Francis Poulenc - Mass in G Major [With score]

Composer: Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963) Choir: RIAS Kammerchor Conductor: Marcus Creed Mass in G Major [Messe en sol majeur], for mixed choir, written in 1937 00:00 - I. Kyrie 03:17 - II. Gloria 07:24 - III. Sanctus 09:58 - IV. Benedictus 13:37 - V. Agnus Dei In 1936, attempting to overcome his reputation for musical flippancy, Poulenc began studying Monteverdi's motets with Nadia Boulanger. Around the same time, his close friend Pierre Octave Ferroud, a composer and critic, was killed in an auto accident. This triggered a personal crisis that led Poulenc back to the Catholicism of his youth. This confluence of spiritual and musical interests led directly to an a cappella mass for soprano solo and choir. The work, dedicated to Poulenc's father, is generally serene and confident and follows the usual sequence of Latin movements, although it omits the Credo. Poulenc's musical language here gives the impression of austerity, thanks to its firm, no-nonsense melodic writing, but the harmony is actually lush though occasionally mildly dissonant. The outer sections of the Kyrie are strongly rhythmic and affirmative, with a more meditative "Christe eleison" section at its center. The Gloria -- not to be confused with Poulenc's full-scale, jubilant late work of that name for chorus and orchestra -- changes melody, harmony, and inflection from phrase to phrase, with solo voices often emerging over a firm bass foundation. The brief Sanctus is light, loving, and cheerful, broadening out near the end for sonorous statements of "Osanna in excelsis." The Benedictus naturally emerges from those measured osannas; it is slow, patient, ethereal, and dominated by the highest voices. This time, the concluding homophonic "Osanna in excelsis" section resembles the stately, antiphonal brass chorales of the Italian Renaissance. The solo soprano introduces the concluding Agnus Dei. The chorus echoes the soloist's haunting melismas in unison octaves, breaking into harmony only upon the striking, hushed appearance of the words "Miserere nobis" ("have mercy on us"). The harmony now is Romantic, lush, and comforting, but soon the chorus is reduced to ethereal pedal tones as a cushion for the soprano's final, serene utterance of "Dona nobis pacem" ("give us peace"). [allmusic.com]