The Imaginary Forests of William Christie

The Imaginary Forests of William Christie : A Measure at the Root’s End

To mark the launch of the “Trees” project on the Google Arts & Culture platform, Les Arts Florissants unveil a delicate and original online exhibition that invites viewers into the world of William Christie—a digital journey where nature, memory, and music intertwine in the quiet breath of a Baroque narrative.

“In our retreats,

Grandeur, never come

To offer your false charms.

Heaven, Heaven, you made them

For innocence and for peace.”

—Excerpt from Les Indes Galantes: “Forêts paisibles” (Les Sauvages) by Jean-Philippe Rameau

It is not unusual for a conductor to love gardens. What is rarer is for one to see them as works of art—something to be listened to. William Christie shares with the ancients a vision of the garden as locus amoenus—an idyllic, harmonious place; a space of clarity, repose, and composition. For Christie, there is no real separation between the song of trees and the song of voices. One continues the other. There is no backdrop—only interior landscapes.

With The Imaginary Forests of William Christie, created as part of the partnership between Les Arts Florissants and Google Arts & Culture, an inner geography emerges: a childhood home in upstate New York, the gardens of Thiré, the pines of Atys. Places walked, cultivated, dreamed. Yves Bonnefoy spoke of the “true place” as a promise—here, that place exists, and it grows… One walks through it gently, quietly, entering a world where pines dance and pathways hum in harmony.

The experience is digital, but the intention is deeply Baroque: to let nature and memory, theatre and intimacy speak to each other. No ostentation. Only fragments, silences, subdued images. A fugue, perhaps—for those still searching for a measure of harmony in the noise of the world.

In these gardens, where precious things grow, time is not suspended.

It is attuned.