The Stanford Chamber Chorale under the direction of Stephen M. Sano, performs Maurice Duruflé's "Ubi caritas" and "Tu es Petrus" from the "Quatre Motets sur des thèmes grégoriens," Op. 10. Chant incipits sung by Jasmine Miller.
This performance was presented on 20 June 2019 in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK.
Maurice Duruflé dedicated his Quatre Motets sur des thèmes grégoriens, composed in 1960, to Auguste le Guennant, director of the Institut grégorien de Paris. Each of the four motets begins with a brief quotation of the Gregorian chant with which it shares a name, both in an incipit and at the beginning of the motet proper. Starting and ending the series with texts traditionally used in the Maundy Thursday service, Duruflé sets brief selections from hymns and prayers
that celebrate divine influence on earth.
The first motet, Ubi caritas, sets four stanzas of the antiphon appointed for the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday. Duruflé surrounds the chant melody, presented in the alto voices, with a
shimmering, pan-diatonic harmonization. Frequent meter shifts create a sense of timelessness and accumulation, stretching and collapsing in an overall arching structure that builds in intensity until it reaches the section that begins with “Exultemus” (“let us rejoice”). Volume and tempo relax again towards the final “Amen,” in which Duruflé quotes a second musical phrase from the plainchant within the alto line.
Duruflé’s energetic yet stately setting of Tu es Petrus emphasizes the trust and firmness behind Jesus’s declaration to his disciple, formerly named Simon, that he is the rock upon which the Christian church shall stand. The chant begins in the tenor section, but is quickly imitated in all voices, leading to an effect that is variously martial, architectural, and even dance-like. --Frances Molyneux
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