La Petite Bande

[1][2] The ensemble was brought together in 1972 by Sigiswald Kuijken, originally for the one-off purpose of recording Lully's comédie-ballet, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, conducted by Gustav Leonhardt for the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi label.

The ensemble was given its name from Lully's Petite Bande des Violons du Roi, an orchestra of 21 string players at the court of Louis XIV.

Their initial repertoire concentrated on French Baroque music, but soon branched out into Italian and German composers, including Corelli, Handel and Bach.

The critic Barry Millington described the performance in The Musical Times: The group has an endearing attitude of indifference to concert platform ritual: each player is dressed for a different occasion.

[6] La Petite Bande's recordings of operatic rarities during their first ten years include Rameau's Zoroastre, Zaïs, and Pigmalion as well as Campra's L'Europe galante and Grétry's Le jugement de Midas.

Jean-Baptiste Lully (holding the violin) surrounded by musicians at the court of Louis XIV . La Petite Bande takes its name from Lully's orchestra, La Petite Bande des Violons du Roi . (Painting by François Puget , 1688.)