“Adoro te devote” is a Eucharistic hymn written by Thomas Aquinas.I t is one of the five Eucharistic hymns which were composed and set to music for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, instituted in 1264 by Pope Urban IV as a Solemnity for the Latin Church of the Catholic Church.
Since the beginning of its composition and it being set to music, Adoro te devote was chanted as an Eucharistic Hymn during Mass in honorem SS. Sacramenti (in honour of the Most Blessed Sacrament), as it was written in the Latin manuscripts. So it was also chanted for the Eucharistic adoration.
The authorship of the hymn by Thomas Aquinas was previously doubted by some scholars. More recent scholarship has put such doubts to rest. Thomas seems to have used it also as a private prayer, for a daily adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
Adoro te devote is one of the medieval poetic compositions, being used as spoken prayers and also as chanted hymns, which were preserved in the Roman Missal published in 1570 following the Council of Trent (1545–1563).
ADORO TE COMPOSERS
Fernand de La Tombelle
Antoine Louis Joseph Gueyrand Fernand Fouant de La Tombelle (3 August 1854 – 13 August 1928) was a French organist and composer. Born in Paris, Fernand de La Tombelle had piano lessons in his childhood with his mother Louise Gueyraud, a pupil of Sigismund Thalberg and Franz Liszt. From the age of eighteen he took private organ and harmony lessons with Alexandre Guilmant. At the Conservatoire de Paris he studied counterpoint, fugue and composition with Théodore Dubois.
In addition to music, La Tombelle, who was interested in many things, was active as a writer and columnist, sculptor and painter, art photographer, music ethnologist and astronomer. His wife Henriette Delacoux de Marivault became known as a writer under the pseudonym Camille Bruno.
Henri Nibelle
Henri Jules Joseph Nibelle (6 November 1883 – 18 November 1967) was a French organist, choral conductor and composer Born in Briare, son and grandson of organists, Henri Nibelle attended the école Niedermeyer as early as 1898, before entering the Conservatoire de Paris, where in 1906 he won a first prize on fugue in the class of Fauré and a 1st accessit of organ in 1910 in the class of Guilmant. He also studied with Louis Vierne who dedicated to him Caprice, the third of the Pièces de Fantaisie for organ Op. 51.
He began his career as an organist on the choir organ of the Versailles Cathedral in 1907. Two years later, he was appointed titular of that of the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul church, then became organist at the Grand Organ of Saint-François-de-Sales in 1912, and succeeded Isidore Massuelle as maître de chapelle of this same church in 1931. Having become almost blind, he left Saint-François-de-Sales in 1959 to retire to Nice and dedicate himself to the composition of religious works: short masses, solemn masses, psalms, motets, spiritual hymns, etc.
Nibelle died in Nice on 18 November 1967 aged 84.
Louis Raffy
Antoine Louis Raffy (1868 in Laroque-Timbaut, Lot-et-Garonne – died in March 1931in Nérac) was a French composer of church music and organist. Raffy was organist at the Église Saint-Nicolas de Nérac which has an organ of 23 stops built by the Magen company of Agen (1862).
Louis James Alfred Lefebure-Wely
Louis-James Alfred Lefébure-Wély (13 November 1817 – 31 December 1869) was a French organist and composer. He played a major role in the development of the French symphonic organ style and was closely associated with the organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, inaugurating many new Cavaillé-Coll organs.
His playing was virtuosic, and as a performer, he was rated above eminent contemporaries including César Franck. His compositions, less substantial than those of Franck and others, have not held such a prominent place in the repertory. Lefébure-Wély was born in Paris, son of an organist. He studied with his father, Isaac-François-Antoine Lefebvre (1756–1831). The boy was musically precocious.
In the manuscript of an unpublished Mass by his father is a note:
“This Mass was played on Easter Tuesday 1826 by my little boy Alfrede, age eight years and four months, on the organ of Saint-Roch to the satisfaction of everyone present. He retained throughout the Mass an extraordinary presence that surprised the people who were near him at the organ.”
Within two years of that occasion, Antoine Lefébure-Wely suffered a stroke, paralysing his left side. For the next five years, his son deputised for him. When Alfred was fourteen Antoine died, and the son succeeded the father as official organist of Saint-Roch.
The French government website says of Lefébure-Wely’s music, “His admirers called on him many times to adopt the ‘religious style’ …. However, he had his habits and his preferences, and, above all his ‘clientele’. Also, even though his contemporaries were unanimous in their admiration for his improvisations, he often seems to have taken the easier alternative, the immediately accessible option, music that doesn’t ask any questions.”
Maurice Emmanuel
Marie François Maurice Emmanuel (2 May 1862 – 14 December 1938) was a French composer of classical music and musicologist born in Bar-sur-Aube, small town in the Champagne-Ardenne region of northeastern France. It was there where he first heard his grandfather’s printing press which according to his granddaughter, Anne Eichner-Emmanuel, first gave him the feeling of rhythm.
Brought up in Dijon, Maurice Emmanuel became a chorister at Beaune cathedral after his family moved to the city in 1869. According to his granddaughter, Anne Eichner-Emmanuel, he was influenced by the brass bands on the streets of Beaune and by the “songs of the grape pickers which imprinted melodies in his memory so different from all the classical music he was taught in the academy of music.”
Subsequently, he went to Paris, and in 1880 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where his composition teacher was Léo Delibes. At the Conservatoire he came to know Claude Debussy who was also a pupil there. In addition, he attended the Conservatoire classes of César Franck.
In 1904 he became choirmaster at the church of Sainte-Clotilde, assisted by Émile Poillot, during the tenure of organist Charles Tournemire, serving until 1907. He was appointed professor of the history of music at the Conservatoire in 1909, and taught there until 1936. His students included Robert Casadesus, Yvonne Lefébure, Georges Migot, Jacques Chailley, Olivier Messiaen and Henri Dutilleux. Emmanuel destroyed all but 30 works composed up to 1938; he died in Paris that year.
Filippo Capocci
Filippo Capocci (11 May 1840 – 25 July 1911) was an Italian organist and composer. Born in Rome, Capocci was trained in organ and harmony by his father Gaetano and in 1861 received a piano diploma from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. In 1875, he was appointed organist of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran. In 1898, he took over from his father as choirmaster at the Basilica. He also served in the Roman churches of St. Ignatius and St. Mary of Montserrat.
His opportunity for wider recognition came in 1881 with the inaugural concert for the new Merklin organ at the Church of St. Louis of France. Franz Liszt, while staying in Rome, sought to meet Capocci personally and expressed great esteem and friendship. In 1899, he was accepted as a member of the American Guild of Organists.
He was appointed a member of the organ faculty for the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in 1911 but was never able to teach because of an illness that debilitated him for months until his death in Rome in July 1911.
In 1892 Pope Leo XIII awarded him the Knighthood of St. Gregory the Great.
Léon Boëllmann
Léon Boëllmann (25 September 1862 – 11 October 1897) was a French composer, known for a small number of compositions for organ. His best-known composition is Suite gothique (1895), which is a staple of the organ repertoire, especially its concluding Toccata.
Boëllmann was born in Ensisheim, Haut-Rhin, Alsace, the son of a pharmacist. In 1871, at the age of nine, he entered the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse (L’École Niedermeyer) in Paris, where he studied with its director, Gustave Lefèvre, and with Eugène Gigout. There, Boëllmann won first prizes in piano, organ, counterpoint, fugue, plainsong, and composition.
After his graduation in 1881, Boëllmann was hired as “organiste de choeur” at the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, and six years later he became cantor and organiste titulaire, a position he held until his early death, probably from tuberculosis.
In 1885, Boëllmann married Louise, the daughter of Gustave Lefèvre and the niece of Eugène Gigout, into whose house the couple moved (having no children of his own, Gigout adopted Boëllmann). Boëllmann then taught in Gigout’s school of organ playing and improvisation.
Boëllmann died in 1897, aged only 35. After the death of his wife the following year, Gigout reared their three orphans, one of whom, Marie-Louise Boëllmann-Gigout (1891–1977), became a noted organ teacher in her own right.
Alexandre Guilmant
Félix-Alexandre Guilmant (March 1837 – 29 March 1911) was a French organist and composer. He was the organist of La Trinité from 1871 until 1901. A noted pedagogue, performer, and improviser, Guilmant helped found the Schola Cantorum de Paris. He was appointed as Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatoire in 1896. Guilmant was born in Meudon. A student first of his father Jean-Baptiste and later of the Belgian master Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, he became an organist and teacher in his place of birth.
In 1871 he was appointed to play the organ regularly at la Trinité church in Paris, and this position, organiste titulaire, was one he held for 30 years.
Guilmant was known for his improvisations, both in the concert and church setting. His inspiration came from gregorian chants, and he was greatly noted amongst his colleagues for his mastery of the melodies. From then on, Guilmant followed a career as a virtuoso; he gave concerts in the United States (the first major French organist to tour that country), and in Canada, as well as in Europe, making especially frequent visits to England. His American achievements included a 1904 series of no fewer than 40 recitals on the largest organ in the world, the St. Louis Exposition Organ, now preserved as the nucleus of Philadelphia’s Wanamaker Organ.
In 1894 Guilmant founded the Schola Cantorum with Charles Bordes and Vincent d’Indy. He taught there up until his death at his home in Meudon, near Paris, in 1911. In addition, he taught at the Conservatoire de Paris where he succeeded Charles-Marie Widor as organ teacher in 1896.
Guilmant’s interest in Marcel Dupré began when the latter was a child. Albert Dupré, father of the celebrated Marcel, studied organ with Guilmant for seven years prior to his son’s birth. In Dupré’s memoirs, he includes an anecdote where Guilmant visits his mother upon his birth and declares that the child will grow up to be an organist. After frequent visits throughout his childhood, Marcel Dupré began studying with Guilmant formally at age 11. From this time until his death, Guilmant championed the young virtuoso and did much to advance his career. Guilmant’s house was later purchased then demolished by Dupré and rebuilt. His home organ was also sold to Dupré.
Guilmant was an accomplished and extremely prolific composer. Unlike Widor, who produced a great deal of music in all the main genres, Guilmant devoted himself almost entirely to works for his own instrument, the organ.
WIKIPEDIA is an excellent source of information – these biographical notes have been excerpted from it and edited. Visit wikipedia.com to read the complete articles.