‘The Christian religion is the most poetic and human, the most favourable to liberty, arts, and letters’.Footnote ¹ Significantly, this statement by Chateaubriand, from Le Génie du christianisme (1802), accords a decisive place to the realm of the senses to sentiment – au cœur as much as to the intellect – in the apprehension of the religious.Footnote ² It crystallizes a conception of Christianity that would leave a profound mark on the nineteenth century, in which spiritual experience is intertwined with emotion, the arts, and subjectivity. In this respect, Chateaubriand’s work constitutes a foundational reference for understanding the links between faith, aesthetics, and artistic expression in the Romantic century. It is against the backdrop of this legacy that the volume edited by Nicolas Dufetel, La musique religieuse en France au XIXe siècle: le sentiment religieux entre profane et sacré (1830–1914), is best understood. Instead of proposing a unified model or a doctrinal reading of the sacred, the volume instead embraces an eclectic and syncretic ambition that is attentive to the diversity of musical forms, the fluctuations of the sentiment religieux and the multiple cultural configurations of the spiritual in post-revolutionary France.

The product of a high-level collaborative scholarly effort – initiated at the conference ‘“L’abbé Gounod”: French Sacred Music during the Romantic Era’, held in Lucca, Italy, in 2018 – the book offers an ambitious reappraisal of a repertoire long consigned to the margins of French music history. The period covered, from the aftermath of the Revolution (but more pointedly from 1830) to the eve of the First World War, traverses a century of liturgical, institutional and aesthetic recompositions (i.e., processes of transformation and reconfiguration in practices, structures, and styles), which Dufetel chooses to frame through a striking rhetorical image: that of the Paris Pantheon, ‘material witness to the Church’s vicissitudes and triumphs’; a place where the sacred and the profane meet; a space of recomposition, appropriation, affirmation and effacement of the sacred (p. 15). The year 1830 marked a watershed moment in both the French political, religious and cultural landscape and in French political, religious and cultural history. The July Revolution and the advent of the July Monarchy redefined the relationship between State and Church, while religious Romanticism emerged as a dominant aesthetic and spiritual framework. It is also a moment in which the sentiment religieux – understood as both a sensory experience and discursive category – crystallized in practices and works that cross the boundary between sacred and profane. The volume aims to capture the eclecticism of the religious phenomenon in nineteenth-century France and to explore its musical diversity. The shift from an exclusively stylistic approach to a symbolic and cultural reading of the religious is arguably one of the book’s most significant contributions. It allows religious music to be considered not merely as falling under a genre or fulfilling a function, but as a contested site of memory, spiritual tension and political regulation.

The introduction, by the volume’s editor, situates this undertaking with precision in the wake of several decades of historiographical renewal, notably shaped by the work of Jean-Yves Hameline, Xavier Bisaro, Jacques Cheyronnaud, Katharine Ellis, Fanny Gribenski, Amélie Porret-Dubreuil, and Vincent Petit.Footnote ³ Yet it also establishes its own distinctive tone, rejecting any teleology of progress and reminding the reader that the history of religious music is equally a history of resistance, conservatism and even indifference. Such an approach is a salutary gesture in a field that remains dominated by the great reformist figures (Perosi, Dom Guéranger, Niedermeyer) to the detriment of local tensions, the slow pace of realities on the ground, and forms of creation that resist incorporation into canonical narratives.Footnote ⁴ One should also note the depth with which Dufetel formulates, almost implicitly, a central tension of the volume – one he himself describes as ‘toute pascalienne’, between the heart and reason, between the inner impetus of faith and the norm of doctrine. In evoking d’Indy, who ‘responds as a Catholic artist to the necessity of feeling the truth rather than demonstrating it’, Dufetel may well be signalling one of the book’s most profound leitmotifs: the dialectic between dogma and creative freedom, between faith contained and faith expressed, which runs through many of the works studied, albeit not always explicitly (p. xli). In this respect, one may regret that what Dufetel describes as the ‘malleable’ notion of sentiment religieux, originating in the early German Romantic intellectual tradition (Schleiermacher, Schlegel, Schiller), is not more fully examined on a methodological level (p. xv). It haunts the chapters like a shadow, but struggles to take form as a shared critical tool, which in places weakens the transversal coherence of the volume. In the absence of a general operative definition, contributors employ the concept in diverse ways, leading to shifts in meaning that at times blur a comparative reading of the chapters. Yet, far from undermining the enterprise, this heterogeneity accentuates the exploratory – and therefore stimulating – character of a work that invites a thorough reconsideration of the boundaries between the sacred, the profane, the liturgical and the expressive in post-revolutionary France.

Further, one of the volume’s major strengths is its clear structure: there are 16 contributions, ranging from philological reconstruction to aesthetic analysis via the study of actors, forms and discourses, organized into four thematic sections. The first section, ‘Musique religieuse, culte et société’, exemplifies the volume’s commitment to anchoring works and debates in their social and ideological context. The opening article by Clair Rowden offers a broad reflection on the relationships between Catholicism, modern philosophies and Republican movements in the nineteenth century, in a context shaped by positivism, evolutionism and comparative theology. It brings to light the discord between Gallicans and Ultramontanists, the role of liberal Protestantism in the public sphere, as well as issues relating to women’s education and the practice of confession. The final part of the article connects this broader backdrop to musical debates, with a focus on Charles Gounod, whose spiritual trajectory reveals the ways in which a nineteenth-century composer could position himself in relation to the moral and religious controversies of his time. Vincent Petit contributes a piece of remarkable acuity on how the nineteenth-century French episcopate sought to impose strict control over church music in a context of Roman centralization and liturgical reconfiguration. Drawing on diocesan archives, episcopal mandates, regulations and records from pastoral sojourns, he shows how bishops endeavoured to impose strict norms: constraining the polyphonic repertoire, prescribing the exclusive use of restored plainchant and regulating both instruments and musicians. His analysis highlights the disciplinary logic underpinning this action – grounded in a moral and doctrinal vision of music – while also underscoring the frequent divergences between official regulations and practice, especially in the parishes of small towns and rural areas. The chapter thus brings to the fore both the strategies of ecclesiastical authorities and the resistance or adaptation of local actors (choirmasters, organists, cantors), offering a finely drawn perspective on the daily negotiation of musical ‘normalization’ within the French Church.

Dufetel’s chapter on the connections between Charles Gay, Charles Gounod and Franz Liszt stands as one of the high points of the volume. In retracing the intellectual and spiritual exchanges around the ideal of the ‘Christian artist’, it sheds light on the tensions between artistic vocation and moral injunction and reconstructs the ideological context of a specifically French Romantic Catholicism. Drawing on previously unpublished sources from public and private archives, Dufetel analyses how the composers’ shared Catholic origins, in the Paris of the 1830s, shaped their careers and their conceptions of art, society and religion. He also examines the notions of sacralization and secularization of music and offers the first overview of the compositions and musical writings of Monseigneur Gay, presented as a composer in his own right. This chapter is followed by Catrina Flint de Médicis’s study of the Schola Cantorum and the debates surrounding sacred music. She shows how the institution became the stage for aesthetic confrontations between those who advocated a ‘pure’ liturgical music, stripped of pathos, and those who defended a more subjective expression of the sentiment religieux. The relationship between liturgy and modernity is captured with subtlety through the prism of the Schola’s internal conflicts, which in turn reflect deeper fault lines within French musical society at large.

The second section, ‘Le plain-chant: liturgie, archéologie et politique’, by the richness of its sources and the variety of its approaches, offers a particularly fertile illustration of the interplay between cultural history, philology and musical analysis. Benedikt Leβmann’s study, based on an impressive range of materials (memoirs, critical editions, correspondence, Gregorian journals), meticulously retraces the development of debates over Gregorian chant in France from 1811 to 1908. His account does not limit itself to the confrontation between the Ratisbon edition and the Solesmes reform; rather, it encompasses a century of the cultural history of chant in France, from Choron’s earliest pleas to Mocquereau’s rhythmic debates, revealing the Gordian knot of liturgical, scholarly, political and aesthetic issues. This multidisciplinary approach – combining intellectual history, musical practice and symbolic representations – presents plainchant as a melting pot in which national traditions, Roman ambitions and artistic imaginaries converge. Amélie Porret-Dubreuil’s article, centred on the 1860 Congrès pour la restauration du plaint-chant et de la musique d’église, complements this analysis by giving substance to the individuals engaged in these debates: abbots, parish cantors, organists, teachers – each embodying a specific liturgical ethos. In the section’s final chapter (and Dufetel’s third essay), he looks to Liszt’s interest in plainchant and modal theory, specifically in Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth, drawing on manuscript sources and Liszt’s marginalia. This research reveals the influence of French Catholic circles on Liszt’s aesthetic, and proposes to reassess this influence in light of his broader European identity.

The third section, ‘Musique sacrée et “sacrée musique” dans l’Église’, presents a series of informative case studies. Sylvia L’Écuyer’s article, devoted to Berlioz’s Te Deum and its reception by d’Ortigue, examines how Catholic criticism succeeded in investing a work conceived for the concert hall with a spiritual dimension, thereby eluding censorship by religious authorities. L’Écuyer does not merely note this apologetic reinterpretation; she probes its aesthetic foundations and ideological limits, showing how d’Ortigue sought to reconcile sonic monumentality with moral elevation. Alluding to Berlioz’s inclusion within a history of religious music, Alban Ramaut opens his article with a provocative question – ‘is this not, a priori, introducing the devil into the sanctuary?’ This provocation allows him to question the category of religious music and posit that Berlioz, even if he did not write for the Mass, constructed a personal spiritual language grounded in the sublime and the monumental. In her study of Saint-Saëns, Christina Stahl demonstrates that the composer’s self-proclaimed unbelief did not prevent him from producing music imbued with a poetic, rational and luminous form of religiosity. Helga Schauerte-Maubouet offers a finely wrought analysis of Fauré’s religious works, arguing that love – both divine and human – is their true key, in an aesthetic that finds resonances even in Pénélope. Consequently, far from any strict dualism between sacred and profane, Fauré’s religious music, as portrayed here, is rooted in an intimate, refined, almost poetic human expression. Although not strictly liturgical, these works partake of a spiritual sonority in which emotion, like love itself, is self-sufficient and delights in beauty.

The fourth section, ‘Hors de l’Église: le sentiment religieux entre profane et sacré’, tracks the circulation of the religious in works and practices outside the strict liturgical framework. Michela Niccolai draws on the Bornemann Collection (Palazzetto Bru Zane), identifying two major strands of popular religiosity in a corpus of approximately 200 songs published between 1850 and 1910.Footnote ⁵ One strand involves works with biblical or hagiographic subjects, sometimes tinged with irony in the café-concert setting; the other is characterized by moral and pedagogical aims and was intended for girls’ educational institution. She shows how these repertoires, of simple musical design and conceived for amateur performance, circulated in spaces where the boundaries between elite and popular culture, sacred and profane, were indistinct. Jean-Christophe Branger contributes a masterful study of Massenet, exposing the presence of the spiritual, but also of the carnal and the sensual, in a work often suffused with ambiguity. His analysis shows how religiosity in Massenet takes the form of desire, ecstasy or compassion, eliciting mixed receptions. Timothy Flynn exposes an introspective and mystical facet of Gounod’s religious music, focusing on the Symphonie sacrée, a little-known work recently discovered in the archives of Northwestern University. Jennifer Walker’s article explores Les Drames sacrés (1893), a staged work by Armand Silvestre, Eugène Morand and Charles Gounod, that premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville. She analyses how this dramatization of biblical subjects on a popular Parisian stage sparked strong controversy, with critics accusing the piece of lacking piety or sincerity. The play’s poor reception reveals the challenges of staging sacred drama for secular audiences. While some praised Gounod’s music for its simplicity and religious inspiration, others dismissed it as outdated. The article thus sheds light on the broader tensions between religion, aesthetics and Republican culture in fin-de-siècle France. Finally, Pauline Génissel closes the volume with a chapter on Vincent d’Indy’s Le Chant de la cloche, in which she claims that this ostensibly secular work rests on an underlying religious principle: the Trinitarian idea of community, faith and order. This principle is conveyed through a musical language that employs Gregorian chant as the organic foundation of its formal construction.

Although the volume as a whole exhibits great coherence and a remarkable unity of purpose, one may nevertheless regret the limited attention accorded to the organ repertoire – an instrument central to the Catholic liturgy and, more generally, to nineteenth-century religious instrumental practice. Moreover, the role of performers – organists, cantors, etc. – in the propagation of religious music is underrepresented, despite them being essential agents of parish musical life. Vincent Petit’s article sheds valuable light on the often-overlooked role of musical actors involved in liturgical life. In this respect, the work of Patrick Hala – who has explored the interplay between ecclesiastical institutions and musicians in the process of the Gregorian chant reform – could fruitfully inform future research.Footnote ⁶

The volume raises several major lines of inquiry for the study of nineteenth-century religious music. Foremost among these is the question of the very definition of religious music, which in nineteenth-century of ideological reconfigurations becomes almost ontological: should religious music be defined by its liturgical function, text, style or spiritual intention? Omnipresent in the discourse of the time, this question prompts reflection on the contours of the sacred and on the forms of musical sacralization in a society undergoing increasing secularization. It also intersects with other equally important issues: the adaptation of a ‘Romantic’ idiom to the religious context (which requires a delicate balance between subjective expression and respect for liturgical canons) and the place of Gregorian chant in churches as well as in unexpected venues such as theatres or concert halls. These questions converge with the vigorous nineteenth-century debates over what religious music ‘ought to be’, both within the Church – among advocates of strict Roman observance and proponents of local or modernising adaptations – but also among artists, critics and theorists who examined the extent of art’s autonomy from liturgical norms. This dual dialogue, between the ecclesiastical institution and the artistic world, constitutes one of the volume’s overarching themes, highlighting the complexity but also integral role of religious music in nineteenth-century France.

Among the avenues for further research opened up by this volume, the question of sonic and liturgical mediations in rural settings remains one of the most pressing. How solid is our understanding of musical practices in rural parishes and the circulation of scores among organists, cantors, schoolteachers and clergy? Likewise, the study of oral or semi-oral repertoires – processional chants, popular hymns, litanies – would complement the findings of the present volume. In this respect, the multidisciplinary approach initiated here, combining cultural history, musical analysis and the study of institutions and political visions, merits further attention and systematisation. A historical ethnography of the gestures, voices and spaces of worship could thus be articulated within the history of forms, in a more embodied perspective on the religious. This path might also engage a fundamental epistemological reflection: what, precisely, is meant by ‘religious music’ in a society in which faith itself is pluralized, interiorized, fragmented and – in a century marked by the rise of anticlericalism – the secularization of institutions, the decline of traditional liturgical practices and the emergence of new forms of religiosity? Such a notion compels us to think in terms of listening regimes, ritual functions and tensions between spirituality and aesthetics. Finally, the relationship between religious music and the history of emotions (mourning, ecstasy, adoration) remains a promising yet understudied topic in French musical historiography. The study of the sentiment religieux cannot be limited to the institutional or the discursive: it calls for thinking, in music, about that which escapes the norm – tremor, fervour, silence itself.

Ultimately, La musique religieuse en France au XIXe siècle stands as an indispensable, erudite, nuanced and masterfully constructed work. Through its extensive documentation, intellectual coherence and theoretical ambition, it fully honours the tradition of excellence of the Brepols Speculum Musicae series. Opening up numerous avenues for future research, it invites us to continue exploring the crossroads of religious history, musicology and cultural history. From an original historiographical viewpoint, it reveals subtle and hitherto unobserved connections between liturgical, para-liturgical and secular music imbued with spiritual content. The volume also resonates with two current major approaches: material religion, which considers music in its tangible mediations (instruments, scores, spaces, gestures), and lived religion, which is attentive to the real practices of communities sometimes far removed from official norms. Although not explicitly declaring these approaches, the volume adopts their spirit, bringing to light actors, places and musical forms that shift the boundaries between the sacred and the profane.