Messe de requiem

It is difficult to determine an accurate date of composition for Plantade’s Messe de requiem à grand orchestre, “composed and dedicated to Mme la Baronne de La Bouillerie” according to its title page. In fact, the work seems to have existed before the event which made it famous: the commemoration, in 1823, of the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Queen Marie Antoinette on the scaffold. The repertory of the Chapelle des Tuileries did not contain many funeral masses at this time, and it is likely that the urgency of an event perhaps scheduled at a late stage made it necessary to draw on works not written by the principal Maîtres de Chapelle (Lesueur and Cherubini). As a result, the organiser of the ceremony turned to Charles-Henri Plantade, asking him to revise a D minor Mass which, although unpublished, had probably already been performed. A luxurious edition, published by Frey for the occasion, benefited from the generosity of the Baronne de La Bouillerie, who put together a long list of subscribers, guaranteeing the profitability of a venture like this. The music of this Requiem strikingly bridges the gap between the models of the French Ancien Régime and early Romanticism. The chorus is written for three male vocal parts (the tenors are always divided) and a single female vocal line. Because of this, the sound is similar to ancient motets in the aesthetic tradition of Lully, then Rameau. The structure retains the traditional scheme of Introït / Kyrie / Graduel / Prose / Offertoire / Sanctus / Pie Jesu / Agnus. After an introduction whose chromaticism represents affliction before death, and whose tam-tam strokes seem to recall man’s implacable destiny, the Kyrie opts for a more energetic fugue, begun in imitation plainchant, whose spiralling motifs are not dissimilar to certain Handelian melismas. The intimate Graduel divides the soprano line into two parts at times and aspires to a homorhythmic fullness, in complete contrast to the Kyrie. The Prose—owing to the length of its text—is the most elaborately developed section of the mass of the dead, and also provides Plantade with a showcase for a wealth of invention: there are hints here of the operatic ferment of the revolutionary works by Méhul and Cherubini, and even the overwrought style of Rossini, then at the height of his popularity. The beautiful Pie Jesu which concludes this section offers a superb example of retrospective style, in which violas and cellos sound like a consort of viols during the reign of Louis XIV. But it is precisely in the “real” Pie Jesu—the one that precedes the Agnus, later in the mass—that Plantade uses the most modern effect of orchestration in his score: a plaintive wail by the horn on an “open”, chromatic note, producing a disturbing sound which Berlioz in particular must have appreciated.