A Languedoc Tantum Ergo

Perhaps it's due to the glut of brilliant talents that French classical music produced at the fin de siècle, but even a cursory glance at the compositional scene of the day shows that France had no shortage of regional heroes.  Paris has always been the center of culture in France, and a combination of a healthy reaction to that kind of artistic exclusivity and increasingly prominent efforts to collect European folk music saw a number of composers celebrate their regional heritage through their works, such as Guy Ropartz with Brittany and quite notably Joseph Canteloube with Auvergne, whose Chants d'Auvergne are sung quite frequently.  Heck, I would've covered Joseph-Ermend Bonnal on one of these blogs earlier if recordings of his stuff weren't so hard to find, and his heritage included the Basque region that stretches across both Southwestern France and Northeastern Spain.  Likewise, Déodat de Séverac's most written-of attribute is his celebration of his Languedoc heritage.  Séverac (1872-1921) is one of those outer Impressionists that I've always known about but never really explored, partially due to his music never really taking flight with Impressionist technique and as such getting lost in the shuffle.  That isn't to say that his music isn't worth investigating - he's just a slightly awkward 'tweener, clearly enamored with the musical elite around him but unsure of how to make their art his own.  He is mostly remembered for his piano works, including the ambitious pictorial suites En Languedoc and Cerdaña, and there are plenty of recordings of his piano works (including an exquisite oeuvres complètes series by Satie champion Aldo Ciccolini.  The other piece of his that still gets played is much shorter than those - in fact so short it can be written on a leaf.

I'll freely admit that Séverac's setting of the Tantum Ergo isn't recognizably Languedocian, but nobody said that a hometown hero can't talk about anything but his native soil.  Written in 1920, the year before his untimely death, the Tantum Ergo has some of the most novel synthesis between all that stepwise-motion voice-leading your theory teachers kept talking about and the kind of French post-Romanticism that Franck and Chausson pioneered.  The lines wax and wane with an intense yearning, kneading into each syllable in that gorgeous way that only a capella choirs can bring to life.  While the harmonies are entirely tonal he'll find perfect spots to phase between junction chords à la Franck.  His dissonances are held on to only long enough to press against the temples, quickly sliding to the next poignant moment, and it's this continual liquid passion that makes the piece so precious.  There are dozens of performances to choose from but the performance below by Schola Cantorum Oxford has the most clarity and simple mastery of any of them, accentuating each supple curve and fully aware that the piece thrives on not wasting anyone's time - hugging the listener's heart and carefully releasing it back into the world.

~PNK