March 25, 2012 - Lent 5

None Other Lamb - Jane M. Marshall/Christina Rossetti

Miserere Mei - Antonio Lotti

Hymns: #439 Wondrous Love, #302 Rendez A Dieu,

              #474 Rockingham

This week I will only discuss the choir anthems. We are again privileged to be joined by a musician who will be providing the prelude and postlude for us. The choir anthems this week are very different from one another but still work together to create a cohesive message for the service. The gradual anthem comes from the pen of Jane Marshall, a noteworthy church musician, teacher and composer. Her best known contribution to the literature is probably the anthem My Eternal King. One of the aspects that set Ms. Marshall apart from other church composers of her time is her attention to extremely high quality texts. This anthem published in 1954 sets the Christina Rossetti hymn text None Other Lamb for four part (often a cappella) choir, organ and cello obbligato. Marshall handles the change in mood and theme of the text by fluctuating between e minor and E major with interludes played by the organ and cello to aid the otherwise a cappella choir in finding the shifts in tonality. The piece requires a great degree of musicianship from the singers as Marshall calls on them to execute large crescendos and decrescendos with little time. In addition to these demands the text often calls for long sustained lines and a great deal of sensitivity to word stress and breaks in the phrases. The text by poet Christina Rossetti is filled with images of longing and desire. It has been suggested that later in life, after resigning herself to never finding a fulfilling relationship in another man that Rossetti turned her visions of love toward the image of Christ as the bridegroom. I think that this text can easily be viewed with this in mind and that it only serves to deepen the sense of longing that the speaker feels.

The communion anthem has a much older text than the 19^th century None Other Lamb. Miserere Mei is a setting of the first three verses of Psalm 51 by the Italian Baroque composer Antonio Lotti. Lotti spent his entire career in Venice at St. Mark’s Cathedral (with the exception of a two years spent in Dresden where a number of his operas were produced.) Lotti started at St. Mark’s as a singer and rose through the ranks finally being named maestro di cappella in 1736. He composed numerous masses, cantatas, chamber works, operas and sacred pieces. His Miserere Mei is still performed at the Cathedral on Maundy Thursday. This setting starts with each voice entering in imitation with lush (for the time period and the ultra-conservative Lotti) suspensions and harmonies. The piece is very short (only 27 measures) but Lotti manages to squeeze the meaning out of every note and every word. For me, the piece ends in a fulfilling way but it is so good that I just want there to be more. It is a truly stunning piece.