Charles Gounod

French composer Charles-François Gounod (sharl frahn-SWA GOO-noh, 1818-1893) gained international fame as the composer of operas, including especially Faust (1859), based on Goethe’s play, and Roméo et Juliette (1867), based on Shakespeare’s, and many a baby-boomer will remember his instrumental Funeral March for a Marionette as the theme music to the 1955-1962 television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

But before he began composing for the stage Gounod was a church musician and in his youth he had considered entering the priesthood, so it is not surprising that his output includes a great many sacred works. In fact, Gounod is most widely known today for his Ave Maria (1852), which uses the first Prelude from J.S. Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier (book 1) as the accompaniment to an original melody.

His second most famous sacred piece probably is Repentir (“Repentance”), or as it is better known in the English-speaking world, O Divine Redeemer. The semi-operatic “scene in the form of a prayer” was composed only six months before the composer’s death, and Gounod wrote the original French text himself. Originally with orchestral accompaniment, Gounod did not intend the scene for use in religious services, but its heartfelt and pious fervor makes it so irresistible to church soloists that it is safe to say that today it is performed more frequently for church congregations than for concert audiences.

--Hsiao-Ling Wang, Kristin Samuelson, February, 2007

--October 21, 2007 (Cromley and Friends: Voices & Violin, Bach to Broadway)