Sonnambula Unearths, Premieres Lost Baroque Works by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre

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The concert will feature mezzo-soprano Chloe Holgate and works by Jacquet de La Guerre's contemporaries, followed by a recording and scholarly publication.

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This fall, four little-known works by Baroque composer Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre will be heard by modern audiences for the first time. Elizabeth Weinfield, Juilliard musicology professor and the artistic director of early music ensemble Sonnambula, was the first to undertake a close examination of a book containing the works after learning of its presence in the Morgan Library & Museum's collection following its acquisition by the museum in 2022. Four 'airs' written for the court at Versailles, the significance of which Weinfield uncovered within the rare 1712 educational treatise Les Amusemens de Monseigneur le Duc de Bretagne in the collection of the Morgan, have remained unresearched, unrecorded, and unperformed for three centuries since their publication. Jacquet de La Guerre's works will be brought to life in a free concert at Columbia University on November 19, then preserved and further illuminated via a forthcoming recording and scholarly publication.

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Commissioned for the four-year-old great-grandson of King Louis XIV, the young Dauphin, to accompany courtly educational games, these pieces vitally expand the classical canon. Tragically, the young prince died shortly after their publication, leaving the music buried within a 1712 commemorative text dedicated to his governess, of which few original prints survive—one of which resides in the collection of the Morgan. The airs are included in the one existing critical edition of Jacquet de La Guerre's work (compiled by musicologist Mary Cyr in 2005), but no secondary literature analyzing their significance has been produced, nor have there been any known performances or recordings. While Jacquet de La Guerre was celebrated in her lifetime as one of the exceedingly rare women who composed at the court of Louis XIV, history books have systemically minimized her output, prioritizing the works of her male contemporaries. Opening the door to new scholarship and public recognition of Jacquet de La Guerre's work—including Weinfield's new research on the pieces, currently being prepared for publication—these airs illuminate how women composers navigated the porous boundaries between elite entertainment, teaching, and public musical life in early eighteenth-century France.

'Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre is a fascinating woman—a composer of the highest caliber, she was also navigating the highly competitive, constantly shifting boundaries of the Versailles court, and did so while garnering respect,' said Elizabeth Weinfield, artistic director of Sonnambula. 'Discoveries like this shift the cultural needle and disrupt masculine narratives that have dominated early music history for far too long, and we are so excited to be bringing her music to life for modern audiences.'

Led by Weinfield on the viola da gamba, Sonnambula is dedicated to shedding light on previously unknown music for Renaissance and Baroque period instruments. The ensemble is acclaimed for their lush sound, deeply researched and thoughtfully curated repertoire, and frequent cross-disciplinary collaboration with leading art museums (most recently the Frick Collection, where Sonnambula served as the museum's inaugural ensemble-in-residence for the 2025-26 season). To premiere the four airs, they will be joined by mezzo-soprano Chloe Holgate, another champion of diversifying the early music canon as a member of the vocal trio ModernMedieval Voices. The program also features works by Jacquet de La Guerre's contemporaries Marin Marais, François Couperin , and Michel Richard Delalande, and a world premiere by Stephen Anthony Weinfield. The concert will be held at Columbia University's St. Paul's Chapel on Thursday, November 19 at 6:00 p.m., free and open to the public with advance registration.

The concert is preceded by a panel discussion on Wednesday, November 18 at 6:00 p.m. held at Columbia University's Maison Française. Highlighting the significance of this discovery for music and feminist history, the panel brings together Weinfield and the Morgan's Curator of Music Manuscripts and Printed Music Robinson McClellan alongside leading scholars Susan Boynton of Columbia University, Anne Higonnet of Barnard College, and Rebecca Cypess of Yeshiva University.

Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre: Works Lost and Found

Wednesday, November 18 at 6:00 p.m.

La Maison Française at Columbia University

Panel free with advance registration at Columbia's Maison Française

Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre: Lost Airs from Versailles

Thursday, November 19 at 6:00 p.m.

St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University

Concert free with advance registration at Columbia University Events

This performance is hosted by Columbia University's Maison Française and Sacred Music at Columbia. The project, including the performance and forthcoming recording, is supported by a 2026 Chamber Music America Award, with additional support from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Praised as 'expressive and stylish' by The Financial Times, Sonnambula is a historically informed ensemble directed by Elizabeth Weinfield that brings to light unknown music for various combinations of early instruments with the lush sound of the viol at the core. While Sonnambula has been presented by the nation's leading early music presenters (among them Academy of Early Music Ann Arbor, Houston Early Music, Indianapolis Early Music, Madison Early Music Festival, and others), the ensemble has carved out a niche connecting art museums with contemporaneous sound history, as a way of telling interdisciplinary stories about the voices they sound, many of which have been left out of traditional archival sources. This goal governed the creation of their 2019 award-winning album of the complete works of Leonora Duarte (1610–1678), and their 2025 release, Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos (2025, Avie Records), hailed by BBC Music Magazine as 'a beautiful disc.'

Sonnambula was the inaugural Ensemble in Residence at The Frick Collection in 2025–26; their sold-out season at the Frick continued the deep work of connecting visual and musical history that they began at the Detroit Institute of Arts, The Morgan Library & Museum, The National Gallery of Art, and as Ensemble in Residence at The Met Cloisters. In October 2023, the ensemble collaborated with The Juilliard School and the National Gallery of Art, DC, to stage Women in Art and Music: An Early Modern Global Conference.

Winner of a Chamber Music America award in 2026, the ensemble has a strong commitment to education and outreach, and has presented interactive masterclasses, lecture/demonstrations, museum programs, and composer workshops at Barnard College, Columbia University, Princeton University, The Juilliard School, University of Michigan, and others. Sonnambula is a regular recipient of arts funding from NYSCA, which affects programming throughout their seasons. The ensemble's work over the years at The Hispanic Society of America in the Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights has included concerts of music by little-known female composers with ties to the early modern Spanish diaspora; premieres of 18th-century Cuban sacred music; Zarzuela!, a program of Spanish theatrical music of the high Baroque; a Covid-era direct-to-screen premiere of Sebastían Duron's 1696 opera Apolo y Dafne; and a celebrated program of Spanish Golden Age works drawn from the over 450 pieces in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio, a manuscript of Renaissance music at the Royal Palace of Madrid.

Photo Credit: Paula Lobo

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwtv/article/Sonnambula-to-Premiere-Rare-Baroque-Works-by-lisabeth-Jacquet-de-La-Guerre-20260929)._