Gloria in excelsis
What better way to celebrate the holiday season than with “a joyful noise”- resounding voices, shimmering brasses, sonorous organ, thrilling percussion, and also the warmth of a lone cello and piano – all helping to express the glory and mystery of the season. Along with our wonderful instrumentalists, including members of Portland’s Big Horn Brass, we present the angels’ greeting to the shepherds in several settings, along with angels who appear among us in other ways. We round out the concert with a vision of peace to overcome the brokenness of the world.
We begin with a joyous fanfare: the opening Proclamation of the Gloria by Sir Karl Jenkins (b. 1944). Knighted in 2015 for his services to music (the first Welsh composer so honored), Jenkins has long demonstrated his versatility as both a performer and a composer. After studies at Cardiff University and the Royal Academy of Music, he initially performed on baritone and soprano saxophone, oboe, flute, and keyboards with popular jazz-rock-fusion ensembles, including Nucleus and Soft Machine, in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he began to focus more on composing and achieved a breakthrough in 1995 with Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary, which topped the classical charts (he performed part of it at the 2014 Winter Olympics with his own New Age group). Along the way, he also composed works as diverse as The Armed Man: A mass for peaceand Palladio, with was famously used in advertisements for De Beers diamonds. His Gloria dates from 2010 and consists of five movements. The three in Latin come from the Catholic mass, with a setting of Psalm 150 in Hebrew and a song based on biblical passages in English interpolated among them; it also includes spoken passages from Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and Islamic traditions. The Gloria and several other works reflect Jenkins’ ecumenism and commitment to music’s role in peacemaking.
Snow Angel (2002) by Canadian Sarah Quartel (b. 1982) envisions angels in a more intimate way. Quartel’s interest in composing grew from her own experiences as a chorister, starting at age ten. Following musical studies at Western University in her hometown of London, Ontario, she became an elementary music educator, which included conducting and composing for children’s choirs. She describes her five years of teaching as the happiest time of her life and still continues working with children’s choirs, even though she now makes her living as a composer. She composed Snow Angel while a student at Western and sang in the world premiere there. She has written, “Though the work has grown since its first performance…, [it still] asks the listener to see the tremendous potential present in our children. It celebrates love, beauty, and the strength that a child’s voice can bring to our troubled world.” One way the work has changed is that it now includes narration inserted between movements, written by Canadian poet and politician Lisa Helps (b. 1976). Although Quartel wrote most of the lyrics herself, Helps may have drawn inspiration from the second movement, which instead uses words from “The Loves of the Angels,” a long Orientalist poem by Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852). Like Snow Angel, the poem features three angels who recount their experiences with people here on earth.
Despite its name, our version of “Carol of the Bells” employs no instruments other than human voices. It began as a Ukrainian folksong about a swallow flying to homes to announce a prosperous new year. Ukrainian composer and ethnomusicologist Mykola Leontovych (1877-1921) composed over 150 choral works, mostly a cappella and many based on folk music; he also set poetry by Ukrainian authors. This New Year song (shchedrivka) is his best-known work, but it came to North America only in 1936 when Ukrainian American composer and music educator Peter Wilhousky (1902-1978) gave it English lyrics and changed the focus from New Year’s celebrations to Christmas. Our version, whose many rapidly changing time signatures conjure up the sensation of hearing bells from every direction, was arranged by Gordon Badgett, a student at Brigham Young University where it premiered just a year ago.
By contrast, “Hodie Christus natus est,” by Giovanni Gabrieli (1555-1612) dates back to the 1590s. Gabrieli became principal organist at San Marco’s Basilica in Venice in 1584, taking over for his uncle Andrea who had been a surrogate father and his main teacher. He composed with San Marco’s peculiar acoustical properties in mind, for its architecture made the use of double choirs, whether of voices or brass instruments, especially exciting. He was the first composer to specify exactly where musicians should stand and at what volume they should perform. He became the most influential composer of the Venetian School, which was characterized by works for multiple choirs; composers from all over Europe flocked to Venice to learn from him. Imagine a Christmas Eve service with his “Hodie” echoing through the vast, golden space of that amazing church.
Knighted just this year, English composer Sir John Rutter (b. 1945) began his musical development as a chorister at Highgate School, along with future fellow composer John Tavener. He continued as a choral singer while studying music at Clare College, Cambridge University, and published his first composition while still an undergraduate. From 1975 to 1979, he served as music director of Clare College, leading the choir in which he had previously sung, and in 1981 he founded his own choir, the Cambridge Singers, which specializes in sacred choral music, including his own. Choral music has remained the heart of Rutter’s compositions, including his Magnificat, Requiem, carols, and church anthems. He composed his Gloria in 1974, always intending his first American commission as a concert work, not as part of a liturgy. He has described the three movements, respectively, as “exalted, devotional, and jubilant,” with the prominent and energetic role of brasses and percussion in the outer movements making “quite a joyful noise unto the Lord,” while the ethereal organ accompaniment in the second movement encourages quiet introspection.
We close with a powerful contemporary carol, “The Dream Isaiah Saw,” by Glenn Rudolph (b. 1951). In 2001, the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh commissioned five new works for its holiday concert. Rudolph, a longtime performer, conductor, and composer in Pittsburgh, chose a 1994 hymn text by Thomas Troeger (1945-2022), a pastor, theologian, poet, musician, and homiletics professor at Yale. Rudolph began composing his new piece in late July, but the attacks on September 11 forced him to change direction. Still, he completed the carol by the end of September, and it had its premiere, as scheduled, at the holiday concert, now as a tribute to those who had died that terrible day. Knowing this background adds poignancy to a carol that doesn’t sound like most holiday music. The music starts almost mournfully, the drums giving a sense of foreboding, before the lowest voices tentatively offer the vision of the peaceable kingdom from the book of Isaiah. More voices join, imploring the newborn Child of Bethlehem to change our hearts, and then the brass instruments, as the vision expands to include humanity as well as animals. The music grows in intensity and urgency, adding more instruments and richer harmonies, to imagine the whole world transformed. As the singers repeat the refrain, we renew our commitment to make Isaiah’s dream a reality for all the people of the world.
With that vision before us, we wish you and those you love a joyful holiday season and peaceful new year.
Susan Wladaver-Morgan