Stravinsky - Canticum Sacrum (1955) [with score] BETTER PERFORMANCE

Canticum Sacrum ad honorem Sancti Marci nominis - for two voices, orchestra and choir Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Philip Jones Ensemble, cond. Simon Preston ’When Alessandro Piosevan, representing the Venice Biennale International Festival of Contemporary Music, asked Stravinsky to compose a new work for the festival, the composer went him one better. Stravinsky not only accepted the commission, but also dedicated the new work to Venice’s patron saint, St. Mark, and structured the work expressly for performance in the saint’s famous cathedral. In composing Canticum sacrum ad honorem Sancti Marci Nominis (1955), Stravinsky made many a number of accommodations for performance in St. Mark’s. He followed complex textures with quieter music to let the sound clear, used antiphonal devices in the spirit of the early Baroque composer Giovanni Gabrieli (onetime organist at St. Mark’s), and emulated church modes within a serial context. In addition, the five movements are laid out in a symmetrical arch form, reflecting the architecture of St. Mark’s five cupolas. The central movement is thus the most important, while the first movement relates to the fifth, and the second to the fourth. The texts, in Latin, are drawn from the Vulgate Bible. Stravinsky was in the midst of his “serial“ period, and Canticum Sacrum, unsurprisingly, makes use the composer’s distinctly individual application of this technique. In this work, as in all of his religious music, Stravinsky explicitly eschews “artistic“ gestures in favor of a pure, contemplative mood. While the idiom of Canticum Sacrum is far from sweetly tonal, it nevertheless achieves an exquisite beauty in the service of its texts. A brief, solemn “Dedicatio“ opens the work, which is scored for tenor, baritone, and two trombones. The first movement proper features a massed chorus of boys and men forcefully declaiming the text, accompanied by loud brass fanfares. These choral passages are followed antiphonally by quiet, low passages for organ and strings; one of these closes the movement. The fifth movement is a repetition of the first in retrograde; Stravinsky took special care in his notation to ensure that the chords are properly accented and paced to sound natural both forward and backward. By contrast, the second and fourth movements are both arias. A selection from the Song of Songs forms the text of the second movement, delivered by a lyrical tenor solo in one of the more striking uses of post-Webern serial technique. The fourth movement, a bass aria, includes occasional accompaniment from the chorus that provides a delicate echo effect. The central third movement, “Ad Tres Virtutes Horationes,“ makes use of texts related to charity, faith, and hope. It is, itself, structured in arch form, two similar canons framing an antiphonal section. Both the “charity“ and “faith“ canons manage to be gruelling and ethereal at the same time, creating a modal impression even through their dissonances. The brighter central antiphon, with its theme of hope, is marked by a strong contrast between the tenor and baritone soloists and the high voices of the choir. Canticum sacrum is, in sum, one of the most effective examples of Stravinsky’s deeply moving body of sacred music.’ - (Andrew Lindemann Malone)