Boulanger: Psaume 130 - Ropartz: Psaume 136 - Schmitt: Psaume XLVII

This trio of psalm settings from three fringe composers confirms the remarkable variety and quality of the musical scene in turn-of-the-century France. Truly, it's amazing that these works are hardly ever performed.

I've been listening a couple of times to Ropartz' setting of Psalm 136 (in the Greek numbering) and the work continues to grow in stature. It's the earliest of the three pieces, composed in 1897. Ropartz makes skillful use of the chromatic, Franckian idiom. The 15 minute piece is clearly structured in three parts: a slow introduction built around a beautiful, doleful theme that is evocative of the yearning of the Jewish people in exile. Follows an animated and fugato middle section that introduces a suitable element of monumentality. A short, quiet coda brings the work to an end. It's a thoroughly worthwhile listening experience and certainly the best work on this CD. It encourages me to seek out Franck's magnum opus Les Béatitudes which was finished in 1879 but publicly performed only in 1891. This was also the work that Ropartz conducted when he took his leave from his public duties as administrator and teacher at the Strasbourg conservatory in 1929.

Florent Schmitt is a composer that is as good as unknown to me. Years ago I listened a few times to his Mirages for piano which I quite liked. But I never ventured any further in exploring this body of work. In my mind the name is associated with exoticism and excess. Quite a surprise to learn then that his setting of Psalm 47 (or 46, depending on the numbering) is such an approachable work. In fact, in a way it exhibits the most conservative idiom of the three works assembled here. It was written in 1904. On the surface it sounds like a barbaric paean with blistering fanfares and heaven-storming tutti. But the harmony is reassuringly diatonic, reminding me of Berlioz, Bizet and, most of all, Rimsky's Sheherazade (1888). In its compact, exultant writing for the full orchestra and chorus it points to the Veni Creator Spiritus in Mahler's Eighth, to be composed two years later (1906). Anyway the modernism seems to be more pose than substance here. It's hard to believe the story that Stravinsky was so enthused about Schmitt's work (not only the Psalm, also his Tragédie de Salomé) that he leaned on it whilst writing the Sacre. Schmitt's Psaume XLVII certainly makes for an enjoyable audition, but to my mind it's not particularly great or subtle music.

The genuine masterpiece amongst these three works is Lili Boulanger's Psaume 130 Du fond de l'abîme. Truly an amazing work that took me by complete surprise. The CD was part of an eclectic, boxed collection that the Chandos label put on the market a few years ago to celebrate their 30th anniversary. I had listened to this particular recording before and knew it contained some very good music. But now that I've been focusing on this particular work I understand what a treasure it really is. The story behind the music is very moving too. Lili Boulanger has been labelled the first female composer to be reckoned with by her gifted sister Nadia Boulanger. And rightly so as Clara Schumann and Alma Mahler were never able to let their gift really flower. Lili's very short life was marked by tragedy. When she was six her father, Ernest Boulanger, collapsed and died whilst he was having a conversation with her. She was diagnosed with Crohn's disease which made her life miserable but was unable to extinguish her creative impulse. Quite to the contrary, it seemed to have spurred her on to put the last ounce of energy in her work. In 1913 she won the Prix de Rome with her cantata Faust et Hélène (also on this CD) which made her the first woman to do so. Du fond de l'abîme dates from 1917, a year before her untimely death at 24. It's a wonderful composition, deeply tragic, very free in form but truly symphonic and in a genuinely modern idiom. I'm thinking of some of her pioneering contemporaries here, such as Scriabin (who died in 1915), Sibelius (particularly his brooding Symphony nr. 4, written in 1910-11) or Rued Langgaard (who wrote his astonishing Music of the Spheres in 1918). One can also readily appreciate why Arthur Honneger was so taken by Boulanger's music. The Psalm sounds like the work of a very mature composer. In its mere 24 minutes it really creates a very distinctive world and sometimes it is indeed as Mahler said of his own Symphony nr. 8 that you can see the 'planets and suns coursing about'. One can only wonder what this brave woman would have been able to produce might she have lived on another decade or so.

Ropartz: Psaume 136, Le Miracle de Saint Nicolas and otherv vocal works

Joseph-Guy Ropartz is a composer one is bound to bump into when exploring turn-of-the-century French music. As Magnard he was an outsider, spending his time in the province (Nancy, Strasbourg) as a teacher and administrator. But despite those time-consuming duties he had the drive to accumulate a very extensive musical oeuvre, including six symphonies. I've always been intrigued by his reputation as 'Celtic bard' due to his allegiance to his Breton roots and I imagined him as a French pendant to Arnold Bax. So lately I decided to try my luck with a cheap Naxos CD collecting some of Ropartz' vocal works. My overall assessment is that it is certainly skillfully composed music that merits more attention than it gets nowadays. The style is derivative, which didn't bother Ropartz who once mused  that "if the originality of a composer dwells much more in the way of feeling than in the manner of expression, it is permissible for him to clothe his thoughts in traditional forms, without losing in any way his true quality". The earliest work here, Psaume 136 (Super flumina Babylonis; from 1897) is clearly indebted to Franck. (I am starting to get an idea by now how massively influential this Franco-Belgian composer has been). There's also a whiff of Berliozian monumentality, very apt given the psalm's subject matter. It's a tightly composed piece, suitably polyphonic, that shows a good command of the orchestra. The language is, as already said, conventional but there are a few striking harmonic moves nevertheless. This merits repeated audition.

The longest piece on this CD is Le Miracle de Saint Nicolas, a legend in 16 short tableaux that tells the lugubrious story about 3 boys that were killed and pickled by a butcher, but after seven years resuscitated by Saint Nicolas (with appropriate punishment for the butcher). The musical language is simple, deliberately so no doubt, lending the piece the character of a mystery play for amateurs and communities (similar to Britten's Noye's Fludde). Musically, it reminds me more of the young Debussy (a watered down version of La Damoiselle Elue) rather than Franck. The piece is scored for string orchestra with continuo parts for organ, piano and harp. There's a choir, children's voices and solos for a narrator, the butcher and Nicolas. All in all it's a quite atmospheric piece, maybe just a tad monotonous.

The three remaining shorter pieces are attractive works for choir and orchestra. Nocturne and Les Vêpres Sonnent date from the late 1920s, Dimanche from 1911. Again the style seems to orient itself quite emphatically to Debussy. Celtic echoes I didn't hear anywhere on this disc.

All in all a worthwhile release that didn't bowl me over but provides incentive enough to seek out a recording of his Third Symphony which is said to be Ropartz's masterpiece. There happens to be a new recording on the Timpani label, remarkably enough conducted by Jean-Yves Ossonce who did so well on the Hyperion release of Magnard symphonies.

The performance by the Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy led by Michel Piquemal is serviceable. The recording is unexceptional.