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ST CAECILIA (ST CECILIA) - LIST OF MUSIC IN HER HONOUR

(At the bottom of the list, please select where shown either PREVIOUS or NEXT to go to next or previous page of the list)

The following is a list of musical works, which are examples of those written to the glory of St Cecilia (St Caecilia) from around 600 AD until the present day. It should be noted where, in the list, alternative spellings of composers’ surnames are provided, where this applies, this is to facilitate search engines accessing this page:

Year of
Composition

Composer

Title of Work

Comments

Recording Sample

1736

Händel, Georg Friederic (or Handel or Haendel)

Alexander’s Feast

Written to celebrate St Cecilia’s Day - only passing reference to St Cecilia is in third last chorus - First Performed in 1736 - Revised later by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1790

1736

Händel, Georg Friederic (or Handel or Haendel)

Cecilia, volgi un sguardo

Played between the two parts of Alexander’s Feast (HWV 75)

1736

Händel, Georg Friederic (or Handel or Haendel)

Look down, harmonious saint

Recitative and aria; probably a discarded fragment for “Alexander’s Feast” (HWV 75), 1736. It appeared in the cantata HWV 89

1736

Händel, Georg Friederic (or Handel or Haendel)

Ode for St Cecilia’s Day

Original Year of Publication - published jointly with Alexander’s Feast - First Performed 1739 - Revised later by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1790 The lyrics are “The Song for St Cecilia’s Day” written by John Dryden.

Listen to recording extract on this website - click here to access

1737

Händel, Georg Friederic (or Handel or Haendel)

Carco sempre di gloria

Variant insertion in “Cecilia, volgi un sguardo”, for performances of Alexander’s Feast (HWV 75), 1736, including music for the castrato Domenico Annibali

1745

Greene, Maurice

Ode for St Cecilia’s Day - Overture

One of a set of six overtures published in 1745, arranged for harpsichord or spinet

1773

Haydn, Franz Josef

Missa Sanctae Caeciliae

Haydn’s St Cecilia Mass (Missa Sanctae Caeciliae) was originally composed in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the shrine at Mariazell (Missa Cellensis in Honorem Beatissimae Virginis Mariae). It is thought that a later performance on St Cecilia’s Day in Vienna may account for its other title. It exists in two versions. The earlier one dates from 1766 and includes only the Kyrie and Gloria. The later version of 1773 includes the entire Mass Ordinary and is the lengthiest of Haydn’s masses, comparable in scale to Bach’s B minor Mass or Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.

1852

Saint-Saëns, Camille

Ode à Saint-Cécile

There is considerable confusion over this work. There is mention that the date of composition should have been 1864 and that an existing recording of a performance follows the composer’s manuscript in the Archives Nationales. The text is identified as being by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and is transparently a parody of Psalm 129 (Psalm 130 in the Protestant numbering). An essay by Alexandre Dratwicki identifies it as the work submitted for the first round of the 1864 competition and remarks upon it as a stylistic step forward from the 1857 Mass, and that certainly is what it sounds like. However, another essay by Yves Gérard makes no mention of any such work, nor can I find it listed in a catalog of the composer’s oeuvre . Instead, that essay discusses in some detail an 1852 Ode-Cantate à Sainte-Cécile , scored for soloists, organ, and orchestra, for which Saint-Saëns won first prize in a competition sponsored by a Parisian musical society, the Société Sainte-Cécile. However, Gérard identifies the text for that work as being by Paul Nibelle and based on the first verse of Psalm 17 (18); that does not match the sung text, and the work recorded here has no vocal soloists, either. Perhaps a Saint-Saëns scholar reading these lines will kindly write in to straighten this all out, but based on the text and compositional style I wonder if Dratwicki and the table of contents are correct, and this Ode is an uncataloged work dating from 1864 that Gérard has confused with the 1852 Ode-Cantate— though in that case why didn’t anyone else catch the error? (The general opinion is that we should be following Gérard and the New Grove , listing the work as the Ode à Sainte-Cécile and that it was composed in 1852.)

1855

Gounod, Charles

Messe solennelle (Sainte-Cécile)

Year of Original Version

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The above list is not guaranteed to be complete and if you know of any works which you feel should be included in addition to the above, please click here to contact us to let us know and we will add them to the list.

Note that the navigation at the right *(Return to Site Previously Viewed)* is for use ONLY when you have entered this site from Caecilian Enterprises Pty Limited and its related sites or the site for the Godfrey family and it will close this window and take you back to the page on Caecilian Enterprises Pty Limited and its related sites or the Godfrey family site which you were most recently browsing. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE OTHER WINDOWS OR TABS OPEN FROM THE SITES JUST MENTIONED, IT WILL NOT FUNCTION. If you wish to go to the Caecilian Enterprises site and you have not come directly from it and its related sites, then you should use the Caecilian image navigation at the right.	Return to Site Previously Viewed

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Version 1.6 November 17, 2018