When Florent Schmitt’s monumental score Psaume XLVII was premiered in December 1906, it burst upon the Parisian music scene in a big way. Nothing this grandiose had been heard outside the opera house since the days of Berlioz.
The French poet and essayist Léon-Paul Fargue echoed the sentiments of many when he wrote of the Psalm: “A great crater of music is opening up.” Ravel declared the music “striking and profound,” and several music critics spoke of Schmitt as “the new Berlioz.”
Perhaps even more interesting for such a singular composition was that Schmitt’s Psalm wouldn’t be a one-off phenomenon, even though the composer himself would set just one other psalm to music – much later in life and employing only an unaccompanied male chorus (the Psaume CXII).
But the Psaume XLVII would influence a number of other French composers to create their own works based on the Psalter – chief among them Lili Boulanger and Albert Roussel.
Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), influenced by Florent Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII, composed three psalms of her own in 1916-17.
Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), the younger sister of the famous musician and teacher Nadia Boulanger, would prove to be influenced most heavily by Schmitt’s composition. Prone to sickness, the younger Boulanger would live for less than 25 years, but in her short life would set three psalms to music – all of them stunningly effective compositions.
She was an incredible musical talent: a 1913 winner of the Prix de Rome whose untimely death would cut short a promising compositional career.
John Perkins, an assistant professor of music at the American University of Sharjah, has written several articles about Lili Boulanger’s choral music – and particularly her Psaume 130 (“Du fond de l’abîme” – “Out of the Depths”), composed in 1917 and premiered in 1921 by Henri Büsser, three years after her death.
Perkin’s writings were published in the May 2010 and June/July 2010 issues of Choral Journal magazine. In his two-part article, Perkins notes the strong influence of Schmitt’s Psalm on the young composer, citing Boulanger biographer Léonie Rosenstiel who wrote that Boulanger “was extremely excited by the premiere … Lili followed every rehearsal with rapt attention.”
Perkins goes on to note:
“… Except for Schmitt’s choice of percussion … the scores resemble each other in instrumentation. Even an extended soprano solo appears in the middle of Schmitt’s work, as it does in the Psaume 130. The overall, and likely initial, influence of Schmitt’s Psaume 47 on Boulanger is evident, resulting in similar characteristics between the two works: form, instrumentation, and choice of psalmodic text.”
In addition to the Psaume 130, Boulanger composed two other psalms: Psaume 24 and Psaume 129, both written in 1916. These are much shorter in length but similar in style to Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII.
The French conductor Yan-Pascal Tortelier has made highly effective recordings of Boulanger’s and Schmitt’s psalms. His 1999 recording of the Boulanger Psaume 24 is every bit as effective as his 2012 Chandos recording of Schmitt’s Psalm, as you can hear in this YouTube clip.
Albert Roussel’s Psaume LXXX, composed in 1928, also owes a debt of gratitude to Florent Schmitt’s earlier Psalm.
Less well-known but equally effective is the Psaume LXXX by Albert Roussel (1969-1937). Roussel’s Psalm was composed in 1928 and features a tenor solo instead of the soprano found in Schmitt’s score. The orchestration differs from Schmitt’s primarily in the omission of the pipe organ.
It’s pretty clear that Roussel was influenced by Schmitt in the composition of the Psalm 80. Indeed, Roussel considered the Psalm XLVII to be the most important of Schmitt’s compositions. As Roussel characterized it, this music was:
“…the work which most faithfully reflects Schmitt’s character, and which gives the most precise impression of his voice as a composer, of the expressive nature of his melody, and the freedom of his rhythms.”
Surprisingly, considering that Roussel’s composition was written nearly 25 years after Schmitt’s, the “modernity” of Psaume LXXX isn’t particularly more pronounced. In fact, the incisive chords and vocal lines seem to stem directly from the 1904 Schmitt composition, underscoring once again how influential Schmitt’s score was on other French composers of the period.
As for Roussel’s Psalm, it’s definitely a choral piece that deserves to be better known, as is amply proven in this performance courtesy of YouTube.
