Gloria

Francis Poulenc’s Gloria (1959-60), for soprano solo, mixed choir and orchestra, marries the nervous energy and breakneck pace of modern life to the reassuring solidity of ancient ritual. The composer cemented their union by applying his vibrant, multidimensional harmonies and characteristic rhythmic joie de vivre and exuberance, developed during the 1920s and beyond in a series of secular works, to the great song of praise from the Latin Mass. There’s something of the cabaret about “Domine Fili unigenite”, while the fanfares that launch the “Gloria” sound like the introduction to a prize fight. Poulenc also recalled the spirit if not the letter of Gregorian chant, especially so in the sublime solo and call-and-response choral writing of “Domine Deus, Rex caelestis” and the opening of the final “Qui sedes ad dextram patris”, and showed his hand as one of the 20th century’s finest song composers in the exotic solo melodies of “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei”. In his youth, Poulenc, the son of a prosperous family, abandoned the Roman Catholic faith of his upbringing in favour of earthly pleasures, but he rediscovered it following a pilgrimage to the shrine of the so-called Black Virgin of Rocamadour in 1936. The latter, he recalled, marked a “capital date in my life and career”. His return to the fold led to the composition of a remarkable sequence of sacred compositions, none finer or more charming than his Gloria.