France has had a unique relationship with North America since long before our Revolutionary War. This inaugural concert by the Chicago Catholic Choir is a tribute to the legacy of the “Blackrobes”. The French missionaries who established the first peaceable relations with the Native Americans based on motives of true friendship rather than trade, whose missionary apostolate was continued even beyond our Civil War era to by Catholic refugees from the French Revolution, and their successors in the European Catholic revival.
Accordingly, this repertoire comes from a variety of French composers, from the Renaissance to modern times, along with three Americans. Additionally, the text of various polyphonic pieces will first be sung in Gregorian chant, giving a taste of the original style which enshrined these words in music.
It is much easier to understand the Americans if we connect them with the French who were their allies than with the English who were their enemies… American history is haunted with the shadow of the Plebiscitary President; they have a tradition of classical architecture for public buildings. Their cities are planned upon the squares of Paris and not upon the labyrinth of London. They call their cities Corinth and Syracuse, as the French called their citizens Epaminondas and Timoleon. Their soldiers wore the French kepi; and they make coffee admirably, and do not make tea at all.
- G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America
PROGRAM
O Sanctissima, arrranged by Jeff Ostrowski
Crux Triumphans, Loyset Compere
Ave Maria, Josquin des Prez
Adorote Te Devote, Mel Bonis
Pater Noster, Charles Gounod
Ave Maria, Theodore Dubois
Prayer to St. Michael, Kevin Allen
Emendemus in Melius, Alfred Calabrese
The Song of Hezekiah, Kevin Allen
Cantique de Jean Racine, Gabriel Fauré