A Noel Proclamation - Joseph M. Martin
O Magnum Mysterium - Tomas Luis Victoria
Hymns: #83 Adeste Fidelis, #96 Gloria, #87 Mendelssohn
#107 in Dulci Jubilo, #111 Stille Nacht,
The music for the Christmas Eve service mixes old and new
which seems applicable given the nature of the season. Christmas for many
people is about tradition and familiarity but it is also often a time of new
beginnings. One week after this service we will find ourselves sitting around
waiting to welcome in a new year. The new year which will bring its own
challenges and adventures but will still bear resemblance to the years that
have gone before. It will share the same seasons, holidays, births, deaths joys
and tears but will have its own character.
For me that about sums up the gradual anthem. It is a
collection of familiar carols arranged by Joseph M. Martin (b. 1959) taken from
his 2009 cantata “The Mystery and Majesty.” The cantata is a lovely blend of
familiar and some less familiar Christmas carols and original compositions that
tell the story of the nativity through the lens of the mystery that was the
birth of Christ. This large carol fantasy concludes the cantata. It opens with Angels From the Realms of Glory set in
unison to an accompaniment that sounds like a Baroque chorale prelude. This
segues into the 19th century hymn Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne, a hymn that goes through the life of
Christ but is most commonly (like Handel’s Messiah)
sung during Advent and Christmas. This flows
into Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s text of the same year, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.
This poem was written in response to the death of Longfellow’s wife in a
fire and the severe injury of his son Charles in battle. After a refrain of Adeste Fidelis we move to the final
hymn, The First Noel. This builds to
a in the last verse of the hymn “Then let us all with one accord.” The
accompaniment explodes as though every church bell in town were pealing
together for the coda proclaiming that “Christ the Lord is born.”
The communion is a setting of an ancient Latin text that has
captivated composers for centuries. O Magnum Mysterium is a chant for Matins
at Christmas. This setting by Tomas Luis Victoria (c.1548-1611) is a standard
of the choral cannon that occupies a prominent place in the repertoire of most
school, college, and church choirs. The opening contrapuntal section captures
the mystery of that the text describes. The counterpoint stops as the text
celebrating the virgin is set in quiet homophonic chords. This moves ahead to
an exuberant triple meter “alleluia” that then breaks into cascading “alleluias”
back in duple meter with an ebb and flow of consonance and dissonance against
the soprano’s sustained tonic.
No comments:
Post a Comment