These days we often think of the Christmas season as the thirty or so shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. And retailers keep expanding that timeframe by putting up their decorations earlier and earlier to the point where it is not at all unusual to see stores awash in holiday glitz and glitter well before Halloween.
The church calendar, however, demarcates its seasons differently. The first season of the church year, beginning four Sundays prior to December 25, is not called Christmas but Advent, a time in which to prepare for the coming or advent of Christ. Following that are the twelve days of the Christmas season, of which Christmas itself is the first. They lead to the season of Epiphany, which begins on January 6, the day on which Christians celebrate the revelation of JesusÕ divine nature not just to the people of Israel but also to the Gentiles, as represented by the three magi, or kings.
Since medieval times, a wealth of vocal music has been written illuminating Biblical and other texts that relate to Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. This program highlights personal favorites from two centuries particularly fruitful for unaccompanied choral works, the 1500s and 1900s. Rather than simply arrange the works chronologically, placing the Renaissance music before intermission and the modern works after, it seemed more appealing to link all the pieces by their texts and arrange them to move through the seasons telling the Christmas story.
The Advent section of the program consists of works that anticipate JesusÕ birth, particularly the angelÕs announcement to Mary that she was to bear the Son of God, and works that extol the virtues of the Virgin Mother, as is also traditional for the Advent season. In three perspectives on the main event of Christmas, we sing of the angels proclaiming the miraculous birth, of the shepherds visiting the baby, and of the strange mystery, the great almighty God appearing on earth as a sleeping infant in a stable meant for animals. And for Epiphany we have accounts of the three kings searching for the newborn King and presenting their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
The program opens with ÒNova! nova!Ó and concludes with ÒGaudeteÓ as its energetic finale. The two pieces are 21st-century compositions based on medieval sources and, combining the newest and oldest musical strains, neatly frame the music of the 16th and 20th centuries.
I hope you enjoy the concert and this chance to compare how composers from markedly different eras approach the same subject matter.
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Cantabile Choral Guild
953 Industrial Avenue, Suite 118, Palo Alto CA 94303
650.424.1410 info@cantabile.org