No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The grand motet was the major large musical form of state-sponsored religion in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. It emerged from the double chorus motet of the early 17th century, influenced by the new musical trends from Italy and French secular genres such as the air de cour and dances, and remained essentially unchanged until the French Revolution. The period covered in this study, beginning with the assumption of power of Louis XIV in 1661 and ending with the death of Delalande in 1726, represents the full blooming and highest musical development of the grand motet. Composers in this form whose names and works have come down to us were associated primarily with the Chapelle Royale at Versailles and, in a few cases, with the more important Paris churches. These composers include some whose names may be familiar: Dumont, Robert, Lully, Campra, Charpentier and Delalande; the repertoire of motets which they produced represents possibly the largest untapped body of Baroque church music still left. The number of motets extant in score or parts is unknown, but numbers in the hundreds. Of these, perhaps ten are available in a decently performable modern edition. It may indeed be that a certain portion of this repertoire deserves to languish in obscurity, but the attractiveness of some of the motets now available suggests the existence of others of high musical worth.

This work is a setting of the hymn of Thanksgiving written by St. Nicetius in the sixth century, the TE DEUM. In the Roman Catholic liturgy it replaces the last responsory of Matins on Feast Days and Sundays and in the Anglican liturgy it is one of the canticles of Morning Prayer. The text is one of the few surviving examples of Latin "Psalmus Idioticus" which were, along with the GLORIA of the Ordinary of the Mass and the EXULTET, early Latin texts written in imitation of the Psalms. This TE DEUM was written to continue a tradition of choral settings of this text, in Latin, English, and German, beginning with Palestrina and Handel, and continuing with Haydn, Mozart, Berlioz, Bruckner, Dvorak, Verdi, Britten, Walton, Kodaly, Persichetti, and Vaughan Williams to the present. The quotes from the Metamorphoses for 23 strings of Richard Strauss are used in honor of Strauss' quote of Beethoven's EROICA Funeral March at the end of the Metamorphoses. Strauss was acknowledging the "Master" and his compositional tradition and in the same way I humbly respect the artistic legacy I have inherited. The text and the music have symbiotically wended their way through the centuries out of the pens of the masters. The work is set using the English translation of the Anglican Church, is in one movement and is scored for the following forces: double woodwind with alto saxophone, four horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, suspended cymbal, tam tam, tubular chimes, vibraphone, triangle, crash cymbals, SATB soli, SSAATTBB chorus, and strings.