In 1953, Florent Schmitt composed Fables sans morales, settings of four fables taken from Jean de la Fontaine’s writings which the composer scored for a cappella mixed chorus. Interestingly, several years earlier Schmitt had already produced another choral work based a Fontaine fable, titled Conseil tenu par les rats, Op. 123 (The Rats’ Council) – […]
Category Archives: Choral Music
Fanfare Magazine music critic Steven Kruger shares his reaction to the first U.S. staging of the Psaume since 2019. For the Houston Symphony’s 2025-26 season-opening weekend of concerts, music director Juraj Valčuha elected to include Florent Schmitt’s monumental Psaume XLVII, Op. 38, in which the orchestra was joined by the Houston Symphony Chorus, the Houston […]
For afficionados of Florent Schmitt’s music, the upcoming 2025-26 concert season will include symphonic works that cover a wide swath of the composer’s career, with eight compositions created over a 50-year period from 1890 to 1941. In addition to two acknowledged “big hits” (La Tragédie de Salomé and Psaume XLVII), the featured repertoire includes several […]
A true rarity in the Florent Schmitt catalogue of compositions is a work that he created in 1920 as a result of a commission from a philosophy society – the Trois chants en l’honneur d’Auguste Comte, Op. 71. The 13-minute work is a vocal composition consisting of a central hymn bracketed on each side by […]
The town of Saint-Cloud honored its longtime resident Florent Schmitt on the occasion of his 80th birthday, presenting a gala concert featuring his recent compositions. When Florent Schmitt turned eighty years old on September 28, 1950, he was the most prominent French composer of his generation who was still active creatively. To be sure, there […]
Within the catalogue of compositions by Florent Schmitt are a large number of choral works, great and small. Of these, music-lovers are most likely to be familiar with Schmitt’s grandiose setting of Psalm 47, which he composed in 1904 and which was premiered in Paris in 1906. But the Psalm isn’t all that representative of […]
Premiered in May 1940 — mere weeks before the fall of France — the piece was shelved thereafter, with the unpublished score and parts languishing in the archives of the Bibliothèque national de France and Universal/Durand. Within the catalogue of Florent Schmitt’s compositions, there are a significant number of works for orchestra with chorus. Some […]
Among the final crop of compositions that Florent Schmitt brought forth during his long career are a group of sacred works written for chorus or mixed solo voices. They are seven in number, penned or published during the final eight years of the composer’s life: Trois liturgies joyeuses, Op. 116 (1951) Psaume VIII (Domine, Dominus […]
The French author and playwright Jean de la Fontaine is best-known for his fables, which are considered masterpieces of French literature. The fables of the ancient Greek author Aesop may be better known across the world, but La Fontaine deserves an equivalent place in the spotlight considering that he produced no fewer than 240 of […]
Recently, an upload appeared on American composer George ‘Nick’ Gianopoulos‘ estimable YouTube music channel that features Florent Schmitt’s late-career choral work Quinque cantus, Op. 121, presented along with the score. It’s one of more than 2,300 score-with-audio uploads that Mr. Gianopoulos has assiduously prepared for the benefit of performing artists and music-lovers the world over […]
On the evening of May 12, 2022, an unforgettable performance of Florent Schmitt’s monumental Psaume XLVII, Op. 38 was presented at Maison de la Radio in Paris. For those of us who were lucky enough to attend the concert, it was a performance that will long stay in our memories — so fine was the […]
Vocal music comprises an important component of Florent Schmitt’s catalogue of works. Throughout his long career the composer would return again and again to the human voice, creating many sets of songs along with a wide range of secular and sacred choral music. One of the most intriguing of these works is the a cappella […]
When the composer Florent Schmitt died in August 1958 at the age of nearly 88 years, many prominent musicians, scholars and journalists wrote words of tribute honoring the last of the “grand generation” of French composers that had included, among others, Debussy, Dukas, Ravel, Roussel, Koechlin, Pierné, Cras, Rabaud, Ropartz and Tournemire. Along those lines, […]
Recently, several photos were uploaded to Twitter that had been taken at a social event in Paris celebrating the release of the first-ever commercial recording of Florent Schmitt’s stunning choral composition Psaume XLVII. Held in February 1953 at Pathé-Marconi headquarters, the event was attended by tout Paris – at least in terms of the classical […]
Throughout his extraordinarily long and productive life, the French composer Florent Schmitt would return again and again to the human voice. His earliest catalogued compositions dating from the 1880s were various mélodies, and his final work was the Messe en quatres parties for mixed chorus and organ, completed just a few months before his death […]