Maxime Jacob, or Dom Clément Jacob, (13 January 1906 in
Bordeaux
Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture ...
– 26 February 1977 in
Abbaye En-Calcat
An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christians, Christian monks and nuns ...
,
Dourgne
Dourgne (; oc, Dornha) is a commune in the Tarn department and Occitanie region of southern France.
Demographics
Sites and monuments
Dourgne is known for its two Benedictine monasteries, the En Calcat Abbey and the Sainte Scholastique Abb ...
,
Tarn) was a French composer and organist.
Biography
Jacob studied at the
Paris Conservatory
The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
with
Charles Koechlin
Charles-Louis-Eugène Koechlin (; 27 November 186731 December 1950), commonly known as Charles Koechlin, was a French composer, teacher and musicologist. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things ...
and
André Gedalge; an admirer of
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...
and
Erik Satie
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an un ...
, he was a member of the École d'Arcueil, a group of young composers sponsored by Satie after his rupture with his previous group of protégés,
Les Six
"Les Six" () is a name given to a group of six composers, five of them French and one Swiss, who lived and worked in Montparnasse. The name, inspired by Mily Balakirev's '' The Five'', originates in two 1920 articles by critic Henri Collet in '' ...
. Other members of this short-lived group included
Henri Cliquet-Pleyel
Henri Cliquet-Pleyel was a French composer born on 12 March 1894 in Paris and died in that city on 9 May 1963. In 1913 he undertook musical studies at the Conservatoire de Paris under teachers André Gedalge and Eugène Cools, from whom he learn ...
,
Henri Sauguet
Henri-Pierre Sauguet-Poupard (18 May 1901 – 22 June 1989) was a French composer.
Born in Bordeaux, he adopted his mother's maiden name as part of his professional pseudonym. His output includes operas, ballets, four symphonies (1945, 1949 ...
and
Roger Désormière
Roger Désormière () (13 September 1898 – 25 October 1963) was a French conductor. He was an enthusiastic champion of contemporary composers, but also conducted performances of early eighteenth century French music.
Life and career
Désormière ...
.
In 1927, Jacob worked with
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (; 4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French writer, poet, dramatist, visual artist, essayist, actor and theatre director. He is widely recognized as a major figure of the E ...
at the ''
Théâtre Alfred Jarry'' composing the score for his production of V''entre brûlé; ou La Mère folle'' (1927)''.''
:252
In 1929, Jacob converted from
Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the ...
to
Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
(influenced by
Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain (; 18 November 1882 – 28 April 1973) was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised Protestant, he was agnostic before converting to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive Thomas Aquinas fo ...
) and became a
Benedictine monk
The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict ( la, Ordo Sancti Benedicti, abbreviated as OSB), are a Christian monasticism, monastic Religious order (Catholic), religious order of the Catholic Church following the Rule of Saint Benedic ...
. He would go on to study organ with
Maurice Duruflé
Maurice Gustave Duruflé (; 11 January 1902 – 16 June 1986) was a French composer, organist, musicologist, and teacher.
Life and career
Duruflé was born in Louviers, Eure in 1902. He became a chorister at the Rouen Cathedral Choir School ...
, as well as
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe dur ...
.
Jacob also published two books, ''L'art et la grâce'' (1939) and ''Souvenirs a deux voix'' (1969).
In the
English-speaking world
Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the ''Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest languag ...
, his
hymn tune
A hymn tune is the melody of a musical composition to which a hymn text is sung. Musically speaking, a hymn is generally understood to have four-part (or more) harmony, a fast harmonic rhythm (chords change frequently), with or without refrai ...
"Living God" in 77.77
meter
The metre ( British spelling) or meter ( American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pr ...
with 77.77
refrain
A refrain (from Vulgar Latin ''refringere'', "to repeat", and later from Old French ''refraindre'') is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in poetry — the "chorus" of a song. Poetic fixed forms that feature refrains include the v ...
, used for ''I Received the Living God'' (''J'ai reçu le Dieu vivant''),
[Musica Sacra Forum http://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/4940/vatican-ii-hymnal-installment-5-hymn-selections-completed-/p2 (copyright for hymn held by ]Éditions du Seuil
Éditions du Seuil (), also known as ''Le Seuil'', is a French publishing house established in 1935 by Catholic intellectual Jean Plaquevent (1901–1965), and currently owned by La Martinière Groupe. It owes its name to this goal "The ''seuil'' ...
)—Hymnary.org and Soundclick.com,among others, have listed the hymn as "Anonymous." is well known.
Notes
Works
;Vocal
*''Par la Taille'' (opera, after
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry (; 8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play '' Ubu Roi'' (1896). He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics.
Jarry was born in Laval, Mayenne, France, ...
)
*''Le Vitrail de Sainte-Thérèse'' (oratorio, 1952)
*''Joinville et Saint-Louis'' (oratorio, after Péguy, 1971)
*''Les psaumes pour tous les temps'' (1966)
*ca. 400 stage songs
;Orchestral
*''Ouverture'' (1923)
*Piano Concerto, 1961
;Chamber music
*8 string quartets
;Miscellaneous
*Piano pieces for
Clément Doucet
*''Livre d'orgue'' (1967)
Further reading
*Marie-Rose Clouzot (1969), ''Souvenirs en deux voix: De Maxime Jacob à dom Clément Jacob'', Toulouse: Privat.
*
Don Randel Don Michael Randel (born December 9, 1940) is an American musicologist, specializing in the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Spain and France. He is currently the Chair of the Board of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a trustee ...
, ''The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music''. Harvard, 1996, p. 413.
1906 births
1977 deaths
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism
Conservatoire de Paris alumni
French classical composers
French male classical composers
20th-century classical composers
French Benedictines
20th-century French composers
20th-century French male musicians
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