Music for Epiphany 4 — Sunday January 29 2023

Messe à trois voix – André Caplet (1878-1925)

View the Kyrie here:

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.

View the Sanctus/Benedictus here:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

View the Agnus Dei here:

Lamb of God, you who take away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.

Lamb of God, you who take away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.

Lamb of God, you who take away the sin of the world, grant us peace.

Although remembered mainly as an orchestrator and editor of unfinished works by his close friend Claude Debussy, André Caplet (1878-1925) was a solid composer in his own right, working in the Impressionist style of his time and place. His music revolved mainly around the voice. Within Debussy’s Impressionistic harmonic manner he developed a personal style, marked especially by wide-ranging, improvisatory-sounding melodies. Additionally setting his music apart from Debussy’s is a taste for plainchant and a general interest in archaic music.

Composed in 1919-20, Caplet’s Messe à trois voix, this Sunday’s setting of the Mass ordinary in church, had its first performance on June 13, 1922 at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, under the direction of the composer. Starting from a single B flat, the three voices gradually emerge to give the main motif of the Kyrie which will, each time, be stated in one voice before being punctuated at the end by the other two. Unison voices are more frequent in the Sanctus (on “Benedictus” and “Hosanna”), and the Agnus Dei presents the most accomplished example of the rhythmic flexibility sought by Caplet, less by using irrational values than by multiplying the poco ritardando and poco accelerando, sometimes in the space of the same measure.

Gerald Harder