(Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a multi-part series on the unsung heroes of Christendom.)
“Christianity has died many times and been resurrected. » wrote GK Chesterton, “for there was a God who knew the way out of the grave.” These words ring true for history in general and perhaps especially for recent history. In the early 19th century, impartial observers might have considered Christianity dead, or at least terminally ill and dying. The previous century had seen absolutist monarchs subject religion to state power and ended with the French Revolution, the world’s first openly atheist and secular fundamentalist uprising against religion in general and Catholic Christianity in particular.
What was worse was the apparent impotence of the Church, which seemed incapable of resisting the ravages of nationalism, rationalism and revolution. At the end of the 18th century, a weak pope, Pius VI, died in exile in France, a prisoner of Napoleon. Everything must have seemed lost.
And yet, the 19th century was a time of great Catholic revival in Europe and the Americas; and nowhere was this more evident than in France itself. After the Revolution had torn itself apart in its own bloodthirsty hatred and after Napoleon had met his literal Waterloo, the Church would rise from the ashes like a phoenix and from the tomb like Christ.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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By mid-century, the Catholic revival in France found its cultural voice in music and the restoration of Gregorian chant. The greatest sacred work composed during this revival was the justly famous Requiem by Gabriel Fauré. His praises, however, have been rightly sung, which excludes his being considered an “unsung hero” of Christianity; nor was he a practicing Catholic.
Along with Debussy and Ravel, Fauré is probably the best-known French composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, several French composers of the 20th century deserve to be better known. “While Fauré, Debussy and Ravel had no significant connection with the Catholic Church,” writes Susan Treacy, author of The music of Christianity, “these young composers were, or became, fervent Catholics”. Six, in particular, deserve special attention as unsung heroes who aren’t as well known as they should be.
Louis Vierne (1870-1937) suffered from near blindness, a handicap that would inspire his vocation as a musician and composer. “The good Lord, who took my eyes, will surely help me,” he said of his decision to devote his life to music. He was organist at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris for nearly forty years and composed six major symphonies for organ, in addition to works for voice, orchestra, piano and chamber ensembles.
Her Solemn Mass for choir and two organs was the expression of the great liturgical renewal of the time. The majesty of this grandiose setting of the mass was summed up by the organist and music journalist David Gammie:
After the tremendous solemnity of Kyrie and the triumphant Gloria And Sanctusthe mysterious antiphonal harmonies of Bénédicte sound a completely new note in French religious music of the time, and the long drawn out phrases of Agnus Dei will bring the whole work to a wonderfully serene conclusion.
Paul Paray (1886-1979) is the composer of three significant sacred works: his Christmas pastoral (Christmas Pastoral); his magnificent oratorio, Jeanne D’Arc (Jeanne D’Arc); and its mass composed to commemorate the quintenary of the martyrdom of Saint Joan of Arc.
THE Christmas pastoral begins with the prophets who predicted the coming of the Messiah and with the “desolate” souls in limbo awaiting the coming of the One who will set them free. The Christmas story continues with the Annunciation, the arrival of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, the appearance of the angels to the shepherds, the adoration of the newborn in the manger, including a lullaby sung by the Blessed Virgin to her child, and ending with the arrival of the Three Wise Men bearing their gifts.
Jeanne D’Arc sings to the glory of the Maid of Orléans by telling the story of her martyrdom, ending with the promise that a “radiant angel” will guide her “white-winged soul” to Heaven.
In his later years, Paray came to America and served as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1952 to 1963. He is still celebrated in the city because Fr. Eduard Perrone, pastor of Assumption Grotto Church, is a great advocate of Paray’s music and has led recorded performances of the Christmas pastoral And Jeanne D’Arc with the Choir and Orchestra of the Grotte de l’Assomption.
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) lived a miserably sinful life before his conversion, but composed wonderful sacred music after joining the faith. “I love Poulenc’s music, both sacred and secular,” writes Susan Treacy,
but he has a controversial life. He was a practicing homosexual. However, in 1936 he underwent a major reconversion to his Catholic faith and returned to the sacraments (including confession) after a dear friend was killed in a car accident. He then composed some of the greatest sacred music of the century.
Poulenc’s most famous sacred work is perhaps Dialogues of the Carmelites (Dialogues des Carmelites), opera created in 1957. Inspired by the novel of the same name by Georges Bernanos, published eight years earlier, it tells the true story of sixteen Carmelites, the martyrs of Compiègne, guillotined in 1794 during the reign of the Terror which followed the French Revolution and were canonized by Saint Pius X in 1906.
Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) was deeply influenced by the liturgical revival that occurred around the time of his childhood musical training, as Susan Treacy explains:
Gregorian chant was central to Maurice’s musical experience as a cathedral chorister. In 1903, Pope Saint Pius X published his motu proprio on sacred music (Tra Le Sollecitudini), in which Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony were promoted. At the time when Maurice became a chorister at Rouen Cathedral, the restoration of singing by the monks of Solesmes to its ancient purity was already part of the musical life of the cathedral.
Years later, as a composer, he incorporated singing into his own work, notably in his Requiem, composed in 1947. Duruflé was unhappy with the widespread abandonment of singing after the Second Vatican Council and may have composed his Mass “Cum Jubilo” which is based on the Gregorian Mass IX, in defiance of the new and lamentable trend of adopting popular and modern secular musical styles in the liturgy at the time of its composition in 1966. “I love Duruflé’s music,” writes Susan Treacy, “and I wish he had composed more. He was a devout Catholic, somewhat reclusive, and composed almost exclusively sacred music.
The fifth French composer to be praised is another of the great French organist-composers of the 20th century, many of whom were devout Catholics. Charles Tournemire (1870-1939) shared Duruflé’s love of Gregorian chant, incorporating it into several of his works.
His most famous work, The Mystical Organ, is described by Susan Treacy as “a sort of liturgical year for the organ”. Inspired by Gregorian chant and the music of Bach, The Mystical Organ also reflects the work of Dom Prosper Guéranger, abbot of Solesmes from 1837 to 1875, whose The Liturgical Year (The Liturgical Year) had a major influence on the Catholic revival of which Vierne, Paray, Poulenc, Duruflé and Tournemire constituted such an important although largely unknown part.
The sixth and final composer is Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), whose compositions are concerned with the theme of eternity. From his first works The Heavenly Banquet (Le Banquet Céleste), dating from 1927, through to later works, such as Quartet for the end of time (End Times Quartet), premiered in 1941, it sought to evangelize the dark, war-torn times in which it found itself with the timeless beauty of God’s presence in time and eternity. This visionary mission was summed up by Susan Treacy:
In an increasingly secular 20th century, Messiaen sought to reveal the sublimity, immensity, depth, tenderness, anguish, joy, clarity and mystery of Catholicism to a world that did not care to remember his own. finitude and apostasy.
Messiaen notably sought to achieve this by evoking the beauty of birdsong in his works. Considering birds as “little servants of immaterial joy”, he considered them as angels, as messengers of the presence of God in the beauty of song. If Messiaen is right, and he is, then he and the six other featured composers are themselves like angels, blessing the earth and heavens with the beauty of their songs.
As Benedict XVI reminds us, “(the) only truly effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely the saints that the Church has produced and the art that grew in its bosom. » It is, he adds, “the splendor of holiness and art” which bears the best witness to the Lord.
These six composers were perhaps not saints, but the splendor of their voices bears a living testimony to the Lord. May we hope and pray that their songs continue to be sung and that they can be heard more clearly amid the din and discord of our modern world.
