Naxos to release Cecilia's recording of "The Construction of Boston."
The CD of Composer in Residence Scott Wheeler's opera will be released during 2008. The libretto, as well as program notes from the April 2007 concert performance, are available now.

"Teeters and his classy cast and players offered the first truly satisfying performance I’ve heard... If I ever forget what a superb programmer he's been over his 39 years of directing Boston Cecilia, remind me of this concert."

-Lloyd Schwartz, The Boston Phoenix, Apr. 5, 2007. Read the review!

Introducing New Music: Recent and Right Now, presenting the music of up-and-coming composers, in collaboration with Scott Wheeler. Annual series debuts in June 2008!

O magnum MYSTERIUM

Three themes are woven throughout Boston Cecilia’s 2007 Christmas concert program.  The first is the ethereal O Magnum Mysterium (O Great Mystery) text which opens and closes the program.  You will first hear a setting of absolute purity by the 16th-century Spanish composer, Tomás Luis de Victoria.  A second setting by contemporary British-American composer Nicholas White is taken from his Alleluia! Puer Natus Est Nobis, a work first performed in Boston in December of 2004 by Boston Cecilia.  The concert closes with a sublime setting by Morten Lauridsen, Composer-in-Residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale.  Mr Lauridsen writes:  “For centuries, composers have been inspired by the beautiful O magnum mysterium text with its juxtaposition of the birth of the new-born King amongst the lowly animals and shepherds.  This affirmation of God’s grace to the meek and the adoration of the Blessed Virgin are celebrated in my setting through a quiet song of profound inner joy.”

Music inspired by the Virgin Mary is the second theme in today’s program.  The women of Boston Cecilia are prominently featured in settings of Ave Maria (Hail Mary) by British composer Gustav Holst and contemporary Canadian composer David MacIntyre.  Both Holst and MacIntyre dedicate their respective compositions to their mothers.  Canadian born Eleanor Daley, winner of the 1994 National Choral Award for Outstanding Choral Composition of the Year by the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors, sets the anonymous Medieval text, There Is No Rose to music that transports the listener heavenward in repetitive ascending arpeggios.

Continuing in the theme of the adoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the full chorus sings two other settings of Ave Maria, one by Victoria, the other by White.  Interspersed are three of the most beloved Christmas pieces in the Anglican tradition by three distinguished 20th century British composers:  Benjamin Britten’s A Hymn to the Virgin (anonymous text, circa 1300) for double choir; Kenneth Leighton’s Of A Rose Is All My Song (anonymous 15th century text) for soprano soloist and choir; and Herbert Howells’ A Spotless Rose (anonymous 14th century text) for baritone soloist and choir.

John Tavener’s Village Wedding, composed in 1991, features the men of Boston Cecilia and is the third inspiration for today’s program.  Tavener, one of Britain’s most highly esteemed composers living today, was organist at the Presbyterian Church of St. John’s, Kensington for 15 years before converting to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977.  Infused with mystical spirituality, Village Wedding sets a poem by the great Greek poet Angelos Sikelianós (1884-1951) with the insertion of a refrain from the orthodox marriage ceremony:  O Isaiah, dance for joy, for the Virgin is with child.  The composer writes:  “Village Wedding is a series of musical and verbal images, describing a village wedding in Greece.  My insertion of Isaiah’s Dance (the moment in the Orthodox Wedding Ceremony when the couple are three times led solemnly around the Holy Table by the Celebrant), and the whole tone of Sikelianós’ poetry however, shows that everything in the natural and visible world, when rightly perceived, is an expression of a supernatural and invisible order of reality.  There is no narrative as such.  I have taken lines from Sikelianós to hint at the essence or ethos of a Greek Orthodox village wedding.”  Commissioned by the Vale of Glamorgan Festival, Village Wedding was first performed by the Hilliard Ensemble at St. Augustine’s Church, Penarth, on August 28, 1992 and is dedicated to Tavener’s wife, Maryanna, and the Hilliard Ensemble.

A final note of deep appreciation is expressed to Margaret Wilmot, former long-time member and librarian of Boston Cecilia, who introduced Tavener’s Village Wedding to me, and whose love of music has been a source of profound inspiration to me and countless others.

- Barbara Bruns

The Boston Cecilia performed these pieces at Church of the Advent in Boston on December 7, 2007, and All Saints Parish in Brookline on December 9, 2007.

© 2007 Barbara Bruns. All rights reserved.

Back to Program Notes page