Messe op. 4
Mass in G minor for four soloists and chorus (SATB), orchestra (2 flutes, 2 English horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, harp, strings), grand orgue and petit orgue; first performed on 21 March 1857 at the church of Saint-Merry in Paris.
“It is like a magnificent Gothic Cathedral in which Bach would conduct his orchestra! [...] [An] extraordinary work, which has its place between Bach and Beethoven.” Thus wrote Franz Liszt, in a letter sent to Saint-Saëns from Rome in August 1869. The Mass in question, the composer’s Opus 4, had been composed almost fifteen years previously: it dates from 1856 – or, as Daniel Fallon supposes, 1855, written for the competition organised by the Société de Sainte-Cécile in Bordeaux. It was published in 1857 by Richault, with a dedication to Abbé Jean-Louis Gabriel, priest of the church of Saint-Merry in Paris, where Saint-Saëns had been organist since 1853. The Mass Opus 4 contains the five pieces of the Ordinary and an O salutaris hostia. In the Kyrie – which Liszt regarded as “the spire of your Cathedral”, although he felt that it was a little too long for “the requirements of the worship”, which may support the hypothesis that it was written as a competition piece – Saint-Saëns resorts to the ancestral principle of alternating the organ with the voices. The Kyrie, Credo and O salutaris hostia are preceded by the words “Canto fermo”, referring to the composer’s use of plainchant melodies: the Kyrie and Credo are built on an arranged reprise of the melodies from the Messe royale de premier ton by Henry Du Mont (1610-1683). Saint-Saëns’s contemporary Léon Roques (1839-1923) made a very successful arrangement of the work for soloists, choir and two organs, published in 1856.