Gabriel Fauré – Cantique de Jean Racine (Op. 11)
SATB choir and organ (1865)
Text and translation
Verbe égal au Très-Haut,
Notre unique espérance,
Jour eternel de la terre et des cieux,
De la paisible nuit,
Nous rompons le silence,
Divin Sauveur jette sur nous les yeux!
Repands sur nous le feu de ta grâce puissante,
Que tout l'enfer fuie au son de ta voix,
Dissipe le sommeil d'une âme languissante,
Qui la conduit à l'oubli de tes lois,
O Christ sois favorable à ce peuple fidèle
Pour te bénir maintenant rassemble,
Reçois les Chants qu'il offre
A ta gloire immortelle
Et de tes dons qu'il retourne comblé!
Word equal to the Most High,
Our only hope,
Eternal day of earth and sky,
Of peaceful night,
We break the silence,
Divine Saviour, cast Thine eyes on us!
Cast on us the fire of Thy mighty grace,
That all Hell may flee at the sound of Thy voice,
Cast sleep from a languishing soul
Thou who bears it to the limit of Thy laws,
O Christ, look favourably on this faithful people
Who gather now to bless Thee,
Receive the songs they offer
To Thy immortal glory
And Thy gifts which they return manifold!
Fauré composed the now extremely popular Cantique in 1865. He was 19 years old and coming to the end of his studies at the École Niedermeyer de Paris. The piece was written as an entry in a school competition for which it won first prize. Although an early work and clearly steeped in the Romantic tradition there are several instances where one can clearly hear the suggestion of Fauré’s more mature and ‘modern’ harmonic language which we come across again in the Requiem. The musicologist Zachary Gates suggests:
“The long sweeping melodies and strong melodic and harmonic appoggiaturas in Cantique are a testament to the Romantic side of the piece, but there is a definite contemporary tint to what he's writing, hidden in very minute and well-justified atonal note choices in the harmonic structure and melody”.
The work begins with an extended instrumental introduction playing a series of triplet arpeggios. The voices enter in turn, beginning with the basses and the first exposition of the main melodic material is heard. Following this, the other voices enter one after the other, each presenting half a line of text, while the other parts accompany in homophony. The second section is separated from the first by a short instrumental interlude similar to the introduction, while the third and final section follows immediately as a kind of reprise.
Jean Racine (1639–99) was one of Europe's leading dramatists, and one of the few French classical playwrights to have had any success outside their own country. In 1688 he published translations of a series of Latin hymns for the days of the week, which Fauré uses here as the text for this work. Verbe égal au Très-Haut is a free version of Consors paterni luminis, the hymn for Tuesday matins, thought to be by St Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan. Matins was sung, at least in strict monasteries, during the night and the words refer to “breaking the night's silence with praise to God, putting to flight dark's evil spirits and driving away sloth”.
