Few eighteenth-century composers earned a personal fortune solely by writing music; Joseph Bodin de Boismortier did, and could claim to be the first Frenchman to sell his talents on the open market. By 1700, the spread of music printing and publishing in Europe, allied to the growth of amateur music-making, made substantial sales of new music possible, and Boismortier seized every opportunity for meeting the popular demand for tuneful, technically simple pieces for a wide variety of vocal and instrumental combinations. Within a year of arriving in Paris in 1723, his first publications were on sale, and by 1747 had been followed by 102 works.

It was in Amsterdam in 1740 that a lawyer named Hubert Le Blanc published an astounding work that defended the use of the bass viol at a time when the violin and the cello were becoming more and more important in Parisian musical life. This recording provides a musical equivalent of his essay, depicting the initial success of the bass viol and of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe (celebrated in the film Tous les matins du monde), its moments of glory and, above all else, the repertoire of the viol, violin and cello during the first half of the 18th century.

Active as a soloist and as a member of leading early music groups worldwide, Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann has appeared on a number of BIS releases, often being singled out in reviews for her performances as continuo player and soloist. For her first solo disc, she has devised a programme illustrating the rise of the cello – from its beginnings as a large-bodied, deep-voiced provider of accompaniments in church music to a glittering, flittering solo instrument of the Rococo. The programme begins with some of the earliest repertoire for the instrument – two unaccompanied pieces by Domenico Galli and Giovanni Battista degli Antonii, and a solo sonata by Domenico Gabrielli, all hailing from around 1690.

Following on from Callirhoé (André Cardinal Destouches), Sémélé (Marin Marais) and Proserpine (Jean-Baptiste Lully), three important tragédies lyriques rescued from oblivion by Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel, Glossa is now restoring to the catalogue and within its collection of French Baroque opera, a recording made in Metz in December 2001: Daphnis et Chloé, the work which was to add Joseph Bodin de Boismortier to the roll call of the history of music in a most determined fashion.

Ensembles specializing in the French Baroque have been busy resurrecting music that's both of interest to specialists and a lot of fun for anybody discovering that much of this repertory makes good party music – just as it did when it was composed. Boismortier was a composer from Lorraine who went to Paris and made good by pleasing well-situated patrons with attractive, somewhat kaleidoscopic music that was well suited to the needs of the instrumentalists they employed. Included on the rather confusingly titled Boismortier: Sonates pour basses are pieces for low-register instruments – viola da gamba, cello, and bassoon, as well as several pieces of perhaps didactic nature, with unspecified and thus adaptable instrumentation.

Although similar in appearance, the viola da gamba and the cello are actually members of two distinct families of stringed instruments. Both coexisted since the early Renaissance, but it was not until the first half of the eighteenth century that the tide shifted, with the cello achieving dominance and the viol gradually fading into obscurity. This recording featuring gambist Jean-Louis Charbonnier and cellist Claire Giardelli explores this transition with solo works written for both instruments by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier.

The discovery of Rebels (1666-1747) Dance Symphonies, a genre mixing dance and pantomime in which the narration is delivered by the dancer alone, was a defining moment in the passion of harpsichordist duo Loris Barrucand and Clément Geoffroy. Rebel, the author of a single Lyric Tragedy, Ulysse (1703), and Elémens (1737) a suite of symphonies famed for its initial Chaos, was first and foremost a composer of symphonies that were made to be danced. Among them is Les Caractères de la Danse (1715), an uninterrupted succession of fourteen dances that enjoyed a dazzling success. Remaining faithful to his time, Rebel intended for them to be played like a piece on the harpsichord.

London Baroque presents a disc charting the Trio Sonata in 18th-century France - a musical environment undergoing rapid changes following the death of Louis XIV in 1715. In 1725 François Couperin published his Apothéose de Lulli, advocating a fusion of Italian and French styles, and the following year saw the collection Les Nations, which included L’Impériale recorded here. Jean-Marie Leclair and his colleague (and great rival) Jean-Pierre Guignon took the idea one step further. Both were fêted violinists as well as composers, and wrote music mainly for their own instrument in an often virtuosic style. Joseph Bodin de Boismortier was not known as a performer, and composed a large number of small-scale works aimed at wealthy amateurs.

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier was perhaps the very first free-lance composer in history. Being born in Thionville in Lorraine as the son of a confectioner, he went to Perpignan in 1713 and established himself there as a collector for the Royal Tobacco Excise Office, a position he held the next ten years. He must have received some musical training, though, since in 1721 a drinking song by a 'M. Boismortier de Metz' was published. His musical activities increased and he went to Paris, where he received his first permission to publish music in 1724. He published duos for transverse flute and cantatas, which was the start of a career as France's most prolific composer in the 18th century, whose oeuvre consists of more than 100 opus numbers with instrumental music, and in addition to that cantatas, motets and some stage works. He also was active as a theorist, writing treatises on the transverse flute and the 'pardessus de viole'.

The period instrument ensemble, Arcanum, presents a beautiful program of works by Boismortier. The baroque ensemble Arcanum was born when Tony Boutte (tenor) and Colin St. Martin (traverso) were asked to put together a concert for the International Conference on the History of Alchemy and Chymistry, held in Philadelphia, PA during the summer of 2007. The concert focused on music that was in some way connected with alchemy, chemistry or magic. One meaning for the term "arcanum" is "a deep secret or mystery" which suited the theme of the event well. The concert was extremely well received, and the ensemble (made up of the two core members, plus harpsichord, cello, violin and viola) was encouraged to continue.

Germany's Accent label has released a series of twin-CD sets featuring the Baroque flute recordings made by Barthold Kuijken, sometimes (as here) accompanied by his cello-playing brother Wieland. The originals date back to the late '70s, when Kuijken was one of the Dutch specialists who brought historical performance out of the too-precious phase, and they still sound good. This release pairs a 1979 set of French flute sonatas from the middle eighteenth century with a 1991 group of Italian works of the same period. The two discs, both recorded in Belgian churches, don't have exactly the same ambiance, but the pairing is an intelligent one, making this a good pick from among the various discs available.

Joseph Boismortier was a French Baroque composer who had to live by his wits, having no patrons or prestigious positions. The notes for this CD quote Jean-Benjamin’s assessment in 1780: “Happy is he, Boismortier, whose fertile quill each month, without pain, conceives new airs at will.” Boismortier, for lack of a better answer to his critics, would always answer: “I am earning money.” His four Ballets de Village are rustic suites that make extensive use of the musette and hurdy-gurdy, instruments considered country cousins, not to be used in “serious” music. Boismortier writes for them with great skill; the droning din they set up is most appealing.