Psaume 24

None of Lili Boulanger’s audacious psalm settings would have won her the Prix de Rome. The first of them, the short but stark Psaume 24, written two years into the First World War in 1916, is no ordinary hymn of praise to “the King of glory.” Scored for four-part chorus, brass, timpani, harp and organ and set in a modal kind of E minor, it is more like an act of defiance. There is no easy splendour in either the dissonant harmonies based on piled-up fourths and fifths or the primitive scoring for brass. Much of the vocal writing, which is confined at first to tenors and basses, is either aggressively severe or distantly modal. It is only with the entry of sopranos and altos on “Portes, élevez vos têtes,” that the composer applies more conventional colouring. The enriched harmonies are retained in the final section which, propelled by a rhythmic ostinato on brass and organ, accelerates to its emphatically affirmative conclusion.