André Gouzes
André Gouzes, born in 1943 in Brusque - a small village in Aveyron not far from the abbey of Sylvanès - is a French Dominican monk, musician, who is one of the main current authors of Christian liturgical chants. He is one of the rare contemporary composers to combine harmonic tradition and modernity of language. Through his work, for half a century, he has been the craftsman of a renewal of liturgical chant.
André Gouzes was introduced to music as a child on the benches of the church of the Sylvanès Abbey, and at a very young age he demonstrated precocious talents in writing, harmony, counterpoint, but also in mastering the organ and the piano.
From 1961 to 1963, he was a student at the famous Dominican College of Sorèze in the neighboring department of Tarn. At the age of twenty, he entered the Order of Preaching Friars (the Dominicans), continued his studies in theology and music in Paris, then was sent to the University of Montreal, in Canada, to complete his training.
It was in 1970, at the Dominican convent in Toulouse, that André Gouzes began his first liturgical compositions, which he named the "Tolosan Liturgy of the Preaching Brothers".
In 1975, he moved to southern Aveyron, where he was originally from, and began the restoration and revival of the Abbey of Sylvanès. It was there that he continued his compositions and created a veritable liturgical corpus: the "Choral Liturgy of the People of God", a collection of over 3,000 pages gathered in around twenty works including psalms and antiphons, responses, chorales, hymns, ordinary of mass, etc. This corpus allows the singing of morning and evening offices as well as Eucharistic liturgies for the entire liturgical year, Sundays and feasts. Texts in French, but also translated and published in many languages.
This work on liturgical musical heritage is inspired by, takes root in, and reconnects with the most authentic musical traditions of Christianity: Gregorian chant, ancient polyphony, Protestant chorale, but also Byzantine modality.
Assisted in his task by Brothers Daniel Bourgeois and Jean-Philippe Revel, apostolic monks of the Community of St. John of Malta in Aix-en-Provence, who translated the psalms and selected the biblical texts to be set to music, André Gouzes wrote polyphonic music for four mixed voices that was both simple and beautiful, inspired by the great liturgical traditions of the West. It is characterized by great harmonic simplicity (but not ease), synonymous with beauty, balance and interiority.
Thus he allows us, in a creative and innovative act, to connect ourselves to this great memory of the undivided Church that the liturgy represents. In this sense he has joined the spirit of the reform of the Second Vatican Council and gives it all its prophetic meaning.