“We shortchange Florent Schmitt if we don’t admire in him, along with his formidable power, that quivering sensitivity to which we owe some of the most moving pages of contemporary music.”
— Louis Aubert, French composer and critic
Florent Schmitt (ca. 1910 ink sketch)
Ask people who are familiar with the music of Florent Schmitt, and they’ll typically identify him with opulent scores featuring rich and colorful orchestrations in the grandest post-Rimsky tradition.
While that characterization isn’t inaccurate, it is incomplete.
Indeed, within the catalogue of Florent Schmitt’s compositions, one finds large swaths of instrumental music for solo or chamber forces. Moreover, nearly 40% of his catalogue is vocal music – including more than 30 choral creations.
The earliest of Schmitt’s choral works to be published – the Psaume XLVII from 1904 (there are several unpublished works of juvenilia composed earlier) – is arguably the best-known of Schmitt’s choral compositions. While that viscerally exciting work is ostensibly a sacred composition, it doesn’t really come across that way. As BBC Music Magazine critic Terry Blain has observed:
“Going from the lurid sex and violence of [La Tragédie de] Salomé to Schmitt’s setting of Psalm 47 should be a major wrench stylistically — but isn’t. The orgiastic volleys of brass and percussion in its opening paragraph have a distinctly pagan feel about them, and are a long way from conventional religiosity.”
After the appearance of the Psaume, Schmitt’s choral works that immediately followed were written on secular rather than sacred themes, employing texts from poets the likes of Charles de Musset, Jean Lahor, Paul Armand Silvestre and others. In fact, it wouldn’t be until another decade had passed – during the years of World War I — that Florent Schmitt would produce his next sacred vocal work – the Cinq motets, Op. 60, written between 1914 and 1917.
The title page of the score to Hymne à St-Nicolas de Lorraine, the first of Florent Schmitt’s Cinq motets, composed in 1914 and dedicated to the captain of the composer’s army unit in Toul.
Similar to Schmitt’s Chansons à quatre voix from 1904, the Cinq motets were written to be sung either by a chorus or by a quartet of singers. As for the Biblical text, Schmitt chose the Latin language — unlike Psaume XLVII which had been set in French.
In another point of differentiation from the Psaume, with the exception of the final number of the set (Laudate Dominum) the Motets inhabit a sound-world that is more redolent of Gabriel Fauré in their introspective character. As an article appearing in the January 1935 issue of the magazine Etudes franciscaines put it:
“[Florent Schmitt’s Cinq motets] succeeds, without extinguishing the colors of his palette, in giving the most accomplished expression of faith and fervor, achieving an almost evangelical purity in a perfect atmosphere of suppleness and sobriety.”
The circumstances of the creation of the Cinq motets are connected to Florent Schmitt’s World War I service as a nearly 45-year-old private second-class soldier stationed at the front in Toul in Eastern France. Two of the motets (Hymne à St-Nicolas de Lorraine and Virgo Gloriosa) were composed in late 1914 at the request of Captain E. Duvaux, who commanded the detachment of troops to which Schmitt was assigned.
The first page of Florent Schmitt’s Virgo Gloriosa. The composer dedicated this motet to Henri Coqueugnot (1880-1944), a fellow-soldier attached to the army battalion in Toul. Cogueugnot was a civil engineer and metallurgical specialist who became the longtime head of the mining department at Schneider Establishment, later serving as general director of the Société des Terres-Rouges in Luxembourg. Although Virgo Gloriosa was one of the first two motets composed by Schmitt, it was positioned as #4 in the set when the Cinq motets score was published by Durand in 1918.
This Roman Catholic parish in Francheville-en-Woevre, built in the 15th century, was the site of the first performance of Florent Schmitt’s two motets that he had composed in 1914. According to contemporaneous accounts, an audience of soldiers and kitchen personnel was on hand to hear the performance, which was sung by four enlisted men and accompanied by the composer on a harmonium-accordion.
These two motets, which are scored for male chorus or four men’s voices (TTBB) received their first performance at the Roman Catholic parish in Francheville-en-Woevre — presented by four soldier-vocalists from the front including the noted Wagnerian tenor Charles Dalmorès, singer-songwriter and actor Georges Chepfer, a marble worker (a certain Monsieur Etienne) and Monsieur Ray, an employee-manager at the French department store chain of Magasins Réunis. (The full names of the latter two men are lost to history.)
Born in Nancy, Georges Lucien Chepfer (1870-1945) achieved fame as a singer, songwriter and actor. Chepfer’s first commercial recording, an album of traditional songs from the Lorraine region that he made at the age of 60, won the coveted Grand Prix du Disque award in 1934.
This quartet of singers was accompanied by Florent Schmitt who, according to a February 16, 1931 article in the periodical Le Guide du concert, “struggled as best he could with a harmonium-accordion weighing at least five kilos with a keyboard of two octaves and a fourth.”
During the Easter season of 1915, the Cathédrale St-Étienne de Toul was the venue for the first “official” performance of the two motets that Florent Schmitt had composed the year before. A quartet of singers drawn from French army ranks was led by Carlos Salzedo. Built in a so-called “flamboyant Gothic” style over a span of three centuries, the visually striking Toul Cathedral also possessed a fine grand organ that was played in the Motets premiere. Toul Cathedral was damaged several times in the modern era: During the French Revolution the sculpted figures of the façade were destroyed, while significant bombing during World War II destroyed the roof, the organ, and partially damaged the south tower. A major restoration campaign was launched in the 1980s, and today Toul Cathedral stands as one of the best-preserved church structures in France. (Photo: François Bernardin, 2011)
The Guide du concert article also reported that the audience at the first hearing consisted of an eclectic mix of enlisted soldiers, army cooks, and a mining/metallurgy specialist of some renown by the name of Henri Coqueugnot.
Comrades in arms … comrades in the arts: Pictured (l. to r.) in this 1915 photograph from the war front are the cubist painter Albert Gleizes, harpist Carlos Salzedo, composer Florent Schmitt and tenor Charles Dalmorès. All our were members of the 47th Regiment of Territorial Infantry (13th Company). In a letter to Stravinsky, Schmitt described his time at the front as “two less-than-amusing years of militarism.” For his part, Dalmorès wrote to a Philadelphia friend, William J. Baird: “At first, the law permitted men over forty-five to be exempt. But after the first general mobilization, the age limit was raised to forty-eight years. Curiously enough, the Government protects us old men — I am forty-four! — and we are seldom upon the direct firing line, although we’re at times within firing distance and we hear the roar of cannons and smaller firearms always. Next to me in my regiment, besides Carlos Salzedo, is the composer Florent Schmitt. We give concerts to divert the wounded soldiers, and often to amuse ourselves we discuss the musical future of all the nations.” A Lorrainer like Schmitt, Dalmorès was born in Nancy in 1871, and after a worldwide career on the stage he became a voice instructor in Paris, New York and Los Angeles. He died in Hollywood in 1939.
A more “official” premiere of the two motets would happen at Toul Cathedral during the Easter season in 1915, with four vocalists directed by famed harpist Carlos Salzedo.
This time, the quartet of vocalists included Charles Dalmorès (once again), the cubist painter and musician Georges Valmier, an archeologist named Raymond Vaufrey, plus a certain Adjutant Courtois. The cathedral’s great organ was a distinct improvement over the field harmonium-accordion that had been used the year before in Francheville-en-Woevre.
Three additional motets were composed by Florent Schmitt thereafter — one of them (De Profundis) featuring male voices (TTBB) while the other two (Ave, Regina Coelorum and Laudate Dominum) being scored for mixed voices (SATB).
The complete score was published under the title Cinq motets by Durand et cie. in 1918. According to Pierre-Octave Ferroud in his 1927 biography of Florent Schmitt, the first Paris performance of the complete set occurred on June 1, 1926 at the 16th arr. home of Mme. Frédéric-Moreau. That performance featured the Kedroff Vocal Quartet, joined by Mmes. Manassevitch and Bessevitch.
The sequence of the five motets as presented in the score — likely determined based on musical contrast considerations — is as follows:
I. Hymne à St-Nicolas de Lorraine (TTBB)
II. Ave Regina (SATB)
III. De Profundis (TTBB)
IV. Virgo Gloriosa (TTBB)
V. Laudate Dominum (SATB)
The first page from the score to Florent Schmitt’s Ave Regina Coelorum, published in 1918 as the second of the Cinq motets. This motet was dedicated to Schmitt’s fellow-soldier Georges Valmier, a painter who was also a vocalist. Interestingly, Valmier sang at both “official” premieres of the motets — first at Toul Cathedral in 1915, and later with the Colonne Concerts Orchestra at the January 1934 first performance of the orchestrated version prepared by the composer two decades after the original version had been written.
Pierre-Octave Ferroud characterizes the Cinq motets as “conceived in a poetic style and yet very close to the spirit of the liturgy … religious music par excellence, since it makes no compromises.”
The French musicologist and critic Robert Kemp has left us this memorable description of the Cinq motets and the circumstances under which the music had been composed:
Robert Kemp (born Félix Robert Kem, 1979-1959) was a French journalist, author and arts critic who wrote for several French periodicals under the nom de plume Robert Dezarnaux, including for L’Aurore and La Liberté. In 1934 Kemp’s noteworthy characterization of Florent Schmitt’s artistry appeared in La Liberté, in which he wrote: “We sometimes have the painful impression that music is about to sink into the waves — into waves of incomprehension and indifference, into the brackish depths of mediocrity or a sea of stale euphemisms. But a few still shine with a solid brilliance … Florent Schmitt is one of these: fully decorated, speaking in an exciting voice — sometimes harsh, sometimes with a tender and moving timbre.” (Sketch drawing by Jean-Dominique van Caulaert, 1938)
“Fine pieces, written with military precision, sobriety and succinctness [because] there was no time to waste. In a few lines of music, Florent Schmitt, close to the line of fire, was able to express so much … and these motets are as full of music as Lorraine mirabelles are full of sugar and flavor! The polyphony is firm, nervous, and perfectly balanced …”
Along similar lines, in an insightful 1934 essay Schmitt’s fellow-composer Louis Aubert wrote of the special character of the Cinq motets, noting:
“We encourage music lovers, accustomed to viewing Florent Schmitt as a sort of fierce and barbaric demigod, to take note of the Cinq motets … Not that we don’t find, in places, the Schmitt of the great symphonic frescoes that we know; the De Profundis and the Laudate Dominum have dramatic or heroic overtones that are, in themselves, a testament to their origins.
But the very human yet profound tenderness of the Salve Regina and the Virgo Gloriosa illuminates a side of his personality that we too often neglect to highlight …
We shortchange Florent Schmitt if we don’t admire in him, along with his formidable power, that quivering sensitivity to which we owe some of the most moving pages of contemporary music.”
The veteran French composer Alfred Bruneau drew a throughline between the theatre of war and the motets that Schmitt had composed while at the front, observing:
Louis Charles Bonaventure Alfred Bruneau (1857-1934) was a French composer and critic whose long association with the literary figure Émile Zola resulted in the creation of several noteworthy operas with storylines anchored in “realism.” Bruneau’s own musical style displayed Wagnerian influences.
“The work was composed under the direct influence of the war, which justifies the extreme emotion it arouses in simple souls, captivated by the loftiness and nobility of its qualities. It does not employ the usual melodic or harmonic forms of religious art; rather, the thought and the musical writing are entirely new – born there and developing naturally.
Collectively, the Motets have the style of an admirable purity – in a way evangelical – which doesn’t prevent them from being alive, penetrating, and ‘modern’ in the truest sense of the term.”
The first page of the score to Florent Schmitt’s De Profundis, published as the third of the Cinq motets. Florent Schmitt dedicated this motet to Albert Gleizes, the cubist painter who was attached to Schmitt’s infantry battalion in Toul. For his part, Gleizes created several famous portraits of Schmitt, and the two men would remain lifelong friends.
Albert Gleizes’ 1915 portrait of Florent Schmitt was featured on a French postage stamp issued nearly a century later (2012).
Following their publication, the Motets were typically presented in ecclesiastical settings – and often individually rather than as a set. Starting in the early 1930s, a vocal quartet by the name of A Camera began presenting the Cinq motets in concert — and the group would keep the piece in its repertoire for the better part of a decade.
A Camera’s advocacy for the music may have been one inspiration for Florent Schmitt to prepare an alternate version of the composition featuring an orchestra in lieu of the organ – a version he completed some two decades after the score’s original conception.
Georges Valmier (1885-1937) was a French painter whose work encompassed the great movements in the modern history of painting, from impressionism and cubism to abstractionism. In 1936 Valmier was commissioned to create three monumental frescoes for the decoration of the Palace of Railways at the Paris Expo, which he completed just before his untimely death. In addition to painting, Valmier was a vocalist of some skill who performed the music of Fauré, Debussy, Satie, Schmitt and Ravel.
The orchestrated version of Cinq motets was given its first public performance in January 1934 by the Colonne Concerts Orchestra under the direction of Paul Paray. The vocal group A Camera (comprised of Mmes. Pourcher and Bridgeman, tenor Maurice Prigent and bass Jean Hazart) were the featured vocalists, with the additional men’s parts for three of the motets sung by tenor Jean Planel and baritone Georges Valmier – the latter of whom had also participated in the Toul Cathedral performance in Easter 1915.
Many of the best-known Parisian music critics working at publications such as L’Intransigéant, Le Journal, La Liberté, Le Matin, Mercure de France, L’Ordre, Paris-Soir and others were on hand for the orchestral premiere performance, where the reception to the music was positive.
Writing in the February 15, 1934 edition of Mercure de France, critic René Dumesnil was highly complimentary of the composition and the performance – even as he bemoaned the Colonne Orchestra’s allegedly dismissive treatment of music critics such as him:
Paul Paray (1886-1979) premiered more orchestral works of Florent Schmitt than any other conductor. The Cinq motets in its orchestrated version was pemiered by Maestro Paray at the Colonne Concerts in January 1934, (ca. 1930 photo)
“Although critics are treated almost like mangy dogs at the Concerts Colonne — and far from making their task easier, efforts seem to be made to keep them out — this does not prevent M. Paul Paray from being an excellent conductor and from taking the greatest care in the works that he stages. We saw new proof of this with the Cinq Motets by Florent Schmitt, given their first performance at the Châtelet in their new form, in which the orchestra replaces the organ. These five motets are a Hymne à St-Nicolas de Lorraine, a Virgo Gloriosa — both composed early in the war — as well as a De Profundis, an Ave Regina, and a Laudate Dominum …
The first page of the score to Florent Schmitt’s Laudate Dominum. The last of the Cinq motets, the piece was dedicated to Abbé Léonce Petit, a military chaplain assigned to Schmitt’s battalion in Toul. The two men were already acquainted, thanks to Abbé Petit’s frequent interactions with Parisian musicians and artists during the prewar period.
This 1900 photograph from a Parisian salon event shows Abbé Léonce Petit (seated at right) in the company of pianist Ricardo Vines (standing at left) and Maurice Ravel (standing far right). At center is the painter Robert Mortier with his pianist wife, Jeanne-Marie Marguerite Vasseur Mortier. Fifteen years later Abbé Petit would be ministering to arts community members in a completely different environment — the war front.
For some time we have known the splendor of these motets and their truly magnificent elevation, but we were unaware of the new grandeur with which the orchestra — and what an orchestra!— could adorn them. It is by turns a radiant transparency, a seraphic dazzle, a pathos of contained grandeur, and a jubilation approaching ecstasy.
The French tenor Jean Planel (1903-1986) distinguished himself in both opera and operetta roles. He also authored several books on vocal technique.
Everywhere and in all of these riches there is a grandiose sobriety: nothing superfluous and nary a single unnecessary ‘double.’ A pure, powerful style, always in perfect harmony with the ideas to be rendered. The vocal quartet A Camera, joined by Messrs. Planel and Valmier, the Colonne Orchestra and its conductor, have superbly brought these five splendid motets to life.”
In his review of the premiere, writing in the January 24, 1934 edition of Le Journal the composer-critic Louis Aubert commented on the character of the motets as follows:
Louis Aubert (1877-1968), photographed in 1928.
“The orchestral translation of the Motets has a French virtue, which is discretion. It limits itself to supporting the rich polyphony of the voices, to accentuating with a colorful touch a certain melodic curve and a certain harmonic turn. As such, it highlights clearly the singers’ timbres … [who are] fervent interpreters of these five pieces.”
Pierre-Octave Ferroud, the young French composer who considered Florent Schmitt his most important mentor, shared the following reflections about the new version of Cinq motets in a column appearing in the January 24, 1934 issue of Paris-Soir:
Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1900-1936)
“At Colonne, where Paul Paray exercises an authority that is truly synonymous with prestige, we have been given the very recent orchestral version of the Cinq Motets by Florent Schmitt. The union of instruments and voices confers to this ‘mini-oratorio’ on this occasion an increase of force and grandeur that cannot surprise us when recalling that this composer is also the author of Psaume XLVII. It is ample in its restricted dimensions — with lines, by turns, expressive and majestic … “
This memorial concert, given at the École normale de musique in Paris on January 18, 1937, honored two recently deceased members of the Triton contemporary music society: Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1900-1936) and Filip Lazar (1894-1936). Ferroud had perished in a fatal automobile crash in Hungary in August 1935, while the avant-garde Romanian composer and pianist Lazar had died in Paris in November 1936 from illness. In addition to presenting chamber music by both composers, Florent Schmitt’s Cinq motets was performed at this memorial concert, featuring the vocal quartet A Camera.
Following the January 1934 premiere of the orchestral version of the Cinq motets, the vocal group A Camera would continue to program the work up until the beginning of World War II, including presenting a broadcast performance of the piece over Radio-Paris on February 25, 1939. (The conductor of the instrumental forces on that occasion was François Cébron.)
The orchestration for Florent Schmitt’s Cinq motets is full-bodied, although the instrumental forces are used more sparingly than in the composer’s Psaume XLVII from 1904.
John Poole (1934-2020) led the BBC Singers from 1972 to 1989. A Francophile musician, he directed the Groupe Vocal de France from 1990 to 1998. Poole was also a highly respected instructor of conducting at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.
But in the eight decades that have followed World War II, it’s safe to say that Cinq motets has been nearly forgotten. Public performances of the Motets – either individually or as a set — have been few and far between, and no commercial recording of the music has ever been made.
Even the audio archives of French Radio contains just two performances of selected motets — one in 1959 by a chorus directed by Yvonne Gouverné with organist Jeanne Baudry-Godard (Hymne à St-Nicolas de Lorraine), and a more recent performance of several excerpts presented by the Lyon Chorus.
However, one glorious exception to the general state of affairs are the BBC Singers, whose very fine performance of the Cinq motets under the direction of John Poole along with organist Gary Sieling dates from the late 1980s and has been broadcast several times over BBC Radio 3.
Not only is the musical quality of the BBC Singers presentation top-notch, the performance was captured in fine sonics.
The BBC Singers photographed in 1994, during the choral group’s 70th anniversary year. Several years earlier, director John Poole and the BBC Singers had prepared Florent Schmitt’s Cinq motets for broadcast over BBC Radio 3.
Fortunately for us, the BBC Singers performance has been uploaded to the Internet accompanied by the score, courtesy of George ‘Nick’ Gianopoulos’ indispensable YouTube music channel. You can view the upload here:
While Cinq motets remains one of Florent Schmitt’s most obscure compositions, there can be little doubt that it has the potential gain many admirers once more music-lovers are exposed to the music. Considered alongside the composer’s L’arbre entre tous (1939-40) and Cinq choeurs en vingt minutes (1951), all three are substantial choral works that richly deserve to receive their first commercial recordings.
Come to think of it, for any conductor or choral director considering making a new recording of Schmitt’s vaunted Psaume XLVII, the decision to include these three additional choral works alongside it would turn the recording into a uniquely special contribution to the composer’s artistic legacy. Who’s ready to take up the challenge?
These beautiful but anxious war pieces are otherworldly in Florent Schmitt’s special eruptive way, where quick, unpredictable bursts of emotion strain at the sense of solace one might expect of religious choral music.
“The polyphony is firm, nervous, and perfectly balanced …” wrote French musicologist Robert Kemp. “Nervous” explains a lot when it comes to war.