Salutation angélique Op. 20
Composer: Pierre Villette (1926–1998), 1954
 |
 |
 |
 |
X |
|
Pierre |
|
Villette |
|
1926 |
1998 |
|
|
|
Op. 20 |
Salutation angélique |
SATB |
a cappella |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Pierre |
|
Villette |
|
1926 |
1998 |
|
|
|
Op. 24 |
Hymne à la Vierge |
SATB |
a cappella |
Op. 20 - Salutation
angélique - 1) soprano et orgue - 2) soprano et orchestre - 3) soprano et
orchestre à cordes (2'45) - 1954
| Posted on YouTube: Not available at
this time. |
|
| |
|
| Internet
references, biography information. |
|
http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67539&vw=dc |
Over the course of his life Pierre
Villette produced around eighty pieces of music—mostly small-scale works for
orchestra, chamber ensembles and choir. Although he was a contemporary of
Pierre Boulez at the Conservatoire National Supérieure de Musique in Paris,
Villette ploughed his own furrow when it came to composition. He eschewed
the uncompromising modernity of much French twentieth-century music, drawing
instead on early music, especially Gregorian chant, and the exotic textures
and harmonies inherited from Poulenc and Messiaen. He loved the music of
Fauré and Debussy and greatly admired Stravinsky, yet his musical language
is unique—something Stephen Layton describes as both ‘spiritual and
sensual’.
Villette was born in 1926 into a musical family. His mother was a competent
pianist and he counted amateur musicians among his aunts and uncles. The
main musical influence in his life, however, came from his father. Henri
Villette ran a joinery business but he was also a composer, pianist,
organist, violinist and violist who encouraged his son’s passion for music.
From the tender age of six Villette fils sang in the choir of St Evode
cathedral in Rouen, where he was introduced to Gregorian chant and music
from a range of composers including Palestrina, Mozart and Franck. In his
early teens he began playing the organ in a local church and such was his
talent that at the age of fifteen he passed the entrance exam for the Paris
conservatoire, with the help of the composer Maurice Duruflé. By the
following year Villette had written his first complete work, a Marche
fantaisiste for orchestra. But with France under Nazi occupation his early
years of study were interrupted and Villette was obliged to join his family
in Normandy.
With the liberation of Paris in 1944 Villette was eventually able to return
to the conservatoire once again, where he studied composition with Henri
Busser. The Ave verum and the gentle Salve regina date from this same year.
In both motets Villette uses chromatic harmonies to draw out the meaning of
the words, bringing an added piquancy to the moment where the text refers to
death in the Ave verum and to tears in the Salve regina. The conclusion of
the Ave verum is particularly intense with a hushed phrase for women’s
voices echoed by the men and then followed by a dramatic outburst. At the
very end the music comes to rest on an unresolved chord, a device that
Villette chose time and time again to round off his choral works.
Another enforced interruption to Villette’s musical training came several
years later in 1948 with the death of his father, and Villette returned home
once again to run the family business. The strain took its toll on his
health however and he underwent numerous operations before surgeons finally
removed one of his lungs. He spent long periods in the Alps recuperating,
but in spite of his fragile health he continued to compose. In 1954 Villette
wrote the motet Salutation angélique for soprano, which exists in three
versions—one with organ, the second with orchestra and the third with string
orchestra. The beguiling opening provides no clue to the more animated
middle section that follows. In the same year he also produced O salutaris
hostia, a work notable for its jazzy harmonies. These found their full
expression a year later in a piece for orchestra entitled Blues. Around the
same time Villette composed the Hymne à la Vierge and dedicated it to his
future wife, Josette. The hymn’s simple melody is reserved for the sopranos,
while the other three voices have some interesting inner parts and chromatic
inflections, particularly towards the end of the piece.
In 1957 Villette took up a job as head of the Conservatoire de Besançon, a
post that began his long stint in academia. During his ten years there he
wrote only a handful of works, of which four were for choir. In 1959 he
composed the eight-part motet O sacrum convivium, a piece which shows the
influence of Messiaen, whom he admired. The music at the words ‘mens
impletur gratia’ could even be a nod towards Messiaen’s early motet of the
same name, as the melody is very similar. Villette’s work wears its heart on
its sleeve, its shimmering chords with added sixths and seconds particularly
effective in creating a sensuous mood. Here the composer’s flexible approach
to word-setting comes into play, with fifteen tempo changes indicated in a
motet lasting less than four minutes. The Strophes polyphoniques pour le
Veni Creator naturally require a similarly fluid approach to the text,
alternating chant and response. The final ‘Amen’ is a rare example of true
counterpoint in Villette’s choral music.
Villette did not, on the whole, compose to order, although he did receive a
number of commissions throughout his creative life. He wrote music for
personal expression and found inspiration largely in his strong faith, which
probably explains why so much of his vocal music is religious. In 1959 he
composed the motet Tu es Petrus to mark the enthronement of the Archbishop
of Besançon. The work exists in three different arrangements: the version
for choir and two organs is the original, but it was later orchestrated and
there is also an arrangement, performed here, with just one organ. As one
would expect, the music is stately, but the motet also contains a more
tender interlude. The repetition of the words ‘Tu es Petrus’ provides a
particularly rousing finale. There is nothing quite so robust in mood in the
whole of Villette’s choral music. Adoro te, which dates from 1960, marks a
return to more familiar territory, but still contains many of the lush
harmonies typical of Villette’s music at this time. After Adoro te, Villette
wrote no motets at all for twenty-three years, but he did compose two
large-scale masses, one of which—the Messe en français—is yet to be
published.
Villette was to hold only one other post in his life, that of director of
the Conservatoire d’Aix-en-Provence where he stayed until his retirement in
1987. His students remember him as a very kind, likeable man who was
passionate about music education: he presided over the expansion of the
conservatoire and did a great deal to enhance musical life in Aix. Many of
his works were premiered by his students, but Villette’s choral music has
achieved greater recognition abroad largely through the efforts of British
choirs. The earliest of these was the Worcester Cathedral Choir with their
director Dr Donald Hunt, who took Villette’s music to an international
public by recording and performing his motets in the mid-1970s. Hunt’s
recordings attracted the composer’s attention and so began a lasting
friendship. In 1983 Villette dedicated the motet Attende, Domine to Hunt and
the choir. It is one of his most ambitious choral works, with a dark,
anguished atmosphere as befits the penitential text. The motet begins with a
descending whole-tone motif that recurs throughout, punctuating the
adventurous sonorities that often begin in close harmony and expand and
contract like a concertina.
In the same year Villette produced O magnum misterium, whose opening bars
are in a similarly dark fashion to Attende, Domine, but on the whole the
music is quite restrained. This piece shows Villette’s contemporary
influences well: it begins in a gentle mood akin to his teacher Duruflé’s
motet Tantum ergo, with a particularly tender moment introduced by the
tenors when the beasts gather around the crib. Gradually the harmonies
become more sensual as the piece nears its conclusion, approaching the
sound-world of Messiaen’s O sacrum convivium—especially the way the
sustained notes in the singers’ lower registers end on a glowing sixth
chord.
When he retired from the conservatoire in Aix, Villette spoke of how much he
looked forward to having more time to write music ‘to the glory of God’. The
first motet to come out of this period was Inviolata, one of Villette’s most
complex and difficult works. ‘It’s a very orchestral approach to the use of
the choir’, says Stephen Layton. ‘At one point there are twenty parts going
at once. Villette uses the different sections of the choirs to create
colours in the same way other composers use different sections of the
orchestra: we have sustained “string” chords from one choir accompanying
“woodwind” melodies from another.’
Inviolata marks a high point of complexity in Villette’s motets. Not only is
it texturally adventurous, it is harmonically complex too with block chords
built of clashing tonalities contributing to its exotic sound world. After
Inviolata in 1991 Villette employs a more simplified musical language in the
remaining five motets. O quam amabilis es is a world away from the
quasi-orchestral fabric of Inviolata; the sensual harmonies are still there
in Villette’s use of added 7th and 9th chords and the soft dissonances
created by suspensions, but the music is less intense in character. Notre
Père d’Aix is simplicity itself; some unexpected turns of phrase intensify
the mood and occasionally the music rises to forte, but in general this is a
gentle, diatonic setting of the Lord’s Prayer. The Pentecostal motet O quam
suavis est is dedicated to Hélène Guy, a music educator based in Aix, and
her Ensemble Vocal de Provence. The piece looks to the rapt side of
Messiaen’s early music once again, with its ethereal harmonies. Jesu, dulcis
memoria shares with O quam suavis est a flowing approach to the musical
line: the parts move more independently of one another than in Villette’s
earlier vocal works. Occasional chromatic inflections in the vocal lines add
an element of surprise. In his final motet, Panis angelicus, Villette has
stripped the music down to the bone, using harmonic colour judiciously to
highlight his plea for God to lead the way. Returning as the music does to
the clarity of the opening makes this all the more poignant.
The phrase ‘no prophet is accepted in his own country’ is particularly apt
in Villette’s case. His music’s sensual quality and approachable idiom have
found favour with choirs and audiences alike in such diverse countries as
the United States, Japan and Germany, and especially in the United Kingdom.
The Hymne à la Vierge was once included in the Service of Nine Lessons and
Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, much to the composer’s delight. But as
yet, few choirs in France perform his music, something that his widow
Josette believes left Villette feeling a little disappointed. ‘I think
religious music has more hold abroad than here in France. Cathedral choirs
are thin on the ground these days, and as he was not based in Paris he did
not have the kind of exposure a composer needed at the time to be well known
in France’, she says. ‘But it meant a lot to him to know that his music was
performed elsewhere. This recording would please him very much. And while it
is a shame that he is no longer here to know this joy, I feel sure he is
looking down from heaven and observing with pride.’
|
|
http://www.musimem.com/villette.htm |
|
Op. 20 - Salutation angélique
- 1) soprano et orgue - 2) soprano et orchestre - 3) soprano et orchestre à
cordes (2'45) - 1954
Op. 24 - Hymne à la vierge - 1) chœur 4 voix mixtes a cappella (3'30)
- 1955 - (Durand, 1967) - 2) version anglaise arrangement Owen Franklin
|
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Villette |
|
Pierre Villette (1926–1998) was a
French composer of choral and instrumental music.
Villette was born into a musical family in 1926 at Duclair, Normandy. He
studied with Maurice Duruflé before attending the Paris Conservatoire.
Pierre Boulez was a fellow student but their careers followed very different
paths. In 1957 Villette was appointed director of the Conservatoire in
Besançon, the capital of the Franche-Comté region. He was dogged by ill
health and had a lung removed while still in his twenties. His bad health
forced him to move from mountainous Besançon to a warmer climate, and he
became director of the Academy at Aix en Provence in 1967. He held this
position until he retired in 1987, and he continued to live in Provence
until his death in 1998.
Villette's music is a product of a French musical heritage that includes
Fauré and Debussy as well as Poulenc and Messiaen, and a French cultural
legacy that includes Catholicism and the Order of Saint Benedict. Villette
was not interested in the avant-garde direction taken by Boulez's circle,
and instead his music drew on influences as eclectic as Gregorian Chant,
medieval music, jazz (he composed an orchestral piece titled Blues), and
Stravinsky. His catalogue has eighty-one opus numbers, (full list via this
link) and he wrote chamber and orchestral music as well as better-known
choral works.
Villette's compositions are performed around the world. His choral music was
championed in England by Dr Donald Hunt in the 1970s when he was director of
Worcester Cathedral Choir, and Villette's Hymne à la Vierge, which is
probably his best-known work, has been performed in the annual Service of
Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College, Cambridge. Choirs in the US,
Japan, and Germany are also familiar with Villette's compositions.
Strangely, however, he has never been widely performed in his native France,
probably because he held regional positions in a country where artistic life
is dominated by Paris.
|
Please notify us of any
broken/defective links
Page last modified:
May 26, 2013
Return to my homepage:
www.avemariasongs.org
|
avemariasongs.org
