Te Deum

Marc-Antoine Charpentier wrote this Te Deum, H. 146, in the late 1680s. The manuscript lay unexamined until the musicologist Carl de Nys identified it in 1953. Its instrumental prelude, a rondeau over trumpets and timpani, was adopted the following year by the European Broadcasting Union as the signature of Eurovision transmissions, which is how most listeners first meet it.