Religious community near Cluny in France. Founded in 1940 by Brother Roger (b 1915), it is an ecumenical brotherhood whose members (about 100 in the late 1990s) come from many different countries. In the early stages the music for worship was composed by the brothers themselves, but in 1955 Jacques Berthier, organist at the Jesuit church of St Ignace in Paris, supplied the community with chants for four voices. The Jesuit liturgical scholar and composer Joseph Gelineau first visited Taizé in 1948 and worked closely with the brothers on what was to become his celebrated version of the psalms.
By 1975, with ever-increasing numbers of young adults visiting Taizé, the brothers were obliged to look for music that would permit the largely transient and multilingual assembly to participate actively in prayer. They provided Berthier with short texts, initially largely in Latin (for its universality), to which he composed the music according to specific formal guidelines. Some of the songs are in canonic form, while others are brief ostinatos, which may continue under solo versicles (often sung in many languages). Berthier frequently looked to the continuo age for inspiration: for example, the chant Laudate Dominum is based on ‘La follia’. His melodies, built on grammatical basses of extreme simplicity and harmonic clarity, are often adorned with additional instrumental lines, thereby reawakening the Baroque traditions of improvisation and division. The Community also makes considerable use of Orthodox church music. Brothers have continued to compose new alleluias, kyries and repetitive songs, and in recent years have further collaborated with Gelineau, whose newer compositions include several psalm settings and a complete mass.
Taizé’s music is used by churches throughout the world and its songs have been translated into many languages, making a potent contribution to Christian worship. Two volumes, Music from Taizé, were published in 1982, and a further volume, Taizé: Songs for Prayer, appeared in 1999. The enduring strength of the repertory lies in its artistic worth, its simplicity, and in the Community’s reluctance to sacrifice quality to quantity.
J.L. Gonzalez-Balado: The Story of Taizé (London, 1980, 3/1988)
K. Spink: A Universal Heart: the Life and Vision of Brother Roger of Taizé (London, 1986)
ANDREW WILSON-DICKSON