Psaume 129

One of the formative experiences in Lili Boulanger’s short life was her attendance at the rehearsals and first performance of Florent Schmitt’s Psalm 47 in Paris in December 1906. Although Schmitt’s score has little in common with the three psalm settings she was herself to complete in 1916, it clearly left a profound impression on her. It might even have been a factor in her decision to take up composition as a profession. There were many other factors, however, not least her upbringing in a household headed by a father who had been musician enough to win Prix de Rome in 1835 and including an older sister, Nadia, who had already started on the career that would make her the most influential teacher of composition of her generation. Gabriel Fauré she knew as a frequent visitor to the house and Debussy she admired from afar.

Among her other advantages, to offset the frequently debilitating abdominal disorder that would kill her before she reached her twenty-fifth birthday, was her extraordinary determination. Nadia having narrowly failed to win the Prix de Rome in 1908, Lili single-mindedly directed her studies at the Paris Conservatoire to winning it - which in 1913 she duly did, becoming the first woman composer ever to be awarded the first prize by what was a notoriously misogynist jury. Although she had concealed it in her competition piece, Faust et Hélène, she had already begun to develop her own musical language, tending to avoid triadic harmonies and enriching the major and minor scales with a variety ancient and modern modes. From now on she applied it to coming to terms through her music - she completed about twenty works in all - with what she always knew would be an early death.

Psalm 129

for baritone and orchestra

Lili Boulanger’s Psalm 129, the second of the three psalm settings she completed in 1916, is not the sustained imprecation that the psalmist himself seems to have had in mind. When she comes to the last verse - “Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you” - she actually invokes that blessing. Whether motivated by a longing for release from her own pain, by compassion for others or by purely musical considerations, Lili’s interpretation of the last verse is the major inspiration of the work and, indeed, its saving grace. Structurally, it is a very risky score with no kind of symmetry to it, no main theme and with only its modally altered D minor tonality to hold it together: it needs a defining moment to put its component parts into perspective.

The orchestral introduction, with its emphatically articulated parallel ninths on woodwind and brass so effectively suggesting the psalmist’s affliction, certainly seems to be going about the business of establishing a main theme. But with the agitated approach on horns and trumpets to the first entry of the soloist the introductory melodic material is dropped and never heard again. Far from linking the verses by recurring motifs, the composer reacts spontaneously to each one, shaping the expressive vocal line entirely in accordance with the natural inflections of the text and adding the occasional illustrative gesture, like the woodwind cries of pain where “des laboureurs ont labouré mon dos.” One prominent feature that emerges from the fourth verse is a rising phrase on lower strings and wind that in following orchestral interlude is developed into an extended mainly whole-tone scale taken up by nearly all the woodwind and brass.

The turning point, after another orchestral episode with a dramatically accelerated variant on the rising scale, comes with the eighth verse and the quiet entry of a consoling melody on woodwind and celesta as the soloist sings of the “bénédiction de l’Eternel.” It is a transforming moment that resolves the foregoing anguish and ends the work in as much serenity as there is in D minor.

Psaume 129

Ils m’ont assez opprimé dès ma jeunesse. Qu’Israël le dise:

ils m’ont opprimé dès ma jeunesse. Mais ils ne m’ont pas vaincu.

Des laboureurs ont labouré mon dos. Ils y ont tracé de larges sillons.

L’Éternel est juste. Il a coupé les cordes des méchants.

Qu’ils soient confondus et qu’ils reculent, tous ceux qui haïssent Sion.

Qu’ils soient comme l’herbe des toits qui sèche avant qu’on ne l’arrache.

Le laboureur n’en remplit point sa main. Celui qui lie les gerbes n’en change point son bras.

Et les passants ne disent point: Que la bénédiction de l’Éternel soit avec vous.

Nous vous bénissons au nom de l’Éternel.

Psalm 129

Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say:

Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have not prevailed against me.

The plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows.

The Lord is righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.

Let them all be confounded and turned back that hate Zion. 

Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up:

Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom.

Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you: We bless you in the name of the Lord.