 |
 Saint Mary Magdalene |
Friday 25th August 2006 at 18:00
Vézelay (Saint Mary Magdalene Basilica)
Soloists of Arsys Bourgogne
Conductor : Pierre Cao
Vespers for the blessed Mary Magdalene
Publication of the CD
Program
Dixit Domunis (Psalm 109) : Theirry Escaich
Confitebor (Psalm 110): Pierre-Adrien Charpy
Beatus vir (Psalm 111) : Nicolas Bacri
Laudate pueri (Psalm 112): Guillaume Connesson
Laudate Dominum (Psalm 116) : Régis Campo
Magnificat : Philippe Fénelon
Each psalm is preceded by plainsong antiphon singing
Description and little background
Arsys Bourgogne’s commission for the Vespers for the Feast of the Blessed Mary Magdalene is a major event in several respects. Apart from the odd rare exception, it is now several decades since any music of this sort was written, since the removal of the vespers service from the church calendar removed with it the necessity for celebrating that service in music. Thus is was that throughout the last century, some composers turned towards truncated and decontextualised forms (those of Florent Schmitt or Igor Stravinsky), while others – Marcel Dupré, Guy Ropartz - carried on writing music for vespers, but for organ solo.
La seconde originalité réside dans l'écriture des psaumes confiée à six compositeurs, l'ensemble évoquant ainsi, plusieurs siècles plus tard, les recueils aux écritures plurielles si fréquents à travers l'Europe musicale baroque. Enfin, du point de vue artistique, cette œuvre est avant tout l'un des exemples les plus probants de l'exceptionnelle vitalité de la composition musicale française d'aujourd'hui.
Another original idea was to entrust the setting of these psalms not to one composer but to six, thus in fact relecting, at several centuries remove, the variety and richness of the settings used during the Baroque period in Europe.
Lastly, from an artistic point of view, this commission is intended to reflect the exceptional creative vitality which French music is currently enjoying.
It falls to Thierry Escaich to express the power and the implacable nature of Dixit Dominus. His lively writing uses contrasting dynamics and frequently accented and syncopated, even percussive, rhythmical patterns which evoke those chosen by Stravinsky in the Symphony of Psalms in 1930. The pulsating nature of the work is underlined by the constantly reiterated word Dixit – often declaimed between verses – and by the swift, fleeting treatment of some elements of the text.
Pierre-Adrien Charpy ’s setting of the ten verses of Confitebor is imbued from beginning to end with a sense of jubilation. Charpy pays careful attention to the prosody of the text, picks out several pieces of onomatopoeia and then subjects it to a powerful and rapid flow of (technically extremely challenging) music in an atmosphere of joyous homage.
Nicolas Bacri ’s Motet No 8 Opus 78 for mixed choir or six solo voices opens with a powerful, homorhythmic tutti crescendo, asserting immediately that indeed, ‘Blessed is he that fears the Lord’. The seven verses he has chosen (out of the nine verses of the psalm) tend thereafter to fuse. Textual blends are reflected musically in a choice of rich vocal textures, sometimes divided into two choirs (as in verses four and five), sometimes into three voices doubled either in unison or an octave away (in verse six).
The sense of serene nostalgia evoked by the perfect minor chord which we hear in the last two bars is contradicted by the ‘definitive suspension’ of the text in the middle of the seventh verse on the words confirmatum est cor….
The voice of praise in Guillaume Connesson’s Laudate pueri is tempered with calm and serenity. The motet is divided in three ‘waves’, one for each of the three first verses of the psalm which the composer chose to set. The motet derives its melodic essence from the flexibility of psalmodic language and from the use of melisma. The work closes on a fortissimo chord of C Major, saying loudly (in solfège), Do for Domini.
Régis Campo chose to set the form of praise found in the short Psalm 116 (Laudate Dominum) in a ‘very slow and mysterious’ manner. The work is based round a constant alternation between moments of classic metric organisation and others where the timing is non-metric and approximate. These latter, non-metric, sections naturally focus the listener’s attention on the rich sound combinations to be found therein. The text is frequently passed from one voice to another. The motet ends on an figuralist repetition of the formula (in) aeternum, which is gradually reduced the phoneme (u) on the piano dynamic il pui dolce possibile with which the work opened.
Philippe Fénelon’s Magnificat opens with a soprano and alto duet, filled with a restrained joy more in the keeping with Mary’s initial respose to Elizabeth than with the inherent exuberance of the Magnificat text. The moments of silence between verses reflect the composer’s concern to set the text in a clearly legible manner, which we also notice in the different polyphonic treatment with which he characterises each verse. Music is put admirably to the service of the text, great flexibility is conferred by frequent metric changes, and particular expression by the repetition of certain ‘rhythmical words’ such as Abraham or Gloria.
The antiphons sung around the six psalm settings make this a programme of particular originality, appropriate to the soloists of Arsys Bourgogne and Pierre Cao, to whom the works are dedicated..
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