The Messe solennelle en l’honneur de Sainte Cécile is Charles Gounod’s best-known sacred work. The new edition carefully evaluates the autograph manuscript and first printed edition.
Charles Gounod’s Messe solennelle en l’honneur de Sainte Cécile was commissioned by the Parisian Association des artistes musiciens for performance at the celebration of the feast of Saint Cecilia in 1855. It was premiered on 29 November in the church of Saint-Eustache-des-Halles.
The aim of the Association was to provide financial support and pensions for musicians, as well as to contribute to the improvement of musical life, and the annual celebration was an important way to add to its financial resources. Gounod’s Messe solennelle was one in a series of masses by important composers such as Adolphe Adam and Ambroise Thomas. The Association also presented other existing religious works to the Parisian public, among which was Beethoven’s Missa solemnis.
It is not known when Gounod received the commission to compose the mass, but we do know that he was busy composing it in the summer of 1855. In letters to his mother he described how he spent time in the forest, read, and thought of his mass, but also that he did not regard the composition an easy task. The greatest difficulty apparently seemed to be “to respond through music to the demands of this incomparable and inexhaustible subject”. In completing his task he felt a pressure that can be imagined all too well, as he was rapidly making a name as one of the most important composers of religious music of his time. Remarkably, while the first performance of the mass, praised by colleagues such as Berlioz, Saint-Saëns and Adam, was so successful that it brought Gounod to the forefront of French composers, he was to abandon composing religious music after it and concentrate on music for the stage, only to return to music for the church in 1870.
The mass was not a completely new work. In 1851 Gounod had presented a Sanctus and a Benedictus in a concert in London, where both pieces made a tremendous impression. A journalist wrote that he had never known such a successful beginning for an unknown composer.
The situation regarding the sources for Gounod’s Messe solennelle is relatively straightforward. There is an autograph score, which is the primary source for the new edition, but unfortunately it is incomplete. At some point in the past it was divided in two sections. It is not known when or why this was done. One section, containing the Kyrie, Gloria, Offertoire and Domine, salvum fac is preserved in the British Library in London; the other section, containing the Credo, Sanctus and Benedictus is preserved at Northwestern University in Chicago. While the Sanctus (showing traces of revisions) and Benedictus are incomplete, the Agnus Dei is missing completely.
During Gounod’s lifetime, Alphonse Lebeau published a full score (1856), an organ vocal score, and parts. This score is the other important source for the edition, and the only source which contains the Agnus Dei.
Overall, Lebeau’s score is not entirely reliable. Much of this pertains to missing percussion entries (particularly in the Gloria), and the difference between the autograph and first edition in the cornet parts in the Sanctus is remarkable.
The last modern edition of the mass (1995, Peters Edition) is based entirely on the Lebeau score. Now, for the first time, this new edition corrects the mistakes and identifies the differences. The new edition provides both the cornet parts, along with an extensive critical commentary which clarifies the differences (among others) between the two main sources, and an informative historical introduction.
Hans Schellevis
(from “[t]akte” 2/2017)