LANGLAIS: Caro Mea; Messe du Saint-Sacrement (Works for Chorus and Organ) - Emmanuel Le Divellec, Ad Lamina

Ad Limina
Emmanuel Le Divellec, orgue

Music and liturgy: a risky encounter… a meeting of opportunities. The worst rubs shoulders with the best. Music has gained a heritage. It retains a field of experimentation. Langlais explores this field with rare success. He achieves the impossible: uniting tradition and modernity.
The year 2007, among other anniversaries, will allow us to celebrate the birth of Jean Langlais (1907-1991). This composer was one of the most prominent organists of the 20th century, in Europe and America, both in concert and in liturgical services. In both roles, he distinguished himself as one of the most brilliant improvisers of his time. From the 1950s onward, he participated in the liturgical reform. He brought to it what his written work already contained: the intuition of the privileged link between music and sacred action, the influence of Gregorian chant, and the tradition he received from his Breton childhood. He was a prolific composer at the organ. But he also wrote for orchestra and voices.
Thus, in 1935, he composed a short mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) for the parish choir of Escalquens, near Toulouse, the hometown of his first wife, which was performed at the time under his direction. But he forgot about this score. It was his second wife, Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais, who rediscovered it in 1999. This Escalquens Mass aptly illustrates the "early style" of Langlais, the young composer. One can still sense the influence of Fauré, even Franck, but one also feels the close affinity with Tournemire, whose successor Langlais became at the organ of Sainte-Clotilde from 1945 to 1987.
It was simply a matter of combining these pieces from the Common of the Mass with another vocal work by Langlais, the Suite Corpus Christi, composed in 1997, which is none other than the Proper of the Mass of the Blessed Sacrament – the Feast of Corpus Christi (Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory, Communion). But instead of following the Escalquens Mass with the Suite Corpus Christi, as in a catalog recording, the choice was made to place the pieces "as they belong" within the unfolding of the liturgical action. And, by the same decision, Langlais's "second style" is "balanced" by his "first." Anyone listening to the recording cannot fail to grasp the difference between Langlais's work from 1935 and 1979. The latter is, in a way, more "hardcore," so to speak. Close in this respect to his friend Olivier Messiaen, Langlais takes definitive liberties with tonal music, breaking the patterns of time signature and even parodying established forms.
The recording adds three other components to these two works, thus recontextualized: first, Gregorian chant, in particular the processional hymn and the famous Corpus Christi sequence, Lauda Sion, alternated between the music stand and the grand organ; second, a large symphonic improvisation for the lengthy offertory; and finally, several organ pieces on themes from the feast. And so the recording unfolds the musical actions of a solemn High Mass.
Why entitle this last piece Caro mea? Langlais had a predilection for the Gregorian melody of this Corpus Christi alleluia. He improvised on this theme hundreds of times. Having suffered a severe brain injury in 1984, it was the first melody he encountered again, even before regaining his speech. But Langlais, a deeply devout man, had meditated on the Gospel of Saint John: “caro me vere est cibus, sanguis meus vere est potus – my flesh is truly food, my blood is truly drink.” One does not seize upon this Gregorian theme as one chooses any tune to “make music.” Or, more precisely, if he treats it musically, it is because he sees in this act one of the means of glimpsing, and allowing others to glimpse, the mystery. An important lesson, a masterful lesson, here, for every church musician. Today as yesterday.

Daniel Hameline

Langlais: Caro Mea
     Jean Langlais (1907-1991)
     Corpus Christi op. 208     
1.    Panis angelicus    6'14
2.    Introït "Cibavit"    3'23
     Messe d'Escalquens op. 19     
3.    Kyrie    1'16
4.    Gloria in excelsis Deo    3'07
     Corpus Christi op. 208     
5.    Graduel "Oculi"    2'21
6.    Alleluia "Caro mea"    6'12
     Anonyme
7.    Lauda Sion salvatorem    8'05

     Jean Langlais (1907-1991)
     Corpus Christi op. 208     
8.    Offertoire "Sacerdotes Domini"    10'52

     Messe d'Escalquens op. 19     
9.    Sanctus    8'58

     Anonyme
10.    Pater noster    1'13

     Jean Langlais (1907-1991)
     Messe d'Escalquens op. 19     
11.    Agnus Dei    1'45

     Corpus Christi op. 208     
12.    Communion "Quotiescumque"    8'17

     Hommage à Frescobaldi op. 70     
13.    Fantaisie    2'41