Since I’ve made a bit of a practice of posting on lesser-rank composers around here, I might mention that we were given a little Mass by Charles Gounod yesterday (the Messe Breve in C Major, No. 7, I believe.)

I know that Gounod wrote what is now the Vatican’s national anthem, and that a lot of people say enthusiastic things about his setting of the Ave Maria and his St. Cecilia Mass, but this one struck me as, well, light and not all that interesting.  On the other hand, it didn’t have any of that nasty self-consciousness one sees so much in the Romantic period, so at least it had that going for it.

A nice touch: The Communion motet was by Saint-Saëns, who was a friend of Gounod and once said:

“Gounod did not cease all his life to write for the church, to accumulate masses and motets; but it was at the commencement of his career, in the Messe de Sainte Cécile, and at the end, in the oratorios The Redemption and Mors et Vita, that he rose highest.”

Perhaps.  I’ve never heard either.  But he certainly didn’t rise all that high with what I heard yesterday.