Cantique de Jean Racine

Gabriel Fauré’s earliest major work, the choral hymn Cantique de Jean Racine , is an intersection in French musical history. Composed when Fauré was a 20-year-old student at Paris’s École Niedermeyer, a pupil of Camille Saint-Saëns, the work is dedicated to César Franck. It won first prize in the school’s 1865 composition competition, and though it wouldn’t be published until 1876 it announced the arrival of a new voice in French music—delicate, understated and deeply felt—anticipating the Requiem that would follow two decades later. Fauré sets words by 17th-century dramatist Jean Racine, paraphrasing a Latin hymn. The text’s “peaceful night” sets the tone for a setting originally scored for organ and four-part mixed voices (Fauré later orchestrated it) in which the organ supplies a muted, lulling accompaniment to voices suspended in hazy softness and stillness. Two outer verses frame the piece in calm, while the central verse with its sequence of rising entries—“qui l’a conduit”—swells to an impassioned climax.