Cantique de Jean Racine
Cantique de Jean Racine (Chant by Jean Racine), Op. 11, is a composition for mixed choir and piano or organ by Gabriel Fauré. The text, "Verbe égal au Très-Haut" ("Word, one with the Highest"), is a French paraphrase by Jean Racine of a Latin hymn from the breviary for matins, Consors paterni luminis. The nineteen-year-old composer set the text in 1864–65 for a composition competition at the École Niedermeyer de Paris, and it won him the first prize. The work was first performed the following year on 4 August 1866 in a version with accompaniment of strings and organ. The style shows similarities with his later work, Requiem. Today, the two works are often performed together.
Cantique de Jean Racine
11
Composition competition
Paraphrase by Jean Racine of a hymn for matins from the breviary
French
1865
4 August 1866: Montivilliers abbey
SATB choir
- Versions:
- Organ
- Piano
- Strings and organ
- Orchestra
History[edit]
Fauré entered the school of church music École Niedermeyer de Paris in 1854, when he was nine years old. There he received training in piano, theory, composition, and classical languages. Weekly choir singing was part of the curriculum for all students. Fauré's teacher in advanced piano was Camille Saint-Saëns, who encouraged him to compose. In 1861 Fauré participated in the first composition competition at the school. In 1863 he submitted a setting of Psalm 137, Super flumina Babylonis, for five vocal parts and orchestra. He received an award but no prize because he had not strictly adhered to all conditions.[1] At age 19, in 1864–65, he composed Cantique de Jean Racine, scored for four vocal parts and piano or organ and that time he received the first prize in the 1865 contest.[1][2]
Fauré's Cantique was first performed on 4 August 1866 in a version with strings and organ, the organ played by the composer, when the new organ of the Saint-Sauveur Montivilliers Abbey was dedicated.[3] César Franck, the dedicatee of the composition, conducted it, possibly the same version, in an orchestral concert on 15 May 1875.[1] A version for a larger orchestra, with wind instruments but without organ, was possibly written by Fauré himself and first played on 28 January 1906, according to a program of the Société de concerts du Conservatoire. Neither of these orchestral versions were published.[1]
Cantique was first published around 1875 or 1876, by Schoen in Paris, as part of the series Echo des Maîtrises. In recent times, the accompaniment has been arranged for strings and harp by John Rutter, to great acclaim.[4]
Recordings[edit]
Cantique de Jean Racine has been recorded often, frequently with his Requiem. Paavo Järvi conducted in 2011 both works, combined with the first recording of Super flumina Babylonis, leading the Orchestre de Paris and its choir.[9] A recording of both pieces in their original scoring was released in 2014 with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Stephen Cleobury.[8]