Aperite portas Christo

Programme

About fifty minutes of music, without an interval. Please do not applaud between the works.

Performers and forces

María José Cantos, soprano, and Juan Carlos Hernández, bass, soloists. Mixed choir and an orchestra of Classical proportions.

Ten works in five languages: Latin, Italian, German, English and Spanish. Bach, Haydn and Mozart are performed in their original orchestration. The other seven works are heard in orchestrations and arrangements by the conductor, written for this ensemble.

Conductor’s note

On 22 October 1978, at the Mass that began his pontificate, John Paul II said in St Peter’s Square: ‘Do not be afraid! Open, indeed, open wide the doors to Christ!’ He had been elected six days earlier, on 16 October. Our concert falls on that same date because of the series calendar, with no intention of commemorating anything, but the coincidence gave me tonight’s title.

I have ordered the programme as one enters a house. We begin at the door, with the Ecce sacerdos magnus by the Córdoba composer Ramón Medina Hidalgo. That text was sung when the bishop arrived at the church and crossed the threshold. It is followed by the hymn by Marco Frisina that gives the evening its name.

Then come three different ways of letting someone in. Bach’s chorale closes a cantata written for the feast of the Visitation, the day Mary enters Elizabeth’s house. Frisina sings of Christ as the life of whoever opens the door to him. And the communion hymn we attribute to Beobide puts the centurion’s words in our mouths: ‘Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof’.

In the second half we go out and come back. Te seguiré is what someone says who, having opened the door, sets out on the road. Haydn shows us the world newly made, with Adam and Eve giving thanks on their first morning. Then come two Marian pieces, Schubert’s Ave Maria and Mozart’s Regina coeli: the litanies call Mary ianua caeli, gate of heaven.

And we end at home. This is the church of the Salesians of Córdoba, who have been in the city since 1901, and the hymn with which we close, Rendidos a tus plantas, has been sung here before the image of Mary Help of Christians for generations.

A correction to the printed programme: the Salesian hymn begins ‘Rendidos’, in the plural, and the words are by the Salesian Salvador Rosés.

The works

Sung texts

English translations made for this version from the original texts, following the Spanish translations by Clemente Mata Ruiz. Lyrics still in copyright are not reproduced. In their place we give, in the original language and in translation, the public-domain biblical and liturgical texts on which each song rests.

Layer 3 · Critical study

Academic layer. The statements rest on primary sources, critical editions and published studies, cited in notes (print version) and in the final bibliography. Where the documentation falls short, the text says so.

I. Sources, versions and authorship

This programme brings together works whose sources are in very different states. Three have a modern critical edition: Bach’s chorale (Neue Bach-Ausgabe), the number from Haydn’s The Creation (Joseph Haydn Werke) and Mozart’s Regina coeli (Neue Mozart-Ausgabe). Another three are recent liturgical songs by Marco Frisina, known through commercial editions and through documentation from the Diocese of Rome. The remaining four belong to the local and devotional repertoire and have received hardly any scholarly attention. Before analysing them, it is worth setting out what we know about each and with what degree of certainty.

Two Ramón Medinas

The printed programme says ‘R. Medina’, and the abbreviation invites confusion. Ramón Medina Ortega (Brihuega, 1891 – Córdoba, 1964) is the composer of the songs the city regards as its own, and has had a bust in the Plaza de San Agustín since 1993. His son, Ramón Medina Hidalgo (Córdoba, 1920 – 2012), also a composer, wrote the work that opens this concert. The Ecce sacerdos magnus is by the son. The son’s biography has yet to be documented: the details given here come from the testimony of the conductor of this concert, and the sources consulted do not allow them to be confirmed. Of the work we know neither the date nor the occasion, and its only source is the autograph manuscript kept in the conductor’s personal archive. It ought to be deposited and catalogued in a public archive: today it is the only witness to the piece.

The documentation of Frisina’s hymns

For Aprite le porte a Cristo there is direct testimony: the diocesan weekly Roma Sette of 24 April 2011 attributes the words and music to Frisina and announces its first performance at the vigil of 30 April in the Circus Maximus. The official booklet of the beatification Mass of 1 May does not include the hymn, so it should not be stated that it was sung there. Jesus Christ, you are my life is known to have been sung at the Tor Vergata vigil of 19–20 August 2000. Of Ti seguirò we know the Paoline edition, but not the date of composition. The date of composition of Jesus Christ, you are my life is not recorded; Frisina himself has said that he wrote it during a meal, on a napkin, so that anyone could sing it, and it should be remembered that the official hymn of that World Youth Day was a different one, Emmanuel. The bibliographical search has turned up no musicological study of his liturgical work; writings of his own on sacred composition can be found. A repertoire sung in so many languages therefore remains unstudied.

Undocumented authorship

The attribution of Oh, Señor, yo no soy digno to Juan Manuel Beobide is the most widespread, but we have not been able to verify it in any documentary source, nor its date. Of Rendidos a tus plantas we know, from the Archdiocese of Seville and from the Boletín Salesiano, that the words are by the Salesian Salvador Rosés and that the hymn was born at the school in Utrera. The date, however, has not been established: the diocesan note places it in 1881, the year the house at Utrera was founded, while the local press assigns it to Rosés’s time as rector, between 1911 and 1917. The same local press states that the melody comes from an Italian song of the period, a claim we have not been able to verify and which should not be repeated without checking. The composer is not documented. The printed programme read ‘Rendido’, in the singular; the first line reads ‘Rendidos’.

Bach’s chorale and its text

Cantata BWV 147 survives in the autograph score (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. Bach P 102) and in the original parts (St 46), and was edited by Uwe Wolf in the Neue Bach-Ausgabe in 1995. Numbers 6 and 10 have the same music with two different stanzas of Martin Jahn’s hymn Jesu, meiner Seelen Wonne. Bach-Digital identifies as the source of the text a Leipzig edition of 1669 of the devotional book Frommer Christen tägliches Betkämmerlein. The numbering of the stanzas varies between editions of the hymnal; Alfred Dürr discusses it in his commentary.

Editorial criteria for the sung texts

This programme reproduces some texts and not others, and the reason should be explained. Those in the public domain are printed in full: the responsory Ecce sacerdos magnus, the stanza of Bach’s chorale (Martin Janus, 1661), Gottfried van Swieten’s text for Haydn, the prayer Ave Maria and the antiphon Regina coeli. In Spain, exploitation rights last, as a general rule, seventy years from the author’s death, and eighty for authors who died before 7 December 1987, under the consolidated text of the Intellectual Property Act and its fourth transitional provision.

Protected lyrics are not reproduced: the three by Marco Frisina, those of Oh, Señor, yo no soy digno, whose authorship has not been clarified, and those of Rendidos a tus plantas, of which only the first line is quoted. The right of quotation allows fragments to be reproduced for teaching or research purposes, citing source and author, but not the whole lyric of a song, which in such cases is the complete work.

The solution adopted keeps to the principle of always giving the original text and its translation when a work is sung in another language: where the lyric cannot be printed, the programme offers the public-domain biblical or liturgical text on which the song rests, in Latin and in translation, and says so expressly so that no one mistakes it for what is being sung. The biblical texts are cited from the Clementine Vulgate and the text of the communion rite from the Missale Romanum. If the publishers authorise the reproduction of the lyrics, they will be added in a later version of this page.

Schubert’s Ave Maria: German text, Latin text

Schubert wrote the song on Adam Storck’s German translation of Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake, and published it in 1826 as part of op. 52. The adaptation of the Latin prayer is later and anonymous. In this concert it is sung with the Latin text, in an arrangement by the conductor for soprano, choir and orchestra, and the prayer should be read as a reference and not as an exact transcription of what is heard.

II. Context: four traditions in one evening

The works in this programme range from 1723 to 2011 and come from four traditions that rarely share a concert. Knowing where each comes from helps one to listen to it with the ear it asks for.

The Lutheran cantata in Leipzig

In Leipzig the cantata was part of Sunday and feast-day worship, and the chorale was the song of the congregation. By closing both parts of BWV 147 with a chorale, Bach handed the music back to the assembly: Schop’s melody was known to everyone, even if here it is wrapped in an orchestra. Seen in this way, Bach’s chorale is closer to Rendidos a tus plantas than it seems.

Austrian sacred music with orchestra

Mozart (1771), Haydn (1798) and Schubert (1825) share a language, that of Viennese Classicism, but their works had very different destinies. The Regina coeli is music for the liturgy of Salzburg on Neapolitan models. The Creation is a concert oratorio, financed by aristocrats and later intended for the paying public. Schubert’s Ave Maria is a song for voice and piano on a religious theme, which later devotion carried into the churches.

Popular religious song in Spain

Rendidos a tus plantas, written in Utrera in the first decades of the twentieth century, and Oh, Señor, yo no soy digno belong to the religious song in Spanish that has sustained the life of parishes and schools. Ginés Cruz Zamora has studied how that repertoire changed in the parishes before and after the Council. It is a repertoire handed down from memory, with few reliable editions, and that is why its attributions are fragile. Medina Hidalgo’s Ecce sacerdos belongs to another, neighbouring sphere: the music written in Córdoba for the celebrations of the city.

Rome after the Council

Frisina’s three songs are music of the Church of Rome under the pontificates of John Paul II and his successors: refrains that are learnt at first hearing and verses that can be sung by a soloist or a choir. They answer what the Second Vatican Council asked for in the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium: that the faithful take part by singing. Hearing them alongside Bach or Mozart calls for a different attitude. Their value lies in their power to gather many people around a text.

III. Formal analysis and questions of performance

The analysis that follows is limited to what is documented in the critical editions and the studies cited. For works with no published edition or study, we describe the text and the treatment they receive in this concert, and record what is lacking.

Medina Hidalgo, Ecce sacerdos magnus

The text follows the structure of the Matins responsory from the Common of Confessor Bishops: a respond (Ecce sacerdos magnus… crescere in plebem suam) and a verse (Benedictionem omnium gentium…), as recorded in the plainchant repertoire. The Pontificale Romanum of 1595 regulates the processional reception of the prelate at the church door in its third part; the assignment of this responsory to that moment belongs to later ceremonial practice and should be checked in the book itself before being taken as certain. Medina Hidalgo’s work, for choir and piano, has not been studied, and there is no edition that would allow a published formal analysis. The orchestration for this concert transfers the piano accompaniment to a Classical-sized orchestra and respects the original choral part.

Bach, BWV 147/10

The originality of the number lies in the superimposition of two planes, each with its own logic: an instrumental ritornello that is never interrupted and a chorale that advances line by line. Dürr stresses that this procedure integrates the congregation’s song into a concertante texture. In performance, the problem is balance: the chorale must be heard without the figuration losing its flow, and the tempo must let the 9/8 breathe without dragging.

Haydn, Die Schöpfung, no. 30 (12b)

The opening section, the one sung tonight, works like responsorial psalmody: the soloists propose the praise and the choir answers with a short formula of blessing. Nicholas Temperley has studied how Haydn organises the third part of the oratorio around this great hymn. Annette Oppermann’s critical edition orders the third part with its own numbering, different from the traditional one.

Schubert, Ellens dritter Gesang, D 839

The song is strophic: the same music serves for the three stanzas of Scott’s poem. The voice unfolds a broad melody over an accompaniment of arpeggios in triplets, which evoke the harp of the bard who, in Scott’s poem, accompanies Ellen’s song. In transferring it to soprano, choir and orchestra, the conductor’s arrangement distributes that accompaniment among the strings and entrusts the harmonic support to the choir in the repetitions.

Mozart, Regina coeli, KV 108

Hellmut Federhofer, editor of the work in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, describes the whole as a cyclic form in which the model of the symphony can be recognised, with a slow second movement added at the demand of the text, and points to Neapolitan sacred music as its stylistic reference.

The congregational songs and their orchestral arrangement

Seven of the ten works are heard in orchestrations or arrangements by the conductor for a Classical-sized orchestra. The decision has a practical consequence: all the works share the instrumental colours of Viennese Classicism. A song conceived for the congregation, such as Rendidos a tus plantas, or a work for choir and piano, such as Medina Hidalgo’s Ecce sacerdos, is thus heard with the sonority of the sacred music of Mozart and Haydn. In Frisina’s songs the challenge is the opposite: to keep the simplicity of the refrain, which is their reason for being, within an orchestral texture.

Performance decisions

The Santuario de María Auxiliadora has a single nave covered by a coffered wooden ceiling. A wooden ceiling usually reverberates less than a stone vault, which favours the clarity of the orchestra and of the text. We have no acoustic measurements of the church; the placing of choir and orchestra and the balance with the soloists are decided at the dress rehearsal.

IV. Theological reading

The title comes from the homily with which John Paul II inaugurated his pontificate. The image of the door, however, runs through Scripture from beginning to end, and the programme follows it in four moments: the door through which the Lord enters, the house that does not feel worthy, the road that opens on going out, and the door that is Mary.

Let the King of glory enter

Psalm 23 of the Vulgate (24 in the Hebrew numbering) sings of the Lord’s entry into his temple: Attollite portas, principes, vestras, et elevamini, portae aeternales, et introibit rex gloriae, ‘lift up your gates, O princes; be lifted up, eternal gates, and the King of glory shall enter’. The liturgy applied it to the Ascension and to the coming of Christ. The Ecce sacerdos magnus, sung as the bishop crossed the church door, belongs to that same image: the one who enters represents Christ entering his house.

I stand at the door and knock

The Book of Revelation turns the scene around: Ecce sto ad ostium et pulso, ‘behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him’ (Rev 3:20). Here it is Christ who waits outside. The phrase of 1978 is understood from this verse, because it is a matter of opening to the one who knocks. Frisina’s hymn turns that call into song.

I am not worthy that you should enter

The centurion of Capernaum knows that a Jew ought not to enter the house of a pagan and gives up the idea of Jesus crossing his threshold: a word is enough for him (Mt 8:8). The Church placed his phrase at the moment of communion, when the house to be entered is the person himself. The communion hymn, at the centre of the programme, is the moment of the door that hesitates. Bach’s chorale answers with the joy of one who has already let him in and will not let Jesus go ‘from my heart or from my sight’.

I am the door

In John’s Gospel, Christ is the door itself: Ego sum ostium: per me si quis introierit, salvabitur, et ingredietur, et egredietur, et pascua inveniet, ‘I am the door: whoever enters through me shall be saved; he shall go in and go out, and find pasture’ (Jn 10:9). The verse has two verbs, to go in and to go out. Te seguiré is the second: having opened the door, the disciple goes out onto the road. Jesus Christ, you are my life, which takes up the ‘way, truth and life’ of Jn 14:6, belongs to the same movement.

The house of the world

Die Welt, so groß, so wunderbar, ist deiner Hände Werk: the world is the work of God’s hands. In Haydn’s oratorio, Adam and Eve contemplate creation as a newly built house, and their first word is one of gratitude. The theology that van Swieten sings is optimistic and of the Enlightenment, and is set before the Fall, which the oratorio never reaches. In the programme it occupies the place of the open world that the disciple finds on going out.

Ianua caeli

The Litany of Loreto calls Mary ianua caeli, gate of heaven. The Fathers of the Church read in her the closed gate of Ezekiel’s temple, through which only the Lord enters (Ezek 44:2), and St Ambrose put it as a question: quae est haec porta, nisi Maria?, ‘what is this gate, if not Mary?’ The Marian pieces of the programme look at Mary from there. The Ave Maria repeats the greeting of the angel who entered the house at Nazareth; the Regina coeli announces to her that the Son she bore in her womb has risen; Rosés’s hymn acclaims her in her own house.

Ending at home

The concert takes place in the church of the Salesians of Córdoba, the congregation’s house in the city since 1901. Rendidos a tus plantas is sung here as what it is: the hymn of this house.

Beauty as a threshold

In his Letter to Artists of 1999, John Paul II spoke of beauty as a call to the transcendent. Joseph Ratzinger devoted a chapter of The Spirit of the Liturgy to music and placed it at the centre of the Church’s prayer. A concert is not a liturgy, though it shares part of its form: one enters, one listens, and one leaves changed. The whole programme is built on that image of the threshold.

Accessibility

What will happen

The concert lasts about fifty minutes. The lights in the nave stay on at half strength. There are no sound effects or sudden changes of lighting.

A choir and an orchestra perform, with a soprano and a bass as soloists. There are ten pieces in a row, nearly all between three and six minutes long. There is no interval.

There are loud moments, with brass and timpani: the first piece, Bach’s chorale, the Haydn number and the final hymn. The quietest are the communion hymn, the fifth, and Schubert’s Ave Maria, the eighth.

There is a low-stimulation area; the front-of-house staff can take you there. Applause comes at the end, when the conductor turns towards the audience. You may leave at any time.

The concert in easy read

Audio description of the space

Text of the audio track, for those who prefer to read it.

Accessibility statement

This programme has been prepared following the WCAG 2.2 guidelines, level AA, and the standard EN 301 549.

This concert offers: accessible navigation with screen reader and keyboard, audio description of the space, an easy-read version, sung texts with translation in high contrast and enlargeable type, an anticipation guide and a low-stimulation area.

The programme will grow from concert to concert, and each new feature will be announced when it is available and tested.

Sources and bibliography

Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, notes and bibliography system. Only primary sources, critical editions, scholarly reference works, institutional publications and published studies are cited.