In the service of God
On his business card, the deeply religious Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) described himself as “composer, teacher of composition, organist, ornithologist and rhythmicist”. Quite a mouthful, and yet all these activities were part of an overarching aesthetic and admiration for the grandeur of creation. As a composer, he drew inspiration from his faith and from nature. He was particularly fascinated by birds, which he saw as “divine voices from nature”.
Messiaen had just turned 22 in 1930 when he published the symphonic meditation Les Offrandes Oubliées (Forgotten Offerings). It immediately came to be seen as one of the key works of his career. Not only was it his first published score for symphony orchestra, but it was also his first composition performed by a professional orchestra before the public at large. Messiaen conceived of the work as a triptych: in the first section, he depicted Jesus on the cross, accompanied by a lamentation in the strings. The second section paints a picture of humanity descending into sin, under incisive trumpet calls and glissandi. In the final section, the sunshine breaks through, filtered through the reds, golds and blues of a stained-glass window; after the offering, all errors are forgiven.
A year after Les Offrandes Oubliées, Messiaen was hired as the titular organist of the Eglise de la Trinité in Paris, a post that he would hold for the rest of his life. And although Messiaen focused until 1945 chiefly on Christian-inspired compositions, he wrote only one liturgical motet: O Sacrum Convivium. There is a good chance that the choir at La Trinité had already performed the motet shortly before Messiaen wrote it down, but the official première took place during a concert of Les Amis de l'Orgue at the Trinité church on 17 February 1938. Messiaen wrote a version for solo voice and organ for that occasion. The motet is short and quite static, and reaches its expressive apex only with the singing of the praises of the glory of God.
Prayer for the universe
Like Messiaen, Lili Boulanger was a committed Catholic. She grew up in a highly musical family where composers such as Gabriel Fauré and Charles Gounod were regular guests. It was clear from a very young age that she had an exceptional talent – not only did she have perfect pitch, but she also played piano, harp and violin with great verve. In 1913, she confirmed this by being the first woman composer to win the Prix de Rome. But even more impressive was her will power: despite her fragile health, in barely ten years she produced an impressive body of work.
Like her teacher Fauré, Boulanger had a predilection for vocal music. She drew inspiration from nature, spirituality and medieval music. Her lyrical melodies are marked by the lightness and elegance of the French musical style, but are also coloured by exotic sounds from eastern music. The death of her father when she was barely six, her own precarious health and the hardships during the First World War led her to compose deep and powerful religious works. Her Vieille prière bouddhique (Prière quotidienne pour tout l'univers), is based on an old Buddhist prayer that pleads for peace for all humankind.
Converted souls
The religious side of Francis Poulenc only came to the fore after 1936, a turning point in his life. That year, one of his best friends, the French composer and music critic Pierre-Octave Ferroud, died in a traffic accident. Poulenc was so shocked by this that he made a pilgrimage to the medieval shrine of the Black Madonna in Rocamadour. As he told it, this reawakened the faith of his childhood. Almost all of Poulenc’s choral and religiously-inspired works date from the period after this deeply significant event. Between July 1938 and January 1939, he worked on four motets that he would later combine to form his Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence. The composition of religious works offered Poulenc a welcome distraction and support during his turbulent political era. “It is a good feeling to be supported by religious inspiration… it helps me to work as well as to get through these dreadful times.”
Igor Stravinsky also returned, in 1936, to his Russian Orthodox faith, after having abandoned it in 1910. Perhaps his conscience played a role – Stravinsky had been leading a fairly dissolute lifestyle during the intervening years – or he needed a source of strength after the illness of his wife Catherine and the criticism his modernist music had met with. Moreover, Stravinsky had for some time been playing with the idea of incorporating Psalm texts into a symphonic context. When, in 1929, he was commissioned by the Russian-American conductor and publisher Serge Koussevitzky to write a symphonic work for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he pursued this path.
Stravinksy’s Symphony of Psalms belongs to his ‘neoclassical’ works, in which the composer draws on musical elements from the pre-Romantic period. In this composition, Stravinsky gave the classical symphony form a new interpretation. His striving for an art that transcends the personal also fit in perfectly with the neoclassical ideal. And since Koussevitzky did not give any specific instructions as to the orchestration, Stravinsky opted to omit clarinets, violins and violas – the Romantic instrument par excellence. His treatment of the Psalm texts also represented and alternative approach: “It is not a symphony on which I have included Psalms to be sung. On the contrary: it is the singing of the Psalms that I am symphonising.” This approach can be heard mainly in the last movement: Stravinsky composed this movement first, starting out from a rhythmical figure that was typical of his work, on the words ‘laudate dominum’. At the end, these exciting rhythms, intended to represent the joy of praising God, culminate in contemplative, almost heavenly music.
At the end of his career, Stravinsky also produced a few arrangements of works by other composers, such as J.S. Bach. Thus, in 1956, he wrote a lively interpretation of his choral variations on the hymn Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her for choir and orchestra.
