Guillaume Minoret

Guillaume Minoret (ca. April 1650 – 1717 or December 1720) was a French baroque composer.

He was of the generation of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, but unlike him only a small part of his œuvre survives. Minoret famously won one of the four rotating annual positions for sous-maîtres at the Chapelle royale in 1683, organised by Louis XIV following the retirement of Henry Du Mont and Pierre Robert. Unfortunately compared to both de Lalande, who won the most prestigious Christmas turn of the four positions, and Pascal Collasse who in most opinions came second, Minoret and his colleague Nicolas Goupillet have been consigned by music historians to the roles of musical mediocrities. Prior to the competition he had been maître de chapelle at Orléans Cathedral since 1679.

Minoret was born in Paris. He was possibly trained by the school of Notre-Dame de Paris, under the composer Pierre Robert. At the age of about twenty, he became master of music (maître de chapelle) at the cathédrale de Rodez, then at Saint-Sernin de Toulouse, succeeding the composer Étienne Moulinié. On 26 April 1679 he was made master of the music at the cathédrale Sainte-Croix d'Orléans, but did not stay there long and left around the start of September - his successor Pierre Tabart was installed on 9 November the same year. This provincial cathedral's music was of high quality - ten years earlier, on 14 September 1669, for the anniversary of the church's dedication, Claude Perrault (brother of the conteur), noted in his Relation du Voyage de Paris à Bordeaux "At Holy Cross [...] we heard music that was very good and which, today, is second only to that at Notre-Dame de Paris". The master was then Philippe Martinot, who was retired as too old on 14 January 1679, thus allowing Minoret to succeed him.

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