Sacred music holds a prominent place in the overall output of the French Romantic composer, Charles François Gounod. Despite this emphasis on sacred genres, Gounod is much better known as a master of French opera than as a composer of religious works. Likewise, Gounod’s choral music, the majority of which is sacred, remains largely unfamiliar. His sacred choral music includes sixty-five motets, six Anglican anthems, three oratorios, four sacred cantatas, nineteen French devotional partsongs, and twenty-one masses. This document examines Gounod’s twenty-one mass settings to clarify the importance of religious choral music in his creative activities while identifying qualities of his sacred compositional style.
The first four chapters provide necessary background for a discussion of the masses. A brief introductory chapter details the prominence of sacred choral music in Gounod’s oeuvre. Chapter Two addresses mass composition in nineteenth-century France, providing an overview of political and cultural influences on sacred music during Gounod’s life and a review of the mass output of the centuries’ most important French composers of sacred music. Chapter Three describes the biographical events and conditions that pertain to Gounod’s mass compositions, highlighting the central role his personal religious convictions played in his ongoing commitment to sacred music. Chapter Four presents a brief overview of Gounod’s mass output, describing general characteristics of his religious style, providing a catalogue of his masses, and outlining a methodology for the discussion to follow.
Chapters Five, Six, and Seven contain descriptions of Gounod’s masses. Chapter Five describes his masses with organ accompaniment, Chapter Six explores his masses with orchestral accompaniment, and Chapter Seven considers his requiem masses. His unpublished masses, by necessity, are only discussed in reference to their biographical context. Because of the large number of published masses, and the nature of this document as an overview of the genre, the musical discussion of the published masses focuses on the most salient musical features of each mass movement. Due to its place within the modern performance repertoire, the Messe Solennelle de Sainte Cécile receives an extended discussion in Chapter Six. Similarly, the Requiem (1893) in Chapter Seven is discussed at greater length due to its historical significance as Gounod’s final composition.