In Rome, a Mass setting composed especially for the Jubilee

The 2025 Jubilee already had its anthem, but it also has a special Mass. It was commissioned as part of the jubilee festivities by the Pious Establishments of France in Rome and Loreto, as well as by the French Embassy to the Holy See. The composer is Samir Amarouch, a former resident of the Villa Medici who trained at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse.

Samir Amarouch is a non-Christian who doesn’t wish to comment on his own relationship with faith and the Catholic Church. However, he simply recalls reading the New Testament in his youth and buying a copy again in 2022 during a visit to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in order to reread it. Coincidence?

Brother Renaud Escande is a Dominican friar who heads the Pious Establishments, an institution that administers the five French churches in Rome. In 2023, he asked Amarouch to create a Mass for the Jubilee. The young man from Charente (in western France), the son of a Moroccan father, was surprised and hesitant. Very attached to his artistic freedom and his artisanal vision of his craft, he finally decided to embark on the adventure.

A deep and regular theological dialogue on the nature of the Mass then developed between the Dominican friar and the artist. Amarouch was particularly interested in the linguistic and symbolic structures of the text, as well as in the Masses composed over the centuries. For a Mass specifically dedicated to the Jubilee, he was venturing into uncharted territory, as he could find no trace of a precedent. “I hope there will be others after me, at least,” he said.

Committed to exploring the textual material of the Mass ritual, Amarouch didn’t change a single word. Nonetheless, he did allow himself, as is often the case in this type of composition, to repeat the ritual words — a way for him to delve into their substance, to question them in order to make them speak.

After nearly a year and a half of work, he completed the five traditional parts of the Mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Alleluia, Sanctus, Agnus Dei – supplemented by a coda, or conclusion.

Machaut, Josquin Desprez, Bach, and Beethoven have deeply inspired the composer, but also the Corsican and Albanian polyphonic traditions. He enlisted the help of some 20 musicians, including the great specialist in medieval polyphony, Marcel Pérès, and his ensemble Organum, to present it to the public.

In total, six male voices, an organist, three flutes, three trombones, two percussionists, two harps, a harpsichord, and three double basses from the “S.a.m.pl.e” and “Ars Ludi” ensembles performed at St. Louis of the French.

“Maybe some people will hate it, but I sincerely believe that you can pray with my Mass,” says Samir Amarouch. “I was interested in the profound questions raised by the text of the Mass, and I'm not sure I've succeeded. I offer an abstract art that makes you think; there are moments that lift you up to the heavens,” he told us.

“It's contemporary music, resolutely contemporary, resolutely not seductive, but composed by someone who has made the effort to blend into our tradition with great sincerity,” emphasizes Brother Renaud Escande.

This work, he assures us, is in keeping with the Church's tradition of patronage and “brings hope, the theme of the Jubilee, in an era marked by conflict and violence.”

The origin of the title Shalom is taken from a contemporary anecdote, recently captured on video. During the recent release of one of the first Jewish hostages on October 7, she turned to her captor, took his hand, and said this word, which is both a greeting and a synonym for peace in Arabic and Hebrew. “It's truly a mass for our times,” concludes the Dominican friar.