Chorale is four weeks into our Autumn rehearsal period, preparing our Advent/Christmas program. We will perform in Hyde Park, and at the Ravinia Festival, the weekend of December 14-15. We presented such a program last year, for the first time, but only at Ravinia. The audience turnout and enthusiasm thrilled us (both performances sold out!), but we felt badly about excluding many of our regular, Hyde Park-based supporters: the trip from the South Side, to near the Wisconsin line, feels like crossing into another world, and is difficult for some of our supporters even to contemplate. So we’ll present two concerts in Highland Park, Saturday at 5 and 7 PM, and one concert in Hyde Park on Sunday, at 3 PM.
This year’s program is built around three pillars—three settings of the O magnum mysterium text: one by the Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, one by twentieth century French composer Francis Poulenc, and, finally, one by contemporary Basque composer Javier Busto. The text, from the Liber Usualis, is the responsorial chant for the Matins of Christmas, and has inspired many choral composers with its expressive beauty:
O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the newborn Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!
In liturgical performance, the chant text is followed by an Alleluia. Poulenc, alone of our three composers, omits the Alleluia, perhaps because the dark, troubling quality of his setting would be disturbed by the addition of an Alleluia. I have read nothing about this omission from Poulenc’s own pen; we just have to assume he knew what he was doing. By this time in his life (this motet was published in 1952), Poulenc had deeply reconnected with his Christian faith, and was composing numerous settings of Christian texts, large and small. This small piece is undoubtedly one of his finest choral compositions, beloved by choirs the world over.
Francis Poulenc
Victoria’s setting, from 1572, while similar in tempo and contemplative quality to Poulenc’s, has none of the troubled darkness of the later work. Victoria focuses on the humble manger scene, transfused with wonder and mystery, and ends with an exuberant, dance-like series of Alleluias, as though the shepherds and their animals are dancing for joy. One of the greatest composers of the Renaissance period, Victoria, a Spaniard, studied and worked for a time in Rome, before returning to Madrid, where he spent his career in service to the royal family.
Tomás Luis de Victoria
Javier Busto was born in Hondarribia, Basque Country, Spain, in 1949, and attended medical school, becoming a family doctor, a profession he has continued to practice up to the present. He began composing and conducting choral music while in school, and has maintained a dual career, while continuing to live in the same region in which he was born. His setting of the O magnum mysterium text, even more than Victoria’s, expresses the observers’ ardent joy at witnessing Jesus’ birth, progressing from the hushed mystery of the birth itself, through the witness and adoration of the animals, and fairly exploding into a fanfare-like Alleluia at the end.
Occurring at the beginning, middle, and end of our program, this text provides a framework which the balance of our music builds on and decorates, and on which it comments. These inspirational settings give performers and audience a lot to chew on and contemplate, as we explore the beauty of the Christmas season.