La Toussaint

According to the conductor Jules Danbé, a friend of Victorin Joncières, interviewed the day after the latter’s death, the composer wrote nothing more after his wife passed away in 1896. If that information proves to be true, La Toussaint (All Saints’ Day) – the autograph manuscript of which is undated – could be a production that remained pending for a long time before being performed at the Concerts-Colonne on 9 November 1902. Yet the funereal mood of this lamento in A minor also suggests that it was written by a man in mourning. No source provides us with the exact programmatic content of the piece, but after its premiere the journalist for L’Éclair described the work thus: “Of La Toussaint (All Saints’ Day), one of the most remarkable of the Church’s solemnities, the people have made the festival of the dead. Monsieur Joncières respects the legend, and his Toussaint conveys the sadness of missing a loved one and the unhappiness of despair. A poignant canonical prelude creates an atmosphere of anguish and distress through which runs a chorale, with the woodwinds and strings in dialogue, possibly symbolising the soothing consolation of faith. Insufficient consolation, no doubt, since the opening lamento reappears with exasperation in a tremendous tutti. Then gradually the music subsides and fades away” (L'Éclair, 10 November 1902). Le Monde artiste of 16 November saw in the work “some recollection of the Entry of the Knights of the Holy Grail in Wagner’s Parsifal”, while hailing it as a “piece that is both beautiful and noble”. It was performed at Joncières’s funeral at the church of Saint-Roch in Paris on Thursday 29 October 1903, just two days before All Saints’ Day.