Psaume 130

The most important of Lili Boulanger’s psalm settings, “Du fond de l’abîme,” was started at the Villa Medici in Rome in 1914 and completed three years later. Dedicated “à la mémoire de mon cher Papa,” it is a dramatic expression of a theme common to much of her work, which is a longing for light in the prevailing darkness. The symbolism is clear enough in the slow orchestral introduction where, over rumbling percussion and amid B flat minor harmonies made all the more oppressive by their modal inflections, a tuba and a solo cello utter a subterranean fragment of plain song. They are answered by lower strings and woodwind striving upwards in aching arpeggios, violins climbing ever higher before being pressed down again and by a searing trumpet call.

On its first entry, the chorus merely chants the words and only gradually, by way of a lyrical expansion on the holy names of “Iahvé” and “Adonaï,” finds the melodic inspiration for sustained supplication. The quicker second section begins in the same way, proceeding from a soft chant to a broad climax on the “Adonaï” material, before the chorus yields to the alto soloist. She introduces a new melody which, though in an E flat minor still distorted by modal inflections, is set in a more relaxed tempo and a more intimate texture. The chorus takes fright again, however, asking with growing insistency “Qui donc pourra tenir?” - most emphatically of all on a fortissimo augmentation of the trumpet call from the introduction.

The answer is in the third section, which is the turning point of the work as far both its construction and its message are concerned. The tempo slows and, against gently rippling arpeggios on harp and organ, a devout new melody arises on woodwind for the alto soloist to take up with the consoling words “Mais la clémence est en toi.” The oppressive modal inflections are still there, however, and it is only at the beginning of the fourth section, where the alto is joined by a tenor soloist, that Lili’s vision at last glimpses the radiance of major harmonies.

At what might with any one else have been the high point of the work, she plunges the chorus back into the darkness of the depths, from where it must resume the struggle to achieve a last, liberated climax of “Iahvé, Adonaï” and to offer an ethereal expression of hope. Even then the work ends without the unambiguous consolation Lili was too honest to provide.

Gerald Larner©

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, beginning with the short Psalm 24 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.

Psaume 130

The most important of Lili Boulanger’s three psalm settings, “Du fond de l’abîme,” was started at the Villa Medici in Rome in 1914 and completed three years later. Dedicated “à la mémoire de mon cher Papa,” it is a dramatic expression of a theme common to much of her work, which is a longing for light in the prevailing darkness. The symbolism is clear enough in the slow orchestral introduction where, over rumbling percussion and amid B flat minor harmonies made all the more oppressive by their modal inflections, a tuba and a solo cello utter a subterranean fragment of plain song. They are answered by lower strings and woodwind striving upwards in aching arpeggios, violins climbing ever higher before being pressed down again and by a searing trumpet call.

On its first entry, the chorus merely chants the words and only gradually, by way of a lyrical expansion on the holy names of “Iahvé” and “Adonaï,” finds the melodic inspiration for sustained supplication. The quicker second section begins in the same way, proceeding from a soft chant to a broad climax on the “Adonaï” material, before the chorus yields to the alto soloist. She introduces a new melody which, though in an E flat minor still distorted by modal inflections, is set in a more relaxed tempo and a more intimate texture. The chorus takes fright again, however, asking with growing insistency “Qui donc pourra tenir?” - most emphatically of all on a fortissimo augmentation of the trumpet call from the introduction.

The answer is in the third section, which is the turning point of the work as far both its construction and its message are concerned. The tempo slows and, against gently rippling arpeggios on harp and organ, a new melody arises on woodwind for the alto soloist to take up with the consoling words “Mais la clémence est en toi.” The oppressive modal inflections are still there, however, and it is only at the beginning of the fourth section, where the alto is joined by a tenor soloist, that Lili’s vision at last glimpses the radiance of major harmonies.

At what might with any one else have been the high point of the work, she plunges the chorus back into the darkness of the depths, from where it must resume the struggle to achieve a last, liberated climax of “Iahvé, Adonaï” and to offer an ethereal expression of hope. Even then the work ends without the unambiguous consolation Lili was too honest to provide.