Te Deum

Composed in 1848-49, this Te Deum was not performed until 30 April 1855, in the church of Saint-Eustache in Paris. That was the only time in his life that Berlioz performed the complete work; later the same year, on the 15 and 16 November, he conducted extracts from it in concerts marking the end of the Exposition Universelle. Programmers may have been put off by its sheer scale. The work is rarely performed as Edmond Viel described it in Le Ménestrel of 6 May 1855 (and in any case the instrumental seventh movement is usually omitted nowadays): “Berlioz employed no fewer than nine hundred artists, distributed as follows: a first choir of one hundred voices in three parts, a second choir of one hundred voices, also in three parts, and finally a third choir of six hundred children singing in unison; so much for the vocal part. As for the instrumental part, it consists of a symphony orchestra of one hundred and sixty musicians, and the great organ of the church. [...] In the immensity of the proportions, as well as in the brilliance of the colouring, Berlioz recalls the immortal paintings of the Venetian school: he is the Titian, the Paulo Veronese of music, but with more idealism and fantasy in his conception.” As in his Requiem, Berlioz restructured the text to suit his purpose. He contrasted moments of introspection with powerful outbursts: notice, for example, the contrast between the sweet fervour of the Te ergo quaesumus (with a tenor soloist) and the clamour of Judex crederis. “It was colossal, Babylonian, Ninevite,” enthused the composer (never one to avoid superlatives), adding with regard to its choral finale: “It is a tremendous piece, probably the most formidable I have ever written.”