Concert of sacred music (standard in concert)

A concert of sacred music is a Concert which answers at least of the two following characteristics:

to have a program made up (partly or entirely) of Sacred music;
to take place at one important moment of the liturgical year.

The expression in “concert of sacred music” is undoubtedly due to the Organiste Pierre Chabanceau of the Bar towards 1650: In the concerts which one called “spiritual” as those of the Bar, of the programs could be constituted without same having recourse to the compositions Latin of liturgical use, the assistance only of works morals and pious in language française. It is undoubtedly in reference to these concerts that Anne Danican Philidor baptizes Concert of sacred music its new organization in concerts, founded in 1725. The program in this Concert of sacred music is largely composed of sacred music, and the concerts can take place only the days of religious holidays or during periods of “penitence”.

The success in the Parisian Concert of sacred music makes followers so much that the expression becomes common, the characteristics in the concerts of sacred music being more or less the same ones from one place to another.

Concerts are thus organized, during the century, in various towns of France, like Bordeaux, Grenoble or Rouen, but also in other countries, as with Vienna (Austria).

In Paris, the French revolution, proclaiming freedom of the theaters and by-effect in the concerts, one saw until several “concerts of sacred music” the same day: This association of words was not any more used but to characterize the kind of music forming the program when it was not only one label dissimulatrice having for goal to justify a spectacle the days of religious holidays for which the police force continued to impose slackening.

Starting from 1801, the Opéra of Paris again gives a program of crowned Musique at the time of Easter. The “concerts of sacred music” return to Christmas 1806. In the following decades, concerts of sacred music take place in Paris during the Holy Week and, certain years, with the Ascension, the Pentecost, the All Saints' day and Christmas. However, the program always did not consist of sacred music; in certain “spiritual” concerts, one counted none of it. These concerts were organized sometimes by the Opera of Paris, sometimes by the Italian Théâtre of Paris, sometimes by the two theaters jointly.

The school of song of Alexandre-Etienne Choron organizes in his turn of the “exercises or concerts of sacred music”, with especially of the sacred music. The Société in the concerts of the Academy takes again then the tradition in the concerts of sacred music.

From the middle of the 19th century and to our days, the expression in “concert of sacred music” is employed more only to indicate a concert of sacred music, independently of the time when it is given.

References

Random links: