle.
The musical language of L'Estocart is influenced, as with all the French composers of his generation, by that of Lassus. The whole range of compositional techniques, from imitative counterpoint to homorhythmic chordal writing, are employed to serve the goal of expression, the neatness with which the musical syntax matches that of the text, rhythmic variety and the sense of movement, and the wide use of rhetoric figures. The greatest originality lies in the boldness of the harmonic language. The points of greatest harmonic daring are a result of the voice-leading, producing clashes that cannot be missed by the attentive listener.

Annie Cœurdevey