The sacred and the profane with Fauré, Messiaen and Debussy at Seattle Symphony

The tension between sacred and profane has held our collective attention long before the latest crop of religious extremists began committing acts of violence in the name of God in the streets of Beirut, Bamako, Paris and beyond. In an unintentional act of synchronicity, this week conductor Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony will explore works by three French composers who unite, rather than divide, the sacred and the secular through music of soul-touching beauty.

The biggest and most frequently performed work on the program, Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, Op. 48, was composed between 1887 and 1888 for the funeral of a wealthy parishioner at the Church of La Madeleine in Paris, where Fauré served as choirmaster, then as organist. It may rankle the ranks of the orthodox to learn that Fauré later confessed that he wrote the requiem “for nothing … for fun, if I may be permitted to say so!”

“Fun,” for this composer who was indifferent to Catholic dogma and weary of accompanying burial services, meant omitting the requiem Mass’ traditional “Dies Irae,” with its terrifying references to final judgment, and concluding it with an angelic “In Paradisum.” This final movement, as touching as it is sublime, has to be the sweetest and most transcendent send-off of any requiem.

Fauré was not unaware of his requiem’s commercial possibilities. Fewer than four months after the funeral, he conducted an initial concert performance at La Madeleine. Further revisions, rescoring and expansions culminated in a version for full orchestra and chorus that premiered at the not-exactly-sacred Trocadéro in Paris as part of the 1900 World’s Fair.

Olivier Messiaen, another church organist, was a far more devout Catholic. As a gift for his first wife, he wrote the song cycle “Poèmes pour Mí” for soprano and piano in 1936, and orchestrated it in 1937.

“The first book of four songs deals with the preparation and ceremony of the marriage in a very practical sense,” Morlot says. “The second book is really about the meaning of the spiritual union.” Throughout the cycle, the 28-year-old Messiaen celebrates the physical and spiritual aspects of marriage in language Morlot calls “half tonal, with elements of Hindu and gamelan harmonies from the East, and half modal, as in plainchant or Gregorian chant.”

The songs, Morlot says, “feel very free, like a big recitative, because it was written without time signatures and bar lines. Only when Messiaen orchestrated it did he make it a little more square. I think it’s wonderful if, when performing it with the orchestra, you can recapture that freedom of having no time signatures and no bar lines, but just rhythms, and put your emphasis on the words rather than on the downbeat and upbeat.”

Morlot says he is thrilled to introduce “extraordinary” Canadian soprano Jane Archibald. The two met in Europe shortly after Archibald had performed “Poèmes pour Mí” with Christian Thielemann and the Berlin Philharmonic.

“It’s a piece I’ve always wanted to do, but very few singers feel like tackling it,” he says. “When she agreed to sing in the requiem as well, it was a complete gift. Then, for the baritone I asked my friend Nicolas Cavallier, who was Seattle Opera’s Don Giovanni. He hasn’t sung much with the symphony, so this was my opportunity.”

Opening the evening is Claude Debussy’s shimmering “Danses sacrée et profane” for harp and string orchestra. Valerie Muzzolini Gordon, the orchestra’s principal harpist, will help part the veils into a rarefied universe whose colors sing of affirmation and love.