Te Deum - Music

Music

Tonus Solemnis - Gregorian Chant

The text has been set to music by many composers, with settings by Haydn, Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi, Bruckner, Furtwängler, Dvořák, Britten, Kodály, and Pärt among the better known. Jean-Baptiste Lully wrote a setting of Te Deum for the court of Louis XIV of France, and received a fatal injury while conducting it. The prelude to Marc-Antoine Charpentier's setting (H.146) is well known in Europe on account of its being used as the theme music for some broadcasts of the European Broadcasting Union, most notably the Eurovision Song Contest. Sir William Walton's Coronation Te Deum was written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952. Other English settings include those by Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Henry Purcell, and Edward Elgar, as well as three settings each by George Frideric Handel and Charles Villiers Stanford.

Puccini's opera Tosca features a dramatic performance of the initial part of the Te Deum at the end of Act I.

A version by Father Michael Keating is popular in some Charismatic circles. Mark Hayes wrote a setting of the text in 2005, with Latin phrases interpolated amid primarily English lyrics. In 1978, British hymnodist Christopher Idle wrote God We Praise You, a version of the text in 8.7.8.7.D meter, set to the tune Rustington. British composer John Rutter has composed two settings of this hymn, one entitled Te Deum and the other Winchester Te Deum. Igor Stravinsky set the first 12 lines of the text as part of The Flood in 1962. Antony Pitts was commissioned by the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music to write a setting for the 2011 10th Anniversary Festival.

Read more about this topic:  Te Deum

Famous quotes containing the word music:

    A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,
    That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.
    One who the music of his own vain tongue
    Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval.
    Ezra Pound (1885–1972)

    The harp that once through Tara’s halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls As if that soul were fled.
    Thomas Moore (1779–1852)