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 […]
Tag Archives: Choral Music
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 […]
In early March 2020, I had the opportunity to attend what turned out to be the very last public performances of Florent Schmitt’s orchestral before the Coronavirus pandemic effectively shut down classical concerts across the globe. Those concerts, presented by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of JoAnn Falletta, were noteworthy not only because the […]
Throughout his long composing career spanning from the late 1880s to the late 1950s, Florent Schmitt would return again and again to the human voice. While he never composed an opera, he wrote voluminous pages of music in every other form that features solo and mixed voices. Tellingly, the composer’s Opus 1 and his final Opus 138 […]
Florent Schmitt’s powerful choral work Psalm XLVII may have been composed in 1904, but it took more than a century for the piece to receive its premiere performances in Poland, in February 2016. That’s when French conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud and the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra joined forces with the Krakow Philharmonic Choir, directed by Teresa Majka-Pacanek and soprano […]
“It’s the sensuality — as well as the expressive power borne from Florent Schmitt’s exceptional mastery of massed musical forces and contrasts …” — Jean-Luc Tingaud, French Orchestral and Operatic Conductor This month, French conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud will be leading the first-ever concert performances of Florent Schmitt’s blockbuster choral work Psaume XLVII in Poland, conducting the […]
Within the extensive catalogue of Florent Schmitt’s compositions are a great many vocal works — pieces written for solo voice or for chorus. In fact, there are over 50 such opus numbers. Many of Schmitt’s choral works are based on sacred texts, although often the scores seem quite removed from a sense of piety. Perhaps the best-known example of […]
There is little question that Florent Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII, Op. 38, composed in 1904, is one of the most powerful compositions in the choral repertoire. Indeed, the forces called for in this music — large chorus, large orchestra, soprano solo and organ — make it nearly unique in the French repertoire. When it had its premiere in […]
For many classical music lovers, nothing can compare to a live performance. While studio recordings promise greater precision and better sound quality — along with the absence of distracting audience noise – often this comes at the expense of spontaneity and immediacy. And for a piece of music as viscerally thrilling as Florent Schmitt’s Psalm […]
Music lovers who know Florent Schmitt’s stunning Psaume XLVII (1904) might wonder what other choral music may have come from the composer’s pen. And in fact, there are nearly 25 individual choral scores written by Schmitt, composed over more than a half-century’s time. None of them are nearly as famous as the Psalm, but they […]
“… An extravagant outburst of highly perfumed Franco-exoticism at its most virile, heroic and exalted … I can’t think of another piece that achieves — or even attempts — quite the impact made by this work.” — Walter Simmons, author and music critic, Fanfare Magazine “Regarding the Psaume, what can we say that hasn’t already […]