Te Deum Op.22

Berlioz liked big sounds in big spaces. Obviously, he valued delicacy and intimacy too: the Nuits d’Eté songs, to name just one example, offer ample evidence of that. But as a true son of the Napoleonic period and as a faithful pupil of Le Sueur, one of the leading composers of that era of grandiloquence in French music, he was excited by acoustic and architectural splendour. The bigger the interior space of a great church or catherdal – like that of Les Invalides where the Grande Messe des Morts was first performed in 1837 – the more inspired he was by its musical potential.

When he wrote the Te Deum Berlioz had no specific event or space in mind. He had been wanting to exploit the dramatic possibilities of such a work since the early 1830s, however, and by 1849 he had completed a score which was much the same as the Te Deum first performed (as part of the official opening cermonies of the Exposition de l’Industrie) in St Eustache in Paris six years later. The only significant difference was that he had in the meantime added a third chorus of 600 children’s voices – bringing the total number of performers required, according to the composer’s own specifications, to 911 (and that’s not including the 12 harps he asks for in the closing Marche pour la présenation des drapeaux which, as in most concert performances, is omitted on this occasion). Their combined effect, Berlioz told Liszt, searching desperately for gigantic synonyms, was “colossal, Babylonian, Ninivite.”

Apart from its sheer size, a singular aspect of the score is that, in the composer’s words, “the organ does not accompany but plays in dialogue with the orchestra.” They are independent forces, he said, “like Pope and Emperor.” So the work begins with Emperor and Pope in an exchange of massive chords leading into the Pope’s presentation of a portentous descending melodic line which, in one way or another, is fundamental to the work. The fugue subject introduced on the first entry of the sopranos of the first chorus incorporates a three-note phrase from it - a phrase which is to recur as a motto in other movements. The descending theme introduced by the second and third choruses in unison with low brass on the words “Te, aeternum” is a close variant of the Pope’s organ line.

In the hugely contrapuntal opening hymn Berlioz began where the Te Deum always begins, with the first two of the 28 verses of the liturgical

text. Thereafter, however, he goes his own way. The second hymn, Tibi omnes, includes verses 3 to 14 but not necessarily in that order. Framed by a lyrically contemplative prelude (on organ) and postlude (on orchestra), it is based on three proclamations of “Sanctus,” the first two beginning radiantly and proceeding on a crescendo to “Pleni sunt coeli,” the third fortissimo throughout.

The first of the prayer movements, Dignare (beginning with verse 26), is a timely intervention of personal humilty amid the generally prevailing public splendour. It is an ingenious construction founded on a bass line which, anticipated in the opening organ solo and then sustained by lower strings and the basses of the chorus, rises in thirds in long and slow-moving steps to “in gloria numerari,” woodwind adding their own plea in plaintive repetitions of the motto phrase. From that central point it falls again to the closing bars.

Christe, Rex gloriae (beginning with verse 14) is the summit of the work in that it is the most brilliantly sonorous and the most festive of the six movements. It is constructed in three main sections – the first based on the Pope’s descending organ line from the Te Deum laudamus and presented in celebratory counterpoint, the second (“Ad liberandum”) a more thoughtful epsisode, the third (“sedes ad dexteram Dei”) taking up the descending theme again and working towards a visionary climax.

Te ergo, quaesumus (verses 20 and 28) is another prayer, this one an operatically plaintive tenor solo adapted from the Agnus Dei of Berlioz’s youthful Messe solennelle. Beginning in D minor and punctuated by chanted interventions from the choral sopranos, it modulates to a brighter G major on “Speravimus” and ends in that key with a very quiet unaccompanied choral treatment of “Fiat super nos.”

The last movement is a combination of hymn, “Judex crederis” in 9/8 time, and prayer, “Salvum fac “in 3/4, worked into a complex and towering construction of a breadth and magnificence not so far achieved even in this monumental work.

The “Judex crederis” sections are driven by the inexorable tread of the theme introduced by the organ in the opening bars, fugally presented by the chorus and repeated literally dozens of times before the end. The “Salvum fac” section, beginning quietly on sopranos with a melody in B flat minor based on the motto phrase from the Te deum laudamus, offers only brief respite from the “Judex crederis’ ostinato: even as the the prayer continues on sopranos, it re-enters on basses to resume its progress and to attract the attention of the percussion to its characteristic rhythm. The hymn and prayer elements are later brought into confrontation again but this time in B flat major – which has been the aim of the movement from the beginning. Its achievement is celebrated by the ostinato theme now liberated from its menace and the motto phrase converted into a final trumpet fanfare.

“It is without doubt,” Berlioz observed, “the most imposing thing I have produced.”

Gerald Larner ©2006