This weeks post concerns a piece by a composer once described as ‘half monk half naughty boy’ – Francis Poulenc. Presented as the first of his ‘four motets for a time of penitence’, though composed last, in early 1939 (I will leave it to readers to decide whether I’m thinking of it in March 2026 as relating to an international martial situation as the one that developed in the year of composition), Timor et Tremor combines verses in Latin from a couple of Psalms and implores the Lord’s help:

Timor et tremor venerunt super me,
et caligo cecidit super me:
miserere mei, Domine, miserere mei,
quoniam in te confidit anima mea.

Exaudi, Deus, deprecationem meam,
quia refugium meum es tu et adjutor fortis.
Domine, invocavi te, non confundar.

The setting comes across as relatively simple, and in places imitates plainchant styles: the incipit for example in simple octaves expanding to a choral response. There are successive and contrasting blocks of sound, marked out by dynamic and textural variation, often relating to illustration of the text: the subito piano for the falling darkness, for example.

The composer had been raised Catholic and his faith had been reinvigorated by hearing of the death of a friend in a car accident; his music before the 1930s had been largely secular and often ironic and humorous, and this style continued alongside his turn to more serious religious works. Whether he knew at the beginning of 1939 that war was coming – he had served as a young man at the end of the first world war and returned to service at the outbreak of the second – that his motets are designated for a time of penitence reflects perhaps something of his spiritual need at that time, and perhaps something of ours(?)

Exaudi, Deus, deprecationem nostram.