MARK-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER Prelude from Te Deum
For this month’s Classical column Bridget Mermikides goes back to the 1600s to find a rousing Baroque composition that has been used both on royal occasions and for Eurovision!
Often dubbed ‘ The European Anthem’ this stirring fanfare is the perfect antidote to all things Brexit, as Bridget ably demonstrates.
Te Deum is a motet – a multi-part piece for voices – written in the latter part of the 17th Century by the French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704). Charpentier was a prolific and well-respected composer, and also a music theorist of the Baroque era - a musical period of rich diversity and transition.
Because of this, his large body of works including masses, operas, oratorios and other works is brilliant and diverse and means he is now one of the most popular and recorded composers of the era. Te Deum remains one of his best known works, a wonderful six- movement piece with an unusual history. It only entered the relatively modern era in 1953 when it was rediscovered by the French musicologist Carl de Nys. It immediately gained popularity and has been performed and recorded widely, particularly the first movement Prelude (Marche en Rondeau) which became (and has been for over 60 years) a prominent theme tune of the European Broadcasting Union. As such you may well have heard it as an introduction to the Eurovision Song Contest as well as a familiar tune representing royalty and coronation in films and on television.
The original manuscript of Prelude itself is very succinct, taking up only two thirds of a page. Written in D major – a key that Charpentier described as “joyful and very warlike” (which I’ve preserved here with drop D tuning), it is propelled by a vibrant and catchy melody which recurs and is developed in a rondeau form. The main technical challenge here is the ornamentations of the melody that you find in bars 2, 6, 7, 10 etc (and are written in Charpentier’s original score with a particular trill symbol. These stylistic elaborations of a melody – which had a level of freedom within the style - I’ve defined here as two types of trill: 1) a fretting-hand trill (as in bar 2) where the trill is achieved by fretting-hand legato; and 2) a cross-string trill (as in bar 7) where it is achieved by the plucking hand alternating between adjacent strings. Both of these may take some work, some good listening and attention to the tab captions, but they are worth the effort as they really lift this wonderful piece. You can of course then use them to enrich your playing in general.
There was in fact other space for flexibility of self-expression in this style: the quavers (which I’ve chosen to play here as written) could also have been made uneven (usually in a long-short pattern somewhat similar to jazz swing playing) in a Baroque style known as ‘notes inégales’ (uneven notes). So do feel free to try this out; it’s a good reminder that ‘classical’ music isn’t fixed on the page but has always been open to interpretation and interaction by players through ages.
NEXT MONTH Bridget arranges the lovely Sicilienne by Maria Theresia von Paradis
te deum’s pr elude is writt en in d ma jor, a key that charp entier descr ibed as ‘joyf ul and very warl ike’