Berlioz in Paris
Église Saint-Eustache
This monumental church, near the Forum des Halles, was built between 1532 and 1637. It provided an ideal setting for the performance of large-scale choral works. Already in 1827 the early Messe Solennelle had been performed for the second time, under Berlioz’s baton, at this church. The Grande Messe des Morts, first performed at Les Invalides in 1837 under the direction of Habeneck, was performed three times at Saint-Eustache under Berlioz himself, in 1846, 1850 and 1852. It was appropriate therefore that Berlioz should have conducted the première of his magnificent Te Deum in that church on 30 April 1855, though the work had been composed six years earlier.
The score of Te Deum is written for solo tenor, triple chorus, orchestra, and organ. The organ is mostly used not to augment the sonority of the orchestra but to contrast with it. Organ and orchestra, as Berlioz described it, should be like ‘Pope and Emperor, speaking in dialogue from opposite ends of the nave’. In a letter to Liszt, dated 1 January 1853, Berlioz, talking about the Te Deum, writes: ‘the organ does not accompany, but rather enters into dialogue with the orchestra’ (Correspondance Générale no. 1552). He also makes similar comments in the organ section of his Treatise on orchestration and instrumentation to explain the different roles of the orchestra and the organ: ‘The organ and the orchestra are both Kings, or rather one is Emperor and the other Pope; they have different missions, their interests are too vast and too divergent to be confused.’
All the photographs reproduced on this page were taken by Michel
Austin; the 1830 engraving is in
our own collection. © Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin.
All rights of reproduction reserved.
Interior of St Eustache around 1830
This is an 1830 engraving showing the nave, scanned from A. Pugin’s book Paris and its Environs, published in London in 1831, in our collection.
Interior of St Eustache today
At the première
of the Te Deum the orchestra, "the Emperor", and
the choruses were
placed at the altar end of the nave.
This is the organ, "the Pope", which entered into dialogue with Berlioz’s orchestra at the première of the Te Deum.
© 2000-2010 Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin for all the pictures and information on this page.
Copyright notice: The texts, photos, images and musical scores on all pages of this site are covered by UK Law and International Law. All rights of publication or reproduction of this material in any form, including Web page use, are reserved. Their use without our explicit permission is illegal.
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