In 1953, with timpani and trumpets à la Marseillaise, a French piece of music once again captured public attention (“Eurovision Hymn”) and a composer was rediscovered: the first recording of MarcAntoine Charpentier’s Te Deum H 146 was released. The introductory fanfare not only praised God but the Sun King Louis XIV, and it opens one of the greatest works of French Baroque music. Magnificent celebration and ardent pleading, effective choruses, arias and small ensembles, plus instrumental interludes combine to create a harmonious whole, drawing its higher meaning from Charpentier’s musicaltheological interpretation of the Latin hymn of praise that it is based on.