Max's Musings

PIe Jesu

Pie Jesu


I'm not esecially religious, but I often find inspiration in religious music. Earlier blogs in this series have mentioned traditional hymns like Amazing Grace and Softly and Gently. Religion inspired some of the greatest music ever written, such as Mozart's Mass in C Minor or Handel's Messiah. Everything J.S. Bach composed was to the greater glory of God.

There's one religious song, the Pie Jesu, from Faure's Requiem Mass, that epitmizes a kind of blissful serenity. It's the song I chose for today's entry in my soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOvyjk8qgRQ

My personal connection with this song is kind of tenuous. Starting in the fifth grade, I studied the flute. By the time I was seventeen, I was taking private lessons from a local teacher, and she helped me choose a solo for the All-State Orchestra audition. The piece she selected was Fantasie, by Gabriel Faure. I'd never heard of this composer, but I loved the harmonies and graceful melody lines of this piece. To my ear, they sounded daring and modern, especially when compared with the traditional repetoire of flautists which includes sonatas by Bach and Handel but not much written after 1800. Beetheoven is alleged to have said that the only thing he hated more than the flute was two flutes. His disdain probably came in part from the mechanical limitations of the instrument used in his day.

When I read up on Faure, I learned he was an influential teacher, including Ravel and Nadia Boulonger among his students. He influenced many other composers, including Debussy, Poulenc, and Copeland, to name just a few. He was a champion of innovations in music, including the dissonances of the Vienna School and the frenetic rhythms and atonality of Stravinsky. He was an early proponent of jazz, and used elements of that genre in his later works. In many ways, he's an under-appreciated genius and a bridge from Romanticism to Modernism.

In any case, there wasn't much variety in the traditional flute repertoire. Debussy wrote one obscure piece, and flute solos decorated the orchestral works of composers like Ravel, but the modern repertoire was pretty sparse. Here's François Leleux with the Orchestre de chambre de Paris performing Faure's Fantasie, the piece I used for the All-State audition (I got in the orchestra, by the way):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md7FtZ_OEEEvv

This work led me to learn more about Faure, which of course led to his masterpiece, the Requiem Mass, and thePie Jesu linked above. Dave Ryan plans to list the equally marvelous Agnus Dei from this mass in his soundtrack
https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/2313407-Soundtrack-Of-My-Life
so I'm listing the Pie Jesu to complement his entry.


A sampling of other classical works that belong in my soundtrack
I'm omitting dozens of things I could list here. String quartets by Beethoven, Brahms, and Bartok, for example. Or Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, or Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. Anything by Satie. It would take too long to list them all, so I'll just do a short list here.

Religious Works
Mozart's Mass in C Minor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez0kqVShFEs

Bach, Jesu, Joy of Man's Desring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkWdBbapJKc

Handel, Ev'ry valley shall be exhalted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NCO6UzZ2R8

Rachmaninov, Vocalise (not religious, but still transcendent)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhQaeDWlZ4A

Fred Bock's arrangment of Jesus Loves Me and Clair de Lune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFBs4Q23NgY

Barber, Adagio for Strings (again, not religious, but transcendent)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3MHeNt6Yjs

Professional flautists performing of some of my favorite solo pieces from when I was in high school
Bach, Sonata in E-flat major, BWV 1031
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jwH4dP2HQs

Debussy, Syrinx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNjroFNi7mA

Handel, Allegro from Sonata in F major
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2RKPg6o8E8

Kennan, Night Soliloquy,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gS3gws-fyI

In researching this blog entry, I stumbled across this cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and it's so good I had to include a link. The song, of course, wasn't written until long after I left high school.
Dos Diamonds-Crossover Music's cover of Hallelujah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5zk7Goo4_4

Max Griffin
Please visit my website and blog at
https://new.MaxGriffin.net

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