Gaudeamus (Feast of the Assumption of the BVM)

Marie-Alphonse-Nicolas-Joseph Jongen (14 December 1873 – 12 July 1953) was a Belgian organist, composer, and music educator. His name is correctly pronounced with a "hard j" - like a "G" with the two syllables receiving equal stress. He was born in Liège, where his parents had immigrated from Flanders. On the strength of an amazing precocity for music, he was admitted to the Liège Conservatoire at the extraordinarily young age of seven, and spent the next sixteen years there. Jongen won a First Prize for Fugue in 1895, an honors diploma in piano the next year, and another for organ in 1896. In 1897, he won the Belgian Prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel to Italy, Germany and France.
In 1902, he returned to his native land, and in the following year he was named a professor of harmony and counterpoint at his old Liège college. With the outbreak of World War I, he and his family moved to England, where he founded a piano quartet. When peace returned, he came back to Belgium and was named professor of fugue at the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels. From 1925 until 1939, he served as director of that institution; 14 years after leaving the directorship, he died at Sart-lez-Spa, Belgium. From his teens to his seventies Jongen composed a great deal, but today, the only part of his oeuvre performed with any regularity is his output for organ, much of it solo, some of it in combination with other instruments.

Today, August 15th, is the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven, according to the beliefs of the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and parts of Anglicanism, it was the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her earthly life. In the churches that observe it, the Assumption is a major feast day.

This work is based on the Gregorian melody of the proper Introit for the day, and begins with the words: "Let us all rejoice, celebrating an holy day, in honor of the Virgin Mary."