Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749)
L’histoire de la femme adultère C191
Te Deum à grand choeur C138
Gwendoline Blondeel (soprano), Guy Cutting (tenor), Samuel Namotte (baritone), Lisandro Abadie (bass-baritone), Namur Chamber Choir, A Nocte Temporis / Reinoud Van Mechelen rec. 2024, Versailles, France
Booklet with Latin texts and translations in English, French and German
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS163 [59]

Nicolas Clérambault became organist at Saint-Sulpice in Paris in 1714. A prolific composer, he wrote more than two hundred works in many genres, both secular and sacred. The large Saint-Sulpice had been being rebuilt since 1646. Its dedicatory service in July 1745 featured this Te Deum à grand choeur. A witness claimed it was “performed by nearly one hundred musicians, the elite of Paris and Versailles”. That scale is not, perhaps regrettably, attempted here. The Namur Chamber Choir has eighteen singers listed, and A Nocte Temporis just fifteen instrumentalists. That is not to say they do not number among “the elite of Paris and Versailles”. They sing and play very well, and with plenty of effect for such a small group, suggesting some of the pomp and ceremony expected in a French Te Deum of the period.

Strings, trumpet and timpani set that expectation in the opening Symphonie. After the opening recitatives, a two-part female choir and violins combine for the Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim before the whole mixed choir, trumpet and drums join for the fugal Sanctus. The artistic director, Reinoud Van Mechelen, supplies the high tenor voice for the eloquent Salvum fac populum tuum Domine. Tenor Guy Cutting sings the penultimate section, the accompanied recitative of Dignare, Domine just as affectingly. The full choir, alternating with instrumental ritornelli, closes the work with In te Domine speravi. These are just a few highlights of a work well worth getting to know.

Clérambault’s L’histoire de la femme adultère (the story of the woman taken in adultery) from the Gospel of John, chapter 8, is preserved in an undated manuscript. The booklet note suggests that Clérambault’s brief drama, just eight sections, was intended for the third Saturday of Lent, when the liturgical gospel reading from St. John was this tale of Jesus’s encounter with an adulterous woman. Bass-baritone Lisandro Abadie sings the narration of the ‘Historian’ very well. Van Mechelen’s tenor again delivers well the compassion of Jesus. Gwendoline Blondeel is the penitent femme adultère, regretful but without unduly heavy lamentation in her O mulier infelix (oh, unhappy woman). In the same vein, Christ’s injunction to her to “go in peace and sin no more” in Neque ego mulier has an almost light-hearted compassion. The Israelites applaud Christ’s wisdom and justice with a substantial closing chorus.

There is a very good and full booklet. The notes and the translations of Latin text are in English, French and German. Most of us will need that for this little-known composer and his music. The fine airy recording is typical of the label and venue. More of Clérambault’s sacred music should surely be explored, if this is characteristic of its quality.

Roy Westbrook

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