music.wikisort.org - Composer

Charles d'Helfer (1598–1661) was a French baroque composer and maître de musique at Soissons Cathedral. His masses follow a strict one syllable per note style.

He is best remembered for his requiem for four voices of 1656[1][2] which was used for the funeral of composer Michel Richard Delalande in 1726[3] and was the basis of Julien-Amable Mathieu (1734-1811) and François Giroust's requiem mass for Louis XV in 1775.[4][5]

Works

• Missa quatuor vocum ad imitationem moduli Benedicam Dominum, Paris 1653
• Missa pro defunctis quatuor vocum, Paris 1656
• Missa quatuor vocum ad moduli Lorsque d'un désir curieux, Paris 1658
• Missa sex vocum ad imitationem moduli In aeternum cantabo, Paris 1658
• Vespres et Hymnes de l'année avec plusieurs motets du St. Sacrement, de la Vierge des SS. et patrons de lieux etc à 4 parties, Paris 1660
• Missa quatuor vocum ad imitationem moduli Deliciae Regum, Paris 1664
• Missa sex vocum ad imitationem moduli Quid videbis in Sunamitae, Paris 1674
• Missa quatuor vocibus ad imitationem moduli Laetatus sum, Paris 1678

Recordings

• Requiem, with funeral oration for Charles III, Duke of Lorraine (d.1608). A Sei Voci. 1994

References

Sources

Jean-Paul C. Montagnier, The Polyphonic Mass in France, 1600-1780: The Evidence of the Printed Choirbooks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

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