L'Apocalypse selon St. Jean

'In early 1939, on his return from a concert tour through America, a young musician encountered a heavy storm on the high seas. The deep impression made by the unbridled elements mixed with memories of the wonderful world of images that he had come to know in the cathedral of his native city of Le Mans. At the time, he was working on a large-scale oratorio whose depths of expression would make it one of his major works. That young man was Jean Françaix. Convinced that the Revelation of Saint John was the response to questions that man has posed since the beginning of time, and that music has the power of evoking something and making it comprehensible even without using images, he turned to the overpowering subject of the Apocalypse, a subject that is difficult to grasp in human, artistic terms: visions of the end of time, of the goal and fulfillment of divine creation. Under the direction of an eminent connoisseur of the Revelation of Saint John, Father Allo, as well as that of several monks from the abbey of Solesmes, Jean Françaix first prepared his text over a one-year period ending in 1938; the composition was completed by the end of 1939, and thus became a premonition of the horrors of the Second World War.' (Thomas Daniel Schlee, Introduction to CD)