Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11

Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11, choral work by Gabriel Fauré, composed for four-part chorus and organ in 1865 and revised for chorus and chamber orchestra in 1906. The words sung by the chorus (“Verbe égal au Très-Haut”) are a translation by 17th-century French poet Jean Racine of a Latin hymn, “Consors paterni luminis” (“O Light of Light”), attributed to the 4th-century bishop of Milan St. Ambrose. (This hymn joins many others by early Christian figures to form an element of the liturgy [divine office] of the Roman Catholic Church as recorded in what was known until 1974 as the Roman Breviary.)

In the course of Fauré’s lengthy career, he became one of the foremost composers of French choral and sacred music. The Cantique de Jean Racine was the first of these works; it was written for a competition held just before the 20-year-old composer graduated from the École Niedermeyer, a school in Paris for training in classical and religious music. Although the judges—who included Fauré’s lifelong friend and one of his teachers Camille Saint-Saëns—had specified a more traditional Latin text, they eventually awarded Fauré first prize for his gentle, emotionally pitch-perfect entry.