Program Notes
We open with, O Vos Omnes, by Tomás Luis Victoria (1549-1611). Adapted from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and often sung as part of the Tennabrae Responsories during Holy Week, Victoria's motet calls us to bear witness.
Cantos Sagrados (1990), by the leading Scottish composer James MacMillan, is a provocative choral drama in three movements that portrays the anguish caused by the “disappearance” of political prisoners and the brutal oppression of indigenous peoples in Latin America by the Conquistadors. MacMillan’s libretto uses two of Ariel Dorfman’s vividly descriptive poems as structural pillars, surrounding an imploring prayer by Ana Maria Mendoza. MacMillan masterfully weaves sacred Latin texts into the texture to create his vision of a work which is meant to be “both timeless and contemporary, both sacred and secular.”
The first movement, “Identity,” is in four distinct sections. The opening “scene” is a chaotic public gathering place, where questions and declamatory cries about the discovery of a dead body which no one can, or dares to, identify, crackle through the air in mixed meter, punctuated by sharp, pungent chords in the organ. The second section represents the quiet, mournful lament of the women gathered by the riverbank, whose hearts ache with the notion that the unknown body “doesn’t belong to anybody.” With the arrival of the police, the crowd’s grief rises to anger and urgency as one woman bravely steps up to claim the body with her name and her family’s name, in order to give worth to the life once lived, and for the body to be buried with an identity and dignity. The movement ends with a chanted excerpt from the Requiem Mass: “Deliver the souls of the faithful departed...that they not fall into obscurity.”
The second movement opens with a slow, translucent, Latin prayer to the Holy Mother in the lower voices, gently repeated over and over again, much as when a parent soothes a despondent child. Above this, the sopranos give voice to a childlike figure who wonders how the Virgin of Guadalupe can be both the patron saint of the Spanish Conquerors and of the Indians they massacred. The voice is filled with the searing agony of betrayal that so often occurs, especially in the young and innocent, when the reality of the cruel things done in the name of faith collide with the aspirations and beliefs of spirituality.
In the third movement, MacMillan superimposes the text of Dorfman’s “Sun Stone,” about the execution of a political prisoner, onto the story of the crucifixion. The movement opens with a deceptively peaceful chorale in the organ, which the lower voices then sing on the text “and He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit.” Part of the chorus sings the Latin text in long, sustained note values, while short, clipped declamations of Dorfman’s poem puncture the serene backdrop. The music builds slowly. As a soldier ties the hands of the condemned, his fingers touch him, warm, gentle, at once asking for absolution and offering a compassion that seeks to carry him through his fate. The story of the crucifixion becomes more expansive as the text of the Dorfman poem becomes more insistent. The culmination of the execution is at once both electric and terrifying. One envisions the images of streams of light filling the body at the precise moment that the shots are fired. As the spirit leaves the body, the music gradually folds in on itself, until we are left with just a single low bass note in the organ, while the soldier whispers “Forgive me, compañero.”
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“Lord, Make Me an Instrument,” by M. Roger Holland, II was introduced to Coro Allegro by our long-term collaborators Jonathan Berryman and the Heritage Chorale of New Haven, with whom Coro Allegro performed William Grant Still’s And They Lynched Him on a Tree in 1999 and in 2019. It is their theme song, and we sang it together as a virtual choir from the isolation of our homes during the lockdown. It is a joy to sing it together with you now. Guest artist, David Coleman, piano, shared how moving it was to him for us to be performing this work from the faith tradition in which he was raised:
“In our diverse world, there are unique experiences that seemingly combine elements from very different cultures. One of those experiences is found in the African-American Catholic worship experience, where we celebrate the traditional Roman Catholic mass often with gospel music, which comes from an American Protestant tradition. M. Roger Holland, II is a composer who celebrates Catholicism through the lens of Gospel music (or vice versa) and the result is a glorious amalgam that refocuses our traditional, recognised religious ideas and paints them on a new canvas with new colors. Holland's "Lord Make Me An Instrument" is a perfect example of this music giving us a new take on the beloved prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.”
Program notes © Artistic Director David Hodgkins and Programming Consultant Yoshi Campbell.
These notes are published here for patrons of Coro Allegro and other interested readers. It is permissible to use short excerpts for reviews. For permission to copy, publish or make other use of these notes, please contact yoshic@coroallegro.org and consider making a donation to Coro Allegro.