At Christmas, Five Books for Catholics recommended some classical music for the season. Moreover, it did not recommend a hodgepodge of works from different periods. It stuck instead to twentieth-century classical composers. As a follow-up, here is a selection of five works of classical music for Lent by twentieth-century composers.
- Quatre Motets pour un temps de pénitence
by François Poulenc - Miserere
by Henryk Górecki - Triodion
by Arvo Pärt - Miserere and Videns Dominus
by James MacMillan - Symphony of Psalms
by Igor Stravinsky
Recommending some twentieth-century classical music for Lent might seem easier said than done. Nowadays, we do not associate Lent with music as we do Christmas. This is not how things have always stood.
In an interview with the Catholic Herald, the conductor Harry Christophers, renowned for his performances of sacred music, noted that the Lenten and Easter repertoire used to outstrip that of Christmas music.
“Frankly, I think some of the best music we have is written for Lent and Passiontide – from Renaissance composers particularly. I suppose in those days the accent on it was much, much more important than Christmas.”
Fortunately, composers born or active in the twentieth century have produced a substantial body of sacred music for that fits right into Lent. But why focus just on these composers rather than the even richer Renaissance and Baroque repertoire?
There are two motives. First, focussing on works written since 1900 sets an additional criterion for selecting the entries. Otherwise, the list ends up being a loosely connected assortment of Lenten pieces. That still does not explain why it is worth focussing on twentieth-century composers rather than Renaissance or Baroque ones. That is where the second, pedagogical motive comes in.
Those who dislike modern classical music might wonder whether listening to some is being recommended as a valuable penitential practice for Lent. Granted, there is plenty of awful modern music that would serve that purpose well. However, anyone wanting tips for putting together their penitential playlist, will need to do their own research. The works recommended here are by outstanding composers. They are seasonal. They are also accessible. They may be a good entry point for those who are unfamiliar with modern classical music. Listening to them can be pedagogical. It is a way of dipping your toes into the waters without getting them scalded or frostbitten.
1.
The Quatre Motets pour le temps de Noël (1952) by François Poulenc (1899-1963) figured in the survey of twentieth-century classical music for Christmas. It was a companion piece for his earlier Quatre motets pour le temps de penitence (1938-39), these too for unaccompanied choir. As the latter work’s title suggests, it is for Lent and Holy Week.
The Quatre motets pour le temps de penitence are one of the first works of sacred music that Poulenc wrote after a turning point in his career. The first was Litanies à la Vierge noire (1936), written shortly after he had taken up his Catholic faith again.
In 1936, Poulenc was moved by the death by car accident of a young composer, Pierre-Octave Ferroud. He retreated to Rocamadour, a site of Marian pilgrimage that his father held dear. During his visit to the sanctuary of the Black Virgin, the simple faith of the pilgrims helped him recover his own. He had left it aside amid the Années folles.
Poulenc’s sojourn at Rocamadour inspired his Litanies à la Vierge noire. This work is a turning point in his output. Thereafter, the composer of Les biches began to produce a substantial body of sacred music or, in the case of his acclaimed operatic setting of Georges Bernanos’ Dialogues of the Carmelites, works about the faith. The themes of his non-sacred music also became more substantial.
The idea for the Quatre motets pour le temps de penitence came to him when listening to two cantatas by Darius Milhaud. However, this was not the only inspiration for the work. Andrea Mantegna was another.Poulenc stated that he wanted to make the motets just “as realistic and tragic” as Mantegna's paintings. Tomás Luis de Victoria was another inspiration. Poulenc admired the Renaissance composer of sacred polyphony greatly and claimed that he thought unceasingly of him while working on the motets.
It is not immediately apparent why Poulenc would have thought of Victoria. Poulenc's motets favour homophony over polyphony, Victoria's hallmark. There are, nonetheless, several strong connections between these motets and Victoria. Just as Victoria is best known for his Tenebrae responsories, three of Poulenc’s Quatre motets pour le temps de penitence are Holy Week responsories (Vinea mea electa, Tenebrae factae sunt, Tristis est anima mea). Victoria incorporated dissonance more freely into his works than some of his contemporaries. Similarly, Poulenc springs surprising dissonances on the listener of his motets. Victoria’s direct style is also mirrored in the austerity of the motets.
One excellent recording is that of Polyphony, directed by Stephen Layton. It also includes Poulenc’s Quatre Motets pour le temps de Noël, Gloria, and Exultate Deo.
2.
Chopin is Poland’s best-known composer, maybe even its greatest. However, the country produced a richer crop of composers during the twentieth-century: Szymanowski, Bacewicz, Panufnik, Lutosławski, and Penderecki. One such composer to have written a work that fits right into Lent is Henryk Górecki (1933-2010).
Górecki’s Miserere, Op. 44 (1981) was dedicated to the town of Bydgoszcz. On 19 March 1981, members of Solidarność attended a meeting with the local authorities of Bydgoszcz to resolve an ongoing local strike. The representatives of Solidarność were pressing for the formation of an independent farmers’s union. When the local authorities refused to discuss the formation of the new union, the Solidarność representatives refused to leave the proceedings. The Citizen’s Militia and its reserve branch, ZOMO, were called in to resolve the situation. They arrested and beat the Solidarność representatives brutally. The move backfired and by the end of the month, the Communist regime had to capitulate before a national strike organised by Solidarność, allow the movement to report independently on the Bydgoszcz events on public television, and resume the talks over the registration of an independent farmers’s union.
Gorecki’s decision to dedicate his Miserere to Bydgoszcz meant that the state did not allow an immediate performance of the work. Nor did it allow for a public announcement of the work’s eventual premiere in 1987. Fortunately, no state sponsored publicity was needed. The work was performed to a packed house.
Despite its title, the work is not a setting of Psalm 50 (51), the Miserere¸ but of the the liturgical invocation, “O Lord, our God, have mercy on us” (Dómine Deus noster, miserére nobis).
Slowly, the work builds up to a climax. The choir is divided into eight parts, one entering after another, from lowest to higher. Each sings a different melody, centred on the next third of the arpeggio. The basses begin in A and the work ends on an A minor chord. Moreover, the last two words of the prayer—miserere nobis—are first uttered in the last of the work’s eleven sections.
The Chicago Lyric Opera Chorus’s performance under the direction of John Nelson is a first-rate recording. Indeed, the work is written for a large chorus. Gorécki indicated a minimum of 120 singers, probably so that the singing would sound like that of church’s congregation.
3.
Lancing College, a public (i.e. private) school in West Sussex, commissioned the Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt (1935-), to write a piece for the 1998 celebration of its 150th anniversary. Benjamin Britten had written his cantata Saint Nicolas (Op. 42) for the school’s 100th anniversary. He had thereby commemorated one of the school chapel’s two patron saints. The other is Mary. Pärt decided to compose a work in her honour and set about looking for a suitable text.
He settled upon a Triodion, or group of three prayers in the form of odes, taken from the homonymous Eastern Orthodox liturgical book for Great Lent. The first is a prayer to Christ; the second to Mary; the third to St. Nicholas. Subsequently, he found a sixteenth-century Russian icon that depicted the three together and confirmed the appropriateness of his choice.
According to conductor Peter Phillips, founder of the Tallis Scholars choir,
“No music being written today makes a more satisfying match for Renaissance polyphony than the sacred compositions of Arvo Pärt.”
Phillips has been adding regularly pieces of Pärt’s to Tallis Scholar’s programmes, “ever more convinced that his music was providing an important new perspective to the works of the older masters.”
This may be partly on account of his affinity with those older masters. During the late sixties and early seventies, Pärt studied European music from the fourteenth to sixteenth century, including Gregorian chant, Ockeghem, Obrecht, Josquin, and Palestrina. Not only did he abandon atonality in favour of tonality. He also absorbed and incorporated some stylistic elements of medieval and Renaissance music. In his early compositions, Pärt employed serialism and other modernist compositional techniques.
Equally significant for his musical development was his conversion from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy in 1972. He had already written sacred music prior to his conversion, such as his Credo (1968). Nevertheless, his Orthodox faith has clearly influenced not only the genre and themes of compositions, but also his sacramental conception of music.
Holy minimalism is the label that is often used to categorise his music. It is minimalist in that the works of his mature period opt for tonality and the greatest simplicity possible instead of modernist atonality and hermetic complexity. It is holy minimalism on account of its religious orientation. Many find the 'holy minimalism' label oversimplistic and misleading. However, like most simplifications, it is useful as a preliminary rough description.
In Triodion, the unaccompanied choir is divided into nine parts. The singing is largely homophonic, with the basses singing a drone note.
In the hymns, we turn to Christ to “entreat forgiveness from our sins”; we invoke Our Lady as penitents, and St. Nicholas as “a teacher of abstinence.” The music reaches a climax in the third ode with the supplication “that our souls may be saved.”
Two recommended recordings are that the Tallis Scholars and Polyphony. Each contains some of Pärt's other sacred music for unaccompanied chorus.
4.
The Scottish composer James MacMillan (1959) first came to the attention of critics and audiences for his instrumental music, most notably The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (1990). Increasingly, he has written sacred music, much of it for unaccompanied choir. Like major composers of the past, such as Bach and Mozart, MacMillan also has ample experience as an on-the-ground Church musician. From 2005-2015, he was choirmaster of St. Columba’s, Maryhill, Glasgow.During that time, he also composed music for the Masses that Benedict XVI celebrated in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park and in Birmingham for the Beatification of John Henry Newman.
A record by The Sixteen, under their founder and director, Harry Christophers, contains two of MacMillan’s works that are made for Lent.
First, there is his Miserere (2009), a setting of the fourth of the seven penitential psalms: Psalm 50 [51]. It was composed for The Sixteen.
In turns plaintiff, haunting, and moving, it exhibits various characteristics of MacMillan’s style. There are motifs, rhythms, and intervals from traditional Scottish music. These are juxtaposed with other styles, such as Anglican chant, and Gregorian chant.
Unlike Górecki's Miserere, which ends on an uncertain A Minor, MacMillan's opens in sorrow, in E Minor, but ends on a note of hope in God’s mercy in E Major.
Second, there is Videns Dominus, a communion motet written for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. The text is from the Gospel According to John (11:33, 35, 43-44, 39).
This motet is one Macmillan’s Strathclyde Motets (2000-2010), so called because they were commissioned for the chaplaincy of Strathclyde University. MacMillan has described them as a “collection of sacred motets, many of them for use at Communion, designed for a good, amateur church or cathedral choir, or amateur secular choir.” Twelve of the fourteen motets, including Videns Dominum, are for unaccompanied choir.
5.
The final work was commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s fiftieth anniversary (1930) and does not have an explicitly Lenten theme. Nor is it sacred music in the strict sense, even though each of its three its three movements is a musical setting of verses from Psalms 38, 39, and 150 respectively. The Symphony of Psalms by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1871) was written for a concert hall, not for a cathedral or church.
Nevertheless, an argument can be made that work makes apt listening during Lent. The first movement is a setting of verses from the third of the penitential psalms.
It is not the only one of Stravinsky's works that makes for Lenten listening. So too can one of his theatrical works, The Soldier’s Tale (L’Histoire du Soldat), . It is based on a Russian folk story, and tells the cautionary tale of a Russian soldier who makes a deal with the devil. There is an excellent recording conducted by Stravinsky and narrated by Jeremy Irons.
Stravinsky is the musical counterpart of Picasso. One of the greatest and most influential twentieth-century composers, he was always rethinking the existing tradition and reinventing himself. The Symphony of Psalms is a case in point.
Some believe that Stravinsky may have opportunistically labelled his settings of Psalms a symphony so as to meet Serge Koussevitzky’s commission for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. However, the work is a novel rethinking of the symphonic tradition.
Nearing fifty when he wrote it, Stravinsky had long resisted the pressure to write a symphony. The Symphony of Psalms is his first and arguably the most novel of his three contributions to the genre. The other two are the Symphony in C (1940) and the Symphony in Three Movements (1948). Significantly, Stravinsky did not number them as successive entries in a series. He thereby indicates that each one is a novel, self-standing rethinking of the genre.
In a way, the Symphony of Psalms rethinks the line of choral symphonies that goes back to Beethoven’s ninth. Nor was Stravinsky the first to have used liturgical texts in a choral symphony. Mahler’s Symphony no. 8 opens with the Veni creator Spiritus (Come Holy Ghost, Creator), but juxtaposes it with a setting of the closing scene from Goethe’s Faust. Stravinsky takes an utterly different approach. This is no choral symphony in the traditional sense. In a letter that he wrote to friend a few months before the premier, Stravinsky state that he was not inserting Psalms into a symphony but symphonizing the singing of psalms. Unlike Beethoven’s choral symphony, the singers are not playing second fiddle to the orchestra. Unlike Mahler’s eighth, the liturgical takes priority over the symphonic, literary, and operatic elements. Each of the three movements is exactly what Stravinsky said: symphonised psalmody.
Stravinksy explained its status as a symphony.
"The juxtaposition of the three psalms is not fortuitous. the prayer of the sinner for divine pity (prelude), the recognition of grace received (double fugue), and the hymn of praise and glory are the basis of an evolutionary plan. The music which embodies these texts follows its development according to its symphonic law. The order of the three movements presupposes a periodic scheme and in this sense realizes a 'symphony'. For a periodic scheme is what distinguished a 'symphony' for a collection of pieces with no scheme but one of succession, as in a suite."
The orchestration is unusual. There are no violins, violas, or clarinets. This levels the ground between orchestra and choir. It also makes for a darker, starker orchestral sound. This may be meant to evoke the ancient and medieval world in which the Church's liturgical chant is rooted. Though the work was written during Stravinsky’s neo-classical phrase, it clearly evokes the baroque and at some points even medieval music.
The influence of the baroque is evident above all in the second movement’s double fugue. Many have also noted that there are passages in the Dorian scale and Phrygian mode at the beginning of the first movement. These scales are typical of Gregorian chant. While Stravinsky declared that this was unintentional, he did not rule out that he may have included them unconsciously. The work's evocation of liturgical traditions is heightened by its use of Latin texts (though Stravinsky started off composing to Old Slavonic).
There are many excellent recordings of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, including those of the composer himself, Leonard Bernstein, or, more recently, Sir Simon Rattle. Appropriately, Nigel Short's recording with Tenebrae and the BBC Symphony Orchestra puts the choir and the text forward. Moreover, Tenebrae sing the text more like a Cathedral choir than an orchestral or operatic one. However, the orchestral playing is not as brilliant as it should be in a work where the instrumental forces are just as important as the vocal ones. Philippe Herreweghe’s recording strikes the right balance between brilliant orchestral playing and meditative choral singing of the Psalms. It also pairs the work intelligently with some of Stravinsky’s other sacred music.
Hopefully, listening to these five works will lead us to express our contrition in prayer, implore God's mercy, and feel the consolation of his compassion.
