edX Online
Instructor photo

Sebastien Daucé

Directeur musical at Ensemble Correspondance

About me

Organiste, claveciniste, Sébastien Daucé est animé par le désir de faire vivre un répertoire foisonnant et encore peu connu : celui de la musique française du XVIIe siècle. C’est pendant sa formation au Conservatoire supérieur de Lyon qu’il rencontre les futurs membres de Correspondances, qu’il fonde à Lyon dès 2009, réunissant auprès de lui chanteurs et instrumentistes épris du répertoire français sacré du Grand Siècle.

Parallèlement à ses activités de musicien, Sébastien Daucé collabore avec les meilleurs spécialistes du XVIIè siècle, publiant régulièrement des articles et participant à d’importants projets de performance-practice. Passionné par la question du style musical, il édite la musique qui constitue le répertoire de l’ensemble, allant jusqu’à en proposer quand cela s’impose, des recompositions complètes, comme ce fut le cas pour Le Ballet Royal de la Nuit. Il enseigne depuis 2012 au Pôle Supérieur de Paris. En 2018, il est directeur artistique invité du London Festival of Baroque Music.

The organist and harpsichordist Sébastien Daucé is lit up with the urge to revive an abundant yet little-known repertory, the sacred and secular music of seventeenth-century France. He formed the ensemble Correspondances in Lyon in 2009, assembling around him singers and instrumentalists with a passion for the French sacred repertory of the Grand Siècle.

With this ensemble, which he directs from the harpsichord or the organ, he now travels throughout France and around the world, and frequently broadcasts on radio. Sébastien Daucé and Correspondances are in residence at the théâtre de Caen, where they developed their first staged projects (Trois Femmes directed by Vincent Huguet in 2016, Le Ballet Royal de la Nuit directed by Francesca Lattuada in November 2017, Cupid and Death in 2021), and are associate artists at the Opéra and Chapelle of the Château de Versailles, and at the Louvre Museum.

Its exploration of a little-performed and often unpublished repertory has led, with the support of the harmonia mundi label, a pioneer of the Baroque repertory in many respects, to a discography of seventeen recordings that have attracted considerable press attention.

Alongside his activities as a performing musician, Sébastien Daucé works with the leading scholars of seventeenth-century music, publishing regular articles and taking part in important performance practice projects. Passionately interested in questions of musical style, he edits the music that makes up the ensemble’s repertory, going so far as to recompose complete pieces when necessary, as was the case in Le Ballet Royal de la Nuit. He has taught at the Pôle Supérieur de Paris between 2012 and 2018. In 2018 he was guest artistic director of the London Festival of Baroque Music.