Jules Massenet

Massenet was born at Montaud, now part of Saint-Étienne, and entered the Paris Conservatoire as a child, where he studied with Ambroise Thomas. He won the Prix de Rome in 1863 and from 1878 to 1896 taught composition at the Conservatoire; Ernest Chausson, Gustave Charpentier and Reynaldo Hahn were among his pupils. Opera was the centre of his career: he wrote about twenty-five, including Manon (1884), Werther (1892) and Thaïs (1894), as well as more than two hundred songs.

His strength was melody, long singing lines made to carry the emotions of love and passion, and he was often seen as Charles Gounod's heir, with a particular feeling for religious subjects. Early work in theatre orchestra pits gave him a practical command of orchestration. From Wagner he took a fuller orchestral sound and a freer handling of themes, but he never adopted Wagner's whole method.

The Méditation is an entr'acte, an orchestral interlude, between the two scenes of Act II of Thaïs, a comédie lyrique after Anatole France's novel, set in Roman Egypt and first staged at the Paris Opéra on 16 March 1894. It follows the scene in which the monk Athanaël confronts the courtesan Thaïs; when it ends she agrees to let him lead her to a convent in the desert, so the music marks the turning point of her conversion. Written for solo violin and orchestra in D major and marked Andante religioso, it uses two harps and, for its final return, a wordless chorus.