AT THE end of the 1660s, aged just 17, the composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier set off to Italy, returning to France some years later an accomplished musician, with the manuscript of his Messe à Quatre Chœurs under his arm.

A recent concert, “Charpentier et l’Italie”, in the magnificent Chapelle Royale of the Palace of Versailles, traced Italy’s direct influences on the composer, by way of the Vatican, where polychoralism was a common practice, but also Venice, where local composers contributed greatly to the dissemination and teaching of the 17th century’s major style. Charpentier probably never heard Monteverdi and Gabrieli, but without them his music would have been quite different.

The accompanying Consort Musica Vera’s trademark use of Renaissance woodwind and brass might also have surprised him. He used recorders, but might have been astonished by cornets and sackbuts, let alone a rackett, and by the mixed voices of the Chœur de l’Opera Royal and the children of the Maîtrise de Paris. Strict authenticity, however, was successfully cast aside in favour of a rich tonal palette, with a large continuo section that boasted both organ and harpsichord, theorbos, and a harp. One slight quibble was the use throughout of a side drum. Sometimes it worked, giving Charpentier’s Mass a martial feel. More often it was an unnecessary distraction.

The opening Deus in adjutorium from Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, with its tenor soloist singing from above, began the evening with a flourish, followed by Benevoli’s six-choir Dixit Dominus and Monteverdi’s Sonata sopra Sancta Maria. The Chapelle’s numerous alcoves and overhead galleries lend themselves perfectly to polychoral music. Small groups of instruments and singers were dotted around the sides like clumps of primroses on a grassy bank. The smudgy, echoing acoustic brought a glorious soft glow to the sound. That this sometimes came at the expense of the words was unimportant.

Agostini’s Magnificat à cinq chœurs, with its big blocks of choral sound, looked back to the 16th century, and the repetition of “Et in saecula saeculorum” falling from all sides really did give the feel of endless ages. The baritone Halidou Nombre’s powerful and unaffected baritone was effective in Gabrieli’s In Ecclesiis.

In a magnificent end to a truly memorable evening, the director, Jean-Baptiste Nicolas, led his massed forces and the soloists Pauline Gaillard (soprano) and Attila Varga-Tóth and Léo Guillou-Kérédan (tenors) in a rendition of Charpentier’s Mass which looked forward not only to the later Baroque, but to the Kingdom of heaven.