Choral

Eric Whitacre’s “I Thank You God For Most This Amazing Day”: A Joyous Setting of E. E. Cummings

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“i thank You God for most this amazing day is such a beautiful and joyous poem that the music was at times almost effortless,” writes American composer Eric Whitacre (b. 1970). The shimmering a cappella choral setting of e.e. cummings’ poetic prayer concludes Whitacre’s Three Songs of Faith, composed in 1999. In this work, the vibrant sound of the human voice becomes an expression of ecstasy. Celestial aspiring lines and bright, sensuous …

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Barber’s “To Be Sung on the Water”: Conspirare

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Themes of loneliness, isolation, and loss emerge in the late works of Samuel Barber. One of the most poignant examples can be heard in To Be Sung on the Water, Op. 42, an a cappella setting of a poem by Louise Bogan (1897-1970). Composed in December of 1968, the music unfolds over an ostinato which suggests the gentle, hypnotic motion of a rowboat through the night. We become aware of the persistent flow …

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Bruckner’s “Locus iste”: A Motet for a Sacred Space

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The symphonies of Anton Bruckner have been compared with the architecture of a great cathedral. Unfolding in an ABA da capo form, the brief motet, Locus iste (“This Place”), exhibits a similar sense of structure and divine mystery. Commentator Peter Strasser has observed that the work’s motifs function as architectural building blocks. The latin text, derived from the biblical stories of Jacob’s Ladder in Genesis and the burning bush in Exodus, is used to …

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Hindemith’s Six Chansons: An Ode to Nature, Harmony, and Community

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Composed in 1939, Paul Hindemith’s Six Chansons for a cappella choir are an ode to nature, harmony, and community. Set to French-language poems by the Austrian writer, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), they offer a dreamy remembrance of the music of the Renaissance and the French chanson. Brief, simple, and serene, this is music of escape. Having fled the Nazis, Hindemith was living amid the Alpine splendor of Valais, Switzerland. Months later, he …

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Arvo Pärt’s “Solfeggio”: Adventures with a Diatonic Tone Row

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What happens when you treat the simple C major scale as a diatonic tone row? The answer can be heard in Solfeggio, the first a cappella choral work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935). Composed in 1963, the same year as Pärt’s Symphony No. 1, Op. 9, “Polyphonic,” Solfeggio anticipates the composer’s later meditative tintinnabuli style. Solfeggio unfolds with a sense of cosmic timelessness. Serene clusters of sound form and dissipate as each vocal …

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Bach’s Cantata, BWV 106, “Actus Tragicus”: Death and Redemption

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Bach’s Cantata, BWV 106 is a gentle and intimate reflection on death and redemption. It is titled, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (“God’s time is the best time”), with the subtitle Actus Tragicus. The Cantata is scored for an unusual combination of instruments which the Netherlands Bach Society calls famous, idiosyncratic, exceptionally beautiful and meaningful…The violins are conspicuous by their absence, but there are two recorders and two viola da gambas, which …

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Handel’s “Gloria”: A Musical Treasure, Lost and Found

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In 2001, a long lost work by Handel was miraculously discovered. The manuscript for Handel’s Gloria in excelsis Deo had been hiding in plain sight in the library of London’s Royal Academy of Music. Bound in a collection of Handel arias that had been owned by singer William Savage (1720-1789), the manuscript was not in the composer’s hand. It was authenticated by Hamburg University professor Hans Joachim Marx. The Academy’s principal, Curtis Price, …

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