The Virgin Mary is a figure whom artists, poets, and composers have treated most tenderly over the centuries. From early Medieval times to the present day, she has inspired the most devout and dramatic musical expression. For tonight's program, we have intentionally selected music to evoke both the universality and diversity across different ages and cultures of expressions of devotion to the Virgin Mother.

The Ave Maria combines two greetings to Mary: from the angel Gabriel before announcing that she would bear Jesus (Luke 1:28) and from her cousin Elisabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, when Mary, also pregnant, came to visit her (Luke 1:42). The Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55) is Mary's reply to Elisabeth. Settings abound for both these songs of Mary. Our program includes four Ave Maria's, five Magnificats, and several other Marian songs.

We begin with two motets from the Renaissance. Flemish composer Jacob Arcadelt (c.1505-1568) gives us a simple, tender Ave Maria based on a traditional hymn tune. The Ave Maria by Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) is fully polyphonic in the style of Palestrina and seasoned with the flavors of his native Spain.

The first Magnificat on the program is a modern premiere. Orlando di Lasso (c.1532-1594) wrote Magnificat "Memor esto" in 1591, but the piece has not been heard for centuries, probably not since the Flemish composer's day. Musicologist Fred Dempster discovered it while researching the thirty Magnificats of di Lasso that were then known to exist. In 1978, his investigations led him to a monastery on the Rhine near Munich, the city where di Lasso spent most of his life. In the library of the monastery, Dempster found sixty previously unknown Magnificat settings by di Lasso. He started to edit this huge body of music but passed away in 1985.

The Magnificats were neglected for years. Only recently have performance editions begun to appear. Arthur Huff, a retired high-school music teacher in Fresno, who recently inherited the manuscripts, has transcribed some of them into modern musical notation. His edition of Magnificat "Memor esto", from which the Guild Chorus performs tonight, is as yet unpublished.

The title, Memor esto, refers to the motet, also by di Lasso, upon which the Magnificat is based. It follows the customary alternatim arrangement, alternating from verse to verse between plainsong and polyphony. In this case, di Lasso has composed music for the even-numbered verses of the Magnificat. The odd verses are sung to the traditional Gregorian chant.

The scoring for six voices allows for complex counterpoint and lush vertical sonorities. Often, such as at the beginning of the first choral verse, the music is a dialogue between the upper three voices and the lower three in Venetian fashion. Also apparent from the beginning is the rich use of modal harmonies with rapid changes between major and minor. The rhythmic complexity reaches its zenith in the "Fecit potentiam," where rapid notes and syncopation abound in all six voices to portray the scattering of the proud.

No concert of Marian hymns would be complete without a setting of one of the Medieval English rose carols, comparing Mary to that lovely, fragrant flower. There Is No Rose by American composer Robert H. Young takes full advantage of the imagery presented in the text. The macaronic mix of English and Latin is typical of carols from the tenth to twelfth centuries. At the end of each stanza, a Latin word or two responds to the preceding English. "Heaven and earth in little space" is answered with "res miranda" ("a wonderful thing"), and "follow we this joyful birth" with "transeamus" ("we are changed").

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) has become well known in the nineties for minimalist works like his Magnificat. For this austere piece, Pärt devised strict rules that determine the pitches and rhythms and carefully control the vertical sonority. The solo line exemplifies this, constrained to a single pitch throughout the entire work. The harmony is a static F minor, and the rhythms follow a distinctive pattern. It is a curious paradox of art that a tightly controlled compositional process can create a work of such spaciousness and mystery. Pärt says of his music, "The complex and many-faceted only confuse me. I search for unity. How do I find my way to it? Traces appear in many guises. Everything that is unimportant falls away."

A set of three recent compositions begins with two pieces by Spanish Basque composer Javier Busto (b. 1949). His Ave Maria is the simpler of the two pieces, yet it is a compelling treatment that communicates profound devotion. This setting, like much of Busto's music, is highly textural and melodic, deriving variety from the former and formal unity from the latter.

In Ave maris stella, Busto utilizes non-standard notation to communicate his innovative ideas, such as when he directs the chorus to sustain particular sounds while the soloist continues a spinning chant-like declamation. The ideas of fanning out and contracting in unify the piece. In the opening, for example, the soloist begins on a B-flat. She sings the upper neighbor, then explores wider and wider intervals, each time returning to the B-flat. The chorus then enters on a unison B-flat and fans out in successively longer phrases to ever fuller harmonies, again returning to B-flat each time. As is typical with Busto, one hears a lovely and sensitive melodic touch and the influence of jazz harmonies.

Norwegian Trond Kverno (b. 1945) composed his Ave maris stella in 1976. The piece, like a crystal, is symmetrical when viewed from many angles. In the opening stanza, the soprano and alto lines mirror each other around the central voice, which sustains a single pitch. The men echo the women verbatim at the octave in the second stanza, a symmetry in time. And the third stanza has all voices singing the theme, the men displaced one measure from the women. Kverno's interest in early music is evident in the compositional devices he uses: canon, polychoral writing and the closing chant.

The Polish composer Henryk GÑrecki (b. 1932), famous for his sorrowful Symphony No. 3, writes primarily sacred vocal music of a unique minimalism. Totus tuus derives its contemplative beauty from this minimalist approach. Static harmonies and rolling repetitions evoke a meditative mysticism that can both challenge and refresh American ears. Listening to this piece, whose emotions range from imploring grandeur to awestruck piety, it is helpful to imagine the massive, ancient stone cathedrals for which GÑrecki composed it.

Bavarian composer Franz Biebl (b. 1906), who turned 92 in September, places his Ave Maria in the context of the Angelus, an ancient rite of the Catholic Church. Several times a day, a tolling bell guides those who observe the practice through a formula of three short Biblical texts after each of which they recite the Ave Maria. In Biebl's piece, the chorus responds to the chanting of the three texts with one of the most beautiful settings of the Ave Maria ever composed.

The best-known choral work of Italian Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi (1675-1741) is surely his Gloria in D, but the Magnificat on tonight's program is just as brilliant with all the dramatic fire and contrast of his concertos. Vivaldi masterfully rings the changes from movement to movement. The opening movement is imposing choral homophony. The aria "Et exultavit" is sprightly counterpoint. The chorus that follows, "Et misericordia", is pulsing chromaticism with daring harmonies and sudden modulations. The "Deposuit" forcefully puts down the mighty and raises up the humble with the whole chorus and orchestra in unison. And the surprises keep coming through to the finale.

In his Magnificat, the Neapolitan Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) mixes two Baroque styles, the older, learned contrapuntal style and the newer gallant style, which is predominantly melodic and homophonic with light texture, periodic phrasing, and frequent cadences.

While this Magnificat is generally attributed to Pergolesi, there is some doubt because on some of the surviving scores the name of the composer is Francesco Durante, one of Pergolesi's teachers. Pergolesi achieved great renown in his time, despite an early death at the age of 26, and it is known that in other instances publishers did put Pergolesi's name on the works of his less famous contemporaries.

On the other hand, in support of Pergolesi's authorship, Durante was a rather conservative composer, perhaps too conservative to write a sacred work employing so much of the gallant style. What is not in doubt is the quality of this richly melodic and imaginative music.

In contrast to the largely choral Magnificats of the Italians, Vivaldi and Pergolesi, the Magnificat of Danish composer Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) alternates among solos, duets, trios, and five-part choral tuttis to dramatize the text. Buxtehude ties his strongly contrasting musical motifs closely to the words within a unifying framework of dance-like orchestral ritornelli.

Melodic beauty, formal perfection, and richness of harmony and texture distinguish the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). Though he was rooted in the traditions of his native Austria and southern Germany, the Italian opera also influenced Mozart deeply. He excelled in every musical idiom current in his time and is often regarded as the most universal composer in the history of Western music. With his Sancta Maria, K. 273, Mozart puts a gracious, charming face on profound religious feelings. In accordance with sonata allegro form, the opening theme returns in the dominant key about halfway through and again in the tonic key toward the end. Mozart enfolds a brilliant variety of material befitting the form and character of the text within this classical framework.

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