Marc-Antoine Charpentier was a seventeenth century Parisian composer who studied with Carissimi in Rome, and helped to set in motion the gradual infiltration of French Baroque music with Italian traits. His four settings of the Te Deum text (a hymn of thanksgiving, probably dating from the early Middle Ages) establish this compositional vein; of these four, H. 146 is undoubtedly the most popular, made famous by the adoption of its regal orchestral Prelude as the theme music for Eurovision (a Europe-wide TV distribution network run by the European Broadcasting Union) in the 1950s. The work was probably written in the early 1690s, perhaps in 1692 to mark the French victory at Steinkerque. Cast in D major (a key that Charpentier characterized as "joyous and warlike"), it alternates between delicate sections in an Italian style for the solo singers (often combined with solo wind instruments) and exultant choruses with French-style dotted rhythms and generally simple harmonies. Within movements there are also dramatic changes of meter or texture, a typical practice for Charpentier—one reflecting his view that "diversity in itself makes perfection." The work as a whole, then, exemplifies the peculiarly lyrical grandeur, the warmly Italianate inflection of French formality, that makes Charpentier's music so attractive.

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