“Years go by without depriving this musical monument of its nobility and power.  On the contrary, it seems to shine with brighter radiance than when it was new.”

— René Dumesnil, music critic, Le Monde

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 “profound and powerful,” and several music critics spoke of Schmitt as “the new Berlioz.”

Perhaps even more astonishing 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).

Instead, what’s interesting is how influential the piece was with other composers who were active in Parisian musical life and beyond. In an article titled “French Religious Music: Precursors and Innovators,” published in the February 1952 issue of Musical America magazine, the composer Henry Barraud wrote:

“Monotony is one of the dangers that face the composer of religious music. Many French musicians, foreseeing this danger, have sought out texts in which religious expression is combined with descriptive, dramatic or heroic elements.The archtype of this genre is Florent Schmitt’s celebrated 46th [sic] Psalm. Written just after the turn of the present century, this work … broke abruptly — ten years before Stravinsky — with the style of the period as it was expressed in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.

The Psalm has played a more important role in the history of contemporary music than has generallly been realized. The oratorios of Arthur Honegger are direct descendents … as are the works of certain other composers related to Schmitt, either directly or through Honegger as an intermediary: Albert Roussel, Jean Martinon and Jean Rivier — and outside France, William Walton and Karol Szymanowski. Most of these composers have taken their themes from the Old Testament with its vast decorative frescoes, varied in color, often barbaric and rich in warlike appeal …

They are religious works more in subject matter than in spirit. Some of them have had brilliant concert histories, but it is hard to imagine [hearing] them in the church.”

On the other hand, attributing “influence” to a particular composer or piece of music is a subjective exercise. American musicologist and author Walter Simmons warns of the pitfalls of making any such imputations, noting, “The notion of ‘influence’ is a very tricky business … what exactly do we mean by influence, and how are we to make that determination?”

Simmons contends that ascribing influence to a particular piece of music may be a pretext for implying that the piece is “superior” to a composition that came along later. Instead, it is typically more appropriate to speak in terms of how two works resemble each other, rather than how one of them may have “influenced” the creation of the other.

Whether one is more in agreement with Barraud or Simmons, it could still be argued that the premiere of Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII in 1906 was a significant event in the musical life of Paris. Moreover, it had some measure of effect on other French composers, inspiring the creation of their own works based on the Psalter – most notably in the case of Lili Boulanger but also Albert Roussel, Jean Rivier, Aymé Kunc and Émile Goué.

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, former professor of music at the American University of Sharjah and now associate director of choral activities at Butler University in Indianapolis, 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.

Perkins’ 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.”

[As an interesting aside, Lili Boulanger’s sister Nadia had played the important organ part in the first performance of Schmitt’s Psalm.]

It is also interesting to note that Florent Schmitt himself, who was also a highly influential music critic in Paris, wrote these words about Boulanger’s Psaume 130 after attending a 1923 performance of the work:

“Coming from the mysteries of the abyss a song rises slowly — the choirs staged parallel to the orchestra — whose music successively emerges, little by little, to reach the most desperate violence …”

In addition to 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.

Less known but equally effective is 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.

Musicologist and author Howard Decker McKinney considered Schmitt and Roussel kindred spirits, writing in his 1949 book Music in History: The Evolution of an Art:

“Florent Schmitt and Albert Roussel were in the best sense French eclectics, strongly influenced by Chabrier, Fauré and above all others, Debussy … 

Although Roussel received his training under d’Indy’s influence [at] the Schola Cantorum, he early developed a taste for the mysterious and exotic, achieving in the end a sharp-pointed personal style quite at variance with his earlier writings.”

It’s pretty clear that Roussel was influenced by Schmitt in the composition of Psalm 80. Indeed, Roussel considered 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.”

Perhaps 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.

Comparing the two compositions in an article that appeared in the August 15, 1993 issue of the Financial Times Weekend newspaper, author and music critic Ronald Crichton noted:

“Roussel has as much rhythmic vigor as Schmitt, but his colors are bracing rather than sensuous. The final section is particularly striking, with the chorus softly pleading to the Lord ’cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved’ over dying pizzicatos.”

Henry Prunières, editor and publisher of the influential French magazine La Revue musicale, wrote these impressions of Roussel’s Psalm in an article appearing in the British publication The Musical Quarterly in January 1930:

“It is neither the highly theatrical conception of Florent Schmitt’s formidable Psalm, nor yet the purely mystic one of Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus. It is a great human work, poignant in feeling, without external brilliance, devoid of super-terrestrial effusion. It speaks for men who suffer — and who implore the Heavens to save them, with cries of revolt which in the end subside in a transport of confidence and hope.”

Roussel’s Psalm is definitely a choral piece that deserves to be better known, as is amply proven in this EMI recording headlined by the conductor Serge Baudo, available courtesy of YouTube.

As for Jean Rivier (1896-1987), his contribution to music based on the psalter, Psaume LVI, is also a worthy composition.  It was created more than 40 years after Schmitt’s Psalm 47 — and yet here as well the influence of “Schmitt as forerunner” is clearly evident.

Rivier’s work is scored for soprano, tenor, chorus, organ and orchestra.  To my knowledge it has never been commercially recorded, but we are fortunate to be able to hear a live performance of the piece as presented by the ORTF in concert in 1952, courtesy of YouTube, with the musical forces directed by Jean Martinon — the same conductor who was responsible for making one of the most memorable recordings of Schmitt’s Psalm (the CD reissue is pictured above).

Beyond Roussel, Boulanger and Rivier there is an additional French composer — Aymé Kunc (1877-1958) — who represents a rather fascinating case.  Kunc was Schmitt’s junior by seven years, dying the same year as his older compatriot.  He won the Prix de Rome second prize for composition two years following Schmitt, in 1902.  (The other second prize winner that year was Maurice Ravel; no first prize was awarded.)

Kunc became quite friendly with Schmitt and André Caplet (the 1901 first prize winner), no doubt being influenced by what he was encountering in these other composers’ musical creations.

In 1907, Kunc composed Psaume CXLVII as one his final envois from the Villa Medici in Rome.  The piece is a total rarity these days.  I’ve been able to find oblique references to it in just a few historical documents; almost certainly no recorded documentation exists.  One of those references about Kunc’s Psalm piques curiosity:  the piece is characterized as “worthy of Florent Schmitt’s Psalm 47,” composed three years earlier. Hopefully there will come a day when this score can be rediscovered — if only to confirm whether that description is accurate — and indeed that what we have is a hidden gem to bring back from “musical purgatory” …

Another French composer who presents an interesting case is Émile Goué (1904-1946), whose musical career is somewhat analogous to that of Alexander Borodin. Goué studied mathematics and philosophy, before earning degrees in physics and chemistry. Beginning in 1923 he taught at a succession of highly regarded schools, ending his university career at Lycée Louis-le-Grand holding one of the most renowned chairs in higher education in France.

But Goué also studied music and composition with two important masters: Albert Roussel and Charles Koechlin. With their encouragement, starting in 1931, Goué created an astonishing number of finely crafted compositions. Koechlin left us this insightful description of Émile Goué and his artistic output:

“He is above all a sensitive, a lyrical man. However, he keeps a constant need for order: a Cartesian whose art does not abandon itself to the fantasy of musical improvisation. The monothematic form that he often prefers is extremely voluntary. It is infinitely serious, often harsh (even strange), sometimes quite austere, sometimes tragic too. But on occasion he achieves real beauty … He is not an entertainer. He isn’t even a skillful charmer. There’s often something rough about him. But it is a living being — who loves, who suffers, who has mercy. What he leaves behind is significant enough to deserve to escape oblivion.”

Goué composed two psalms — the first — Psaume XIII for tenor, chorus and orchestra — in 1938, and the second — Psaume CXXIII for tenor, men’s chorus and orchestra — written in 1940 during his captivity as a prisoner of war in Germany. Captured at the beginning of the Second World War, Goué was to spend five years imprisoned in Germany, during which time he organized lectures on the history of music along with teaching courses harmony, counterpoint and fugue — and even a course in physics to help fellow prisoners prepare for their future exams.

Goue’s compositions during his time in captivity — particularly Psaume CXXIII and several chamber works — reveal an artistic maturity. In particular, Koechlin would speak later of the emotion that emanated from the Psaume.

Weakened from his years of captivity, Goué was destined to live only 17 months following his return to France in 1945 dying at the age of just 42 years. Unfortunately, neither of his psalm compositions has ever been commercially recorded; however, it is hoped that this situation may be redressed in the coming years, thanks to the recording activities of a society dedicated to the composer’s artistry.

To this crop of French composers we could add two others with Parisian ties during the same period of time. Joseph Jongen (1873-1953) from next-door Belgium, was an early admirer and advocate of Florent Schmitt’s Psaum 47.  Jongen had studied with Vincent d’Indy in Paris from 1899-1902, during which time he became acquainted with Schmitt and other French composers of the younger generation.

Indeed, it was Jongen who would conduct the Belgian premiere of Psaume XLVII in his capacity as director of the Brussels-based Concerts spirituels in the early 1920s. But as early as 1909 Jongen was inspired by Schmitt’s work to pen his own composition, Psaume CXXVIII (Deus Abraham).

Three surviving manuscripts exist of the piece, with the final version, dated 1929, being scored for voice, cello solo and orchestra (plus ad libitum organ).

A new critical edition of Jongen’s Psalm 128, derived from the composer’s original manuscripts housed at the CeBeDeM (Belgian Centre for Musical Documentation) was prepared in 1994. Unfortunately, the piece has failed to gain much traction in the music world — which is a pity, considering the worthiness of the score (and fully in keeping with the French-inflected qualities of nearly all of Jongen’s artistic output).

In addition, the Swiss-born (and later American) composer Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) came to Paris to study in the early years of the twentieth century. Bloch created three psalms compositions during the years 1912-14 while residing in Paris. While these differ from the other compositions discussed in this article in that they were written for solo voice and orchestra (without chorus), in other respects they fit neatly into the group of works that were influenced by Florent Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII.

All three of Bloch’s psalms compositions were written using French translations from the original Hebrew, courtesy of the librettist Edmund Fleg who was widely regarded as one of the finest Hebrew cantors in the French language. At fewer than four minutes in length, Bloch’s Psaume CXIV, which relates to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, is the shortest of the three and owes the greatest stylistic debt to Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII — replete with punctuating brass fanfares at its beginning and conclusion. The brass are also called upon to evoke the sound of the shofar, the ritualistic ram’s horn of the synagogue.

By contrast, the six-minute Psaume CXXXVII — dealing with the subject of the Jewish exile in Babylon — is a lamentation that incorporates in its middle section a call to vengeance against oppression.

The third psalm from Ernest Bloch was Psaume XXII, written for baritone solo (as opposed to soprano vocalist in the first two). Dedicated to the French writer Romain Rolland, Psaume XXII is the largest and most complex of the three compositions. Tellingly, it is also the one that adopts most clearly the stylized “Hebraic” sound of Bloch that would soon reach its apex in works such as Schelomo, Voice in the Wilderness and the Israel Symphony.

It is a measure of the notable characteristics of Bloch’s (and Schmitt’s) psalm compositions that at the time of the December 1925 American premiere of Arthur Honegger’s dramatic psalm/oratorio Le Roi David, the New York Times critic Olin Downes would pan the Honegger work by comparison, writing:

“There is everything for every taste in [the Le Roi David] score. There is an old cast-off shoe of Handel’s … there is junk of all kinds from the scrap heap of Debussy, Stravinsky, Bach … even Mozart and Wagner — nothing is missing and quite cleverly [it’s] served up. Poly-harmony here, eastern melismata there; now a disarming simplicity of the diatonic persuasion. Once in a while a real musical idea …

But what a superficial, hastily flung-together mélange it is! Whan an artificial and sensational contraption! As for orientalism, there is [in contrast] Florent Schmitt, who made years ago an amazingly dramatic setting of the 47th Psalm … And there is a composer named Ernest Bloch; there is more that is profoundly and superbly Semitic in one page of one of his Psalms for solo voice and orchestra than in all the trumpeting of Honegger.”

It should also be noted that in his writings as a music critic for several publications — notably Le Temps and Le Courrier musical — Florent Schmitt was very complimentary of several major works by Ernest Bloch, including his opera Macbeth which had been mounted at the Opéra-Comique in 1910, Schelomo, plus the Suite for Viola and Piano and the Violin Concerto. About this last work, Schmitt wrote in Le Temps:

“The composer describes his Violin Concerto in terms of what it is not: neither a work of Jewish inspiration nor of Jewish intent. Nevertheless, it is permeated from one end to the other with a strong ‘oriental’ flavor.”

… Just like the Psalms, in fact.