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Charles Gounod - 200 Years, 5. Life (continued) and First Period: Early Masses, Ave Verum, O Salutaris, other choral works, and Ave Maria
In 1839, just before Charles Gounod (1818-1893) went Italy on his Prix de Rome prize, he composed a mass for the Saint-Eustache church in Paris, the Première Messe Solennelle à grand orchestre (First Solemn Mass for grand orchestra) in G major [CG 54]. The work was written 'in memory of his dear and illustrious teacher' Jean-François Le Sueur (1760-1837) for five-part choir, orchestra and organ and was well received.
In 1841 in Rome, he was asked to write another mass for the May 1st celebration at the Saint-Louis-des-Français Church on Via del Corso in Rome. This was the Messe à grand orchestre (Mass for grand orchestra) in A major [CG 55] for three-part male choir and soloists.
These beginner's masses remain unpublished, but they were a sign of things to come. In addition to his tremendous melodic gift and his dramatic and visual talents which he abundantly utilized in his works for the stage, Gounod also created a body of very satisfying religious works. At the Sistine Chapel during his years in Rome he greatly admired the works of Palestrina (ca. 1525 - 1594), and we will see some of this Renaissance composer's influence on Gounod's works..
After Gounod returned to Paris in 1843, Abbé Dumarsais, former chaplain of the St. Louis Lyceum and now priest at the Chapel of the Foreign Missions Society, offered him a job at his parish. Gounod worked there as organist and chapel master for several years. (2)
The chapel had a poor organ and limited choir, and the parish was not used to 'new' music such as that of Palestrina and Bach. When Gounod started, the pastor asked for changes. Gounod preferred to resign instead. The pastor, however, asked him to come back the same day and promised him complete freedom in his job. After a while the parishioners turned around and started to like the new music. (3)
Gounod lived with his mother at the rectory together with the pastor and one other priest, Charles Gay. Gounod knew Gay. They had been singing in a choir together as teenagers; they met at a performance of Fromental Halévy's (1799-1862) La Juive; they both studied composition with Anton Reicha (1770-1836) and played piano trios by Mozart and Beethoven together with Gay's sister. Gay went on to become a priest and studied theology in Rome while Gounod was there. At the time Gounod wrote his memoirs, Gay had become vicar general in Poitiers.
During his third year at the Foreign Missions Gounod seriously started to consider entering the priesthood. He studied philosophy, theology, and took theology classes at seminary of Saint-Sulpice. He even wore clergy dress during one winter. In the end he realized he couldn't live without his art and returned to the world.
In the summer of 1846 Gounod took a health/summer vacation at the beach in Trouville with pastor Dumarsais and Charles Gay. He almost drowned there. The event reached the Paris newspapers.
Gounod was reported dead on a stretcher. His brother was able to reassure his mother. On the brighter side, still on the beach, he met a priest and his young pupil Gaston de Beaucourt (1833-1902). Gounod visited the latter at his mother's, a countess, house between Pont-l'Evêque and Lisieux. Gaston de Beaucourt remained a lifelong friend.
Gounod thus started his career working for the church, writing a number of masses and choral works. Let's listen to two masses and a number of choral works--religious and secular--from his first period (1839-1859). As indicated below, Gounod often rearranged these early works or wrote new settings to the Latin texts in later years, and we hear them here in whichever version is available at YouTube.
- Deuxième Messe brève pour les sociétés chorales à 4 voix d'hommes (Missa Brevis No. 2 for the choral societies for 4-part male choir) in G major for choir and organ (a revision of an a capella mass (1846) dedicated to his friend Gabriel de Vendeuvre, 1862/63) [CG 71]. This short mass was written for the Choral Societies in Paris and the Seine Department. It was later adapted by Alfred Lebeau (1835-1906) as Messe No. 3 à trois voix égales (Mass No. 3 for three equal parts) [CG 71a] for the religious communities, c. 1882, publ. 1891) and as the Messe brève no. 6 aux cathédrales (Missa Brevis No. 6 for the cathedrals) for soloists, choir and organ (1890, publ. 1893) [CG 71b]. Here is a version for male choir and orchestra arranged by Gerhard Rabe (b. 1944). The mass is infused with religious feeling throughout, and especially in the final notes of the Agnus Dei.
- Messe solennelle No. 1 en L'honneur de Sainte-Cecile (Solemn Mass in Honor of Saint Cecilia) (1855 and 1864) [CG 56] for soloists, choir, orchestra and organ. The mass was premiered at the Saint Eustache Church in Paris on the feast day of Saint Cecilia. From this beautiful mass let's first hear the two best known parts, Sanctus and the Benedictus, and then the entire work, all in live performances.
- At the end of the Saint-Cecilia mass Domine salvum fac Imperatorem nostrum Napoleorem (Lord, Save our Emperor Napoleon) [CG 56d] (1855), a prayer of the church, the army and the nation, was sung by a four-part mixed choir.
- Gounod set or arranged the Ave Verum Corpus Eucharistic chant no less than 29 times. (5) Many of them date from his years at the Missions Etrangères (1844-1846) and/or appeared in the 60 Chants Sacrés (60 Sacred Songs (1878) collection. A few were arrangements of Mozart's Ave Verum (1856/57), and some were settings in English during Gounod's time in London (1870s). The following is the most popular setting on YouTube, mostly described as a 1879 setting for four voices. The score can be found here, where it is incorrectly given the Gounod catalog number CG 19. (6) Whichever Ave Verum setting this may be, it is beautiful, so we hear it twice.
- Salve regina [CG 140] (1844/46) for SATB choir and organ. It is different from the CG 101 setting published posthumously in 1894.
- O salutaris hostia is another Eucharistic hymn, originally written by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) which Gounod set about thirty times during his career, also beginning with his years at the Foreign Missions. About half of them appeared in the 60 Chants Sacrés collection (1878). The Charles Gounod website lists O salutaris [CG 72a] (Adagio) as (1) for two high voices and organ, an offertory for the Missa Brevis No. 4 (Messe pour les Dames auxiliatrices/Mass for the Congregation of Marie Auxiliatrice) [CG 72] (1876) and (2) arranged for four mixed voices for the Missa Brevis No. 7 (aux Chapelles/to the Chapels) (1893). It is not sure whether the latter was arranged by Gounod himself, but this is the version featured below.
- In Les sept paroles du Christ sur la croix (The seven words of Christ on the Cross) [CG 147] (1855) Gounod 'captures the purity and clarity of the 'a capella' tradition of Palestrina and the Roman school. Overall this multi-movement work is declamatory in nature; however, Gounod varies the musical texture with ease and frequency... He also employs motivic development, which adds to the restrained dramatic quality...' (7)
The text's message of Forgiveness, Salvation, Relationship, Abandonment, Distress, Triumph and Reunion is timeless, and Gounod renders it beautifully.
- The motets Regina coeli [CG 106, for one or two equal voices] (publ. 1856), Laudate Dominum [CG 105, for two equal voices or choir] (1856) and the three-part Da pacem [CG 116] (1844-1846) also appeared in 60 Chants Sacrés. The collection has another setting of the Regina coeli [CG 154, for five mixed voices) and of Da Pacem [CG 115, for S.T.B. with organ or piano] (both 1844-1846), and there are two other settings of Da Pacem: [CG 66b] published after the Missa Brevis No. 1 (1846) and [CG 110] (1854) for two equal voices a capella. Let's listen to CG 106, CG 105 and CG 115:
- Gounod set the Pater Noster (Our Father) nine times. Three of the settings appeared in 60 Chants Sacrés (1878), one remains unpublished, and one was lost. The following is a beautiful setting, not one of those in the 60 Chants Sacrés but probably, by process of elimination, the 1871 version for four parts and organ [CG 146] (1871).
- In 1853 Gounod improvised a melody over a slightly changed version of the Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book I of J.S. Bach's (1685-1750) The Well-Tempered Clavier, written 137 years earlier. His future father-in-law Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman (1785-1853) transcribed the improvisation and arranged it for violin (or cello) and piano (or harmonium) with the title Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach. That same year it was published with lyrics to a poem by Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), Le livre de la vie (The book of life). In 1859 the most popular version of the melody, set to the Latin prayer Ave Maria, was published. (8) In the end, all this collaboration produced Gounod's most enduring hit, performed at weddings, funerals, and Christmas celebrations, performed by famous opera singers and many choirs. Gounod himself was unaware of the piece's enduring impact and doesn't even mention it in his autobiography--which breaks off in 1859. We hear performances by jazz vocalist Bobby McFerrin (b. 1950) in the underlying Bach prelude and his audience choir singing the Ave Maria, Anna Moffo (1932-2006), the Livinus choir a capella during a Christmas concert, and a splendid arrangement for piano, mixed choir and 6-part string orchestra by Rajko Maksimović (b. 1935).
- It was not all religious choral writing during Gounod's first period. Vive l'Empéreur, Chant National (Hail to the Emperor, National Hymn) [CG 217/217a] (1855/1862) was going to be the official hymn of the Second French Empire, but the Empire fell before it could be used. It was originally composed for six-part a capella choir to lyrics by Auguste Lefranc (1814-1878) and premiered at the Exposition Universelle in Paris (1855). In 1862 it was arranged for orchestra and fanfare. We hear the instrumental version.
- La cigale et la fourmi (The cricket and the ant) ( [CG 209/209a] (1856) for four-part male chorus (TTBB) set a poem by Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695). Gounod dedicated it to A. Lelyon who headed the Paris Choral Societies. The work was later published for three equal voices, and in 1862 it was arranged for mixed chorus and piano [CG 209a].
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(1) Photo by PHGCOM [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], 2008, from Wikimedia Commons.
(2) The Foreign Missions Society 'is not a religious institute, but an organization of secular priests and lay persons dedicated to missionary work in foreign lands.' ("Paris Foreign Missions Society." Wikipedia page. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Foreign_Missions_Society (08/04/2018))
(3) Although this is somewhat hard to imagine from a twenty-first century work environment viewpoint, Gounod explains in his memoirs that he only took the job on the condition of having complete freedom in the music he would write and perform. He would be 'the priest of music.' After a year of listening to Gounod's music, performed with mediocre forces and on a tight budget, and some of his parishioners' complaints, the pastor had enough of it and asked Gounod to make some concessions. Gounod refused and walked away. A few hours later the priest came to Gounod's house and asked him very kindly to come back to the Parish. Gounod accepted, having made his point, without concessions. (Charles Gounod, "Mémoires d'un artiste (Memoirs of an artist)." Autobiography, Calmann Lévy, éditeurs, 1896 (3e éd.), Chapter IV. Le Retour (The Return), p. 164. (https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/M%C3%A9moires_d%E2%80%99un_artiste/IV._%E2%80%94_Le_retour (08/20/2018)))
(4) Eugène Boudin (1824-1898), "The Beach at Trouville." Painting, Princeton University Art Museum, gift of the estate of Laurence Hutton, Eugène Boudin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boudin,_Eug%C3%A8ne,_The_Beach_at_Trouville,_1865.jpg (08/18/2018))
(5) See the Motets and Canticles in Latin or with Latin title, for one or more voices page at the Charles Gounod website. (http://www.charles-gounod.com/motets-et-choeurs.html (08/18/2018))
(6) The Charles Gounod site, however, lists no such 1879 Ave Verum. According to the Charles Gounod website CG 19 belongs to the draft of a lyrical Françoise de Rimini [CG 19] (Jules Barbier, Michel Carré) after Dante (draft, 1867-1868).
(7) Timothy Flynn, "Charles François Gounod: A Research and Information Guide." New York, Routledge, 2009, p. 8. (https://books.google.com/books?id=Ocsl82CocP8C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA8#v=onepage&q=Les%20sept%20paroles&f=false (08/20/2018))
(8) "Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod)." Wikipedia entry. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_(Bach/Gounod) (08/20/2018))
In 1841 in Rome, he was asked to write another mass for the May 1st celebration at the Saint-Louis-des-Français Church on Via del Corso in Rome. This was the Messe à grand orchestre (Mass for grand orchestra) in A major [CG 55] for three-part male choir and soloists.
These beginner's masses remain unpublished, but they were a sign of things to come. In addition to his tremendous melodic gift and his dramatic and visual talents which he abundantly utilized in his works for the stage, Gounod also created a body of very satisfying religious works. At the Sistine Chapel during his years in Rome he greatly admired the works of Palestrina (ca. 1525 - 1594), and we will see some of this Renaissance composer's influence on Gounod's works..
 |
| Chapel of Foreign Missions (1) |
After Gounod returned to Paris in 1843, Abbé Dumarsais, former chaplain of the St. Louis Lyceum and now priest at the Chapel of the Foreign Missions Society, offered him a job at his parish. Gounod worked there as organist and chapel master for several years. (2)
The chapel had a poor organ and limited choir, and the parish was not used to 'new' music such as that of Palestrina and Bach. When Gounod started, the pastor asked for changes. Gounod preferred to resign instead. The pastor, however, asked him to come back the same day and promised him complete freedom in his job. After a while the parishioners turned around and started to like the new music. (3)
Gounod lived with his mother at the rectory together with the pastor and one other priest, Charles Gay. Gounod knew Gay. They had been singing in a choir together as teenagers; they met at a performance of Fromental Halévy's (1799-1862) La Juive; they both studied composition with Anton Reicha (1770-1836) and played piano trios by Mozart and Beethoven together with Gay's sister. Gay went on to become a priest and studied theology in Rome while Gounod was there. At the time Gounod wrote his memoirs, Gay had become vicar general in Poitiers.
During his third year at the Foreign Missions Gounod seriously started to consider entering the priesthood. He studied philosophy, theology, and took theology classes at seminary of Saint-Sulpice. He even wore clergy dress during one winter. In the end he realized he couldn't live without his art and returned to the world.
 |
| The Beach at Trouville (4) |
In the summer of 1846 Gounod took a health/summer vacation at the beach in Trouville with pastor Dumarsais and Charles Gay. He almost drowned there. The event reached the Paris newspapers.
Gounod was reported dead on a stretcher. His brother was able to reassure his mother. On the brighter side, still on the beach, he met a priest and his young pupil Gaston de Beaucourt (1833-1902). Gounod visited the latter at his mother's, a countess, house between Pont-l'Evêque and Lisieux. Gaston de Beaucourt remained a lifelong friend.
Gounod thus started his career working for the church, writing a number of masses and choral works. Let's listen to two masses and a number of choral works--religious and secular--from his first period (1839-1859). As indicated below, Gounod often rearranged these early works or wrote new settings to the Latin texts in later years, and we hear them here in whichever version is available at YouTube.
- Deuxième Messe brève pour les sociétés chorales à 4 voix d'hommes (Missa Brevis No. 2 for the choral societies for 4-part male choir) in G major for choir and organ (a revision of an a capella mass (1846) dedicated to his friend Gabriel de Vendeuvre, 1862/63) [CG 71]. This short mass was written for the Choral Societies in Paris and the Seine Department. It was later adapted by Alfred Lebeau (1835-1906) as Messe No. 3 à trois voix égales (Mass No. 3 for three equal parts) [CG 71a] for the religious communities, c. 1882, publ. 1891) and as the Messe brève no. 6 aux cathédrales (Missa Brevis No. 6 for the cathedrals) for soloists, choir and organ (1890, publ. 1893) [CG 71b]. Here is a version for male choir and orchestra arranged by Gerhard Rabe (b. 1944). The mass is infused with religious feeling throughout, and especially in the final notes of the Agnus Dei.
- Messe solennelle No. 1 en L'honneur de Sainte-Cecile (Solemn Mass in Honor of Saint Cecilia) (1855 and 1864) [CG 56] for soloists, choir, orchestra and organ. The mass was premiered at the Saint Eustache Church in Paris on the feast day of Saint Cecilia. From this beautiful mass let's first hear the two best known parts, Sanctus and the Benedictus, and then the entire work, all in live performances.
- At the end of the Saint-Cecilia mass Domine salvum fac Imperatorem nostrum Napoleorem (Lord, Save our Emperor Napoleon) [CG 56d] (1855), a prayer of the church, the army and the nation, was sung by a four-part mixed choir.
- Gounod set or arranged the Ave Verum Corpus Eucharistic chant no less than 29 times. (5) Many of them date from his years at the Missions Etrangères (1844-1846) and/or appeared in the 60 Chants Sacrés (60 Sacred Songs (1878) collection. A few were arrangements of Mozart's Ave Verum (1856/57), and some were settings in English during Gounod's time in London (1870s). The following is the most popular setting on YouTube, mostly described as a 1879 setting for four voices. The score can be found here, where it is incorrectly given the Gounod catalog number CG 19. (6) Whichever Ave Verum setting this may be, it is beautiful, so we hear it twice.
- Salve regina [CG 140] (1844/46) for SATB choir and organ. It is different from the CG 101 setting published posthumously in 1894.
- O salutaris hostia is another Eucharistic hymn, originally written by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) which Gounod set about thirty times during his career, also beginning with his years at the Foreign Missions. About half of them appeared in the 60 Chants Sacrés collection (1878). The Charles Gounod website lists O salutaris [CG 72a] (Adagio) as (1) for two high voices and organ, an offertory for the Missa Brevis No. 4 (Messe pour les Dames auxiliatrices/Mass for the Congregation of Marie Auxiliatrice) [CG 72] (1876) and (2) arranged for four mixed voices for the Missa Brevis No. 7 (aux Chapelles/to the Chapels) (1893). It is not sure whether the latter was arranged by Gounod himself, but this is the version featured below.
The text's message of Forgiveness, Salvation, Relationship, Abandonment, Distress, Triumph and Reunion is timeless, and Gounod renders it beautifully.
- Gounod set the Pater Noster (Our Father) nine times. Three of the settings appeared in 60 Chants Sacrés (1878), one remains unpublished, and one was lost. The following is a beautiful setting, not one of those in the 60 Chants Sacrés but probably, by process of elimination, the 1871 version for four parts and organ [CG 146] (1871).
(1) Photo by PHGCOM [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], 2008, from Wikimedia Commons.
(2) The Foreign Missions Society 'is not a religious institute, but an organization of secular priests and lay persons dedicated to missionary work in foreign lands.' ("Paris Foreign Missions Society." Wikipedia page. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Foreign_Missions_Society (08/04/2018))
(3) Although this is somewhat hard to imagine from a twenty-first century work environment viewpoint, Gounod explains in his memoirs that he only took the job on the condition of having complete freedom in the music he would write and perform. He would be 'the priest of music.' After a year of listening to Gounod's music, performed with mediocre forces and on a tight budget, and some of his parishioners' complaints, the pastor had enough of it and asked Gounod to make some concessions. Gounod refused and walked away. A few hours later the priest came to Gounod's house and asked him very kindly to come back to the Parish. Gounod accepted, having made his point, without concessions. (Charles Gounod, "Mémoires d'un artiste (Memoirs of an artist)." Autobiography, Calmann Lévy, éditeurs, 1896 (3e éd.), Chapter IV. Le Retour (The Return), p. 164. (https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/M%C3%A9moires_d%E2%80%99un_artiste/IV._%E2%80%94_Le_retour (08/20/2018)))
(4) Eugène Boudin (1824-1898), "The Beach at Trouville." Painting, Princeton University Art Museum, gift of the estate of Laurence Hutton, Eugène Boudin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boudin,_Eug%C3%A8ne,_The_Beach_at_Trouville,_1865.jpg (08/18/2018))
(5) See the Motets and Canticles in Latin or with Latin title, for one or more voices page at the Charles Gounod website. (http://www.charles-gounod.com/motets-et-choeurs.html (08/18/2018))
(6) The Charles Gounod site, however, lists no such 1879 Ave Verum. According to the Charles Gounod website CG 19 belongs to the draft of a lyrical Françoise de Rimini [CG 19] (Jules Barbier, Michel Carré) after Dante (draft, 1867-1868).
(7) Timothy Flynn, "Charles François Gounod: A Research and Information Guide." New York, Routledge, 2009, p. 8. (https://books.google.com/books?id=Ocsl82CocP8C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA8#v=onepage&q=Les%20sept%20paroles&f=false (08/20/2018))
(8) "Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod)." Wikipedia entry. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_(Bach/Gounod) (08/20/2018))
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