Lumen gentium

Programme

Between fifty and fifty-five minutes of music, without an interval. Please do not applaud until the end.

Performers and forces

Cristina Avilés, soprano, sings Gounod’s Ave Maria. In the Pie Jesu, written for soprano and treble, Cristina Avilés and María José Cantos, mezzo-soprano, sing. Mixed choir and string orchestra with organ.

Eleven works; those that are sung are in Greek, Latin and Spanish, with some fifteen centuries between the oldest and the most recent. Eight of them are heard in arrangements by the conductor for choir, strings and organ. Bach’s Air and Mascagni’s Intermezzo are purely instrumental.

Conductor’s note

If you went to Mass last Sunday, you will have seen the Advent wreath with a single candle lit. One candle gives little light, but it announces that more is coming. We are in the first week of Advent, the season in which the Church learns to wait.

The concert is called Lumen gentium, ‘light of the nations’. These are the words of Simeon, the old man who takes the Child in his arms in the Temple and calls him lumen ad revelationem gentium, a light to enlighten the nations. The image comes from Isaiah, and with it the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the Church also begins: Lumen gentium cum sit Christus, ‘Christ is the light of the nations’.

The programme has two halves: first the one who waits, Mary, and then the light that comes, Christ. We begin in the East, with a Byzantine hymn some fifteen centuries old that is sung standing. We pass through two Marian songs that many people know, and the second, Bendita sea tu pureza, you may sing with us if you know it: Tuesday is the Immaculate Conception.

At the centre are two pieces linked by Bach. The Air from the third suite is a long melody floating over a bass that walks unhurriedly. Then Gounod’s Ave Maria: Gounod took a prelude by Bach, left it almost untouched and wrote a new melody above it.

The second half looks to Christ: the one who calls on the shore, the one invoked in the Anima Christi, the one who gives rest in the Pie Jesu. Then comes the Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana, which in the opera takes place on Easter morning, with the square empty while the townsfolk are in church. We end with the Eucharist and with the hymn Manuel Castillo wrote for the International Eucharistic Congress in Seville in 1993. Its title, Cristo, luz de los pueblos, was the motto of that congress, and it is also the one that gives this evening its name.

A word about how all this will sound. Apart from Bach’s Air and the Intermezzo, the works in this programme were not written for choir and orchestra, and eight of them are heard in my arrangements. I have written them all for the same forces, a string orchestra with organ, so that eleven pieces from very different places, from Constantinople to Seville, sound like a single concert and not like a collection.

There are three weeks to go until Christmas and the wreath still has only one candle. May this concert keep you company until the second.

The works

Sung texts

English translations made for this version from the original texts, following the Spanish translations by Clemente Mata Ruiz. Lyrics in copyright are not reproduced: their content is summarised.

Layer 3 · Critical study

Academic layer. The statements rest on primary sources, critical editions, institutional catalogues and published studies, cited in notes (print version) and in the final bibliography. Several works in this programme are recent liturgical music on which there is hardly any scholarly literature; where this is so, the text says so.

I. Sources, authorship and versions

This programme brings together works of very different kinds: a Byzantine hymn transmitted in manuscript, two canonical works of the concert repertoire, a nineteenth-century melody built on an eighteenth-century work, an operatic excerpt, a number from a requiem of 1985 and several liturgical songs in Spanish written after the Second Vatican Council. Each group raises different source problems, and they should be set out before any analysis.

The Akathistos: a hymn without an author

The Akathistos survives in the manuscript tradition of the Byzantine liturgy. The New Catholic Encyclopedia summarises the attributions proposed, which range from Romanos the Melodist (sixth century) to Patriarch Sergius and George of Pisidia (seventh century), and even to Germanus and Photius (eighth and ninth centuries); the majority view places it in the sixth century or earlier. Leena Mari Peltomaa, in the most extensive study devoted to the hymn, proposes the context of the Council of Ephesus (431) and dates it between that council and Chalcedon (451). Mary Cunningham inclines towards the early sixth century because of the maturity of its poetic form. It is debated whether the prooemium Tē hypermachō stratēgō is original or was added later; tradition links it to the lifting of one of the sieges of Constantinople, though the chronicles do not allow us to determine which. The standard musical edition is still that of Egon Wellesz in the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae.

Tonight’s arrangement starts from the Byzantine melody and takes it to Western forces of choir, strings and organ. It is a conscious decision: Byzantine chant is monophonic, with a vocal drone (ison), and transferring it to Western harmony changes its nature.

Bach and Gounod: one work upon another

Suite no. 3 in D major, BWV 1068, survives in Leipzig performing parts and is edited in volume VII/1 of the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, by Heinrich Besseler and Hans Grüß. The Air is the only movement in which the trumpets, oboes and timpani are silent.

Gounod’s case is an example of reworking at a time when the Bach revival was already well established. According to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Méditation sur le 1er prélude de piano de S. Bach (CG 89a) dates from 1852, and the version with the Latin text of the Ave Maria (CG 89e) from 1859. The imprint of the first edition could not be established with certainty, and the name of its first performer, which often circulates, does not appear in any reliable source. Gounod kept Bach’s prelude, in the version current in his day, and superimposed a melody on it, first instrumental and later sung.

The liturgical songs in Spanish

Four works in the programme belong to the repertoire of liturgical song in Spanish that arose after the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963): those by Carmelo Erdozáin, Cesáreo Gabaráin, Antonio Alcalde and Manuel Castillo. Marco Frisina’s Anima Christi belongs to the Italian liturgical repertoire of recent decades. Apart from Castillo’s, there are hardly any scholarly studies of these works. Their details come from their publishers’ catalogues and the songbooks in which they were published, and the dates, where given, are those of publication or copyright registration. In the case of Pescador de hombres, the publisher’s record gives 1979. It is a field that would merit research: the history of liturgical song in Spanish after the Council is largely still to be written.

Cristo, luz de los pueblos is the exception. It was published in 1993 in Madrid by Ediciones Paulinas, as the hymn of the 45th International Eucharistic Congress in Seville, for congregation, mixed choir and organ, with words by José María Estudillo. Manuel Castillo’s legacy is preserved at the Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía.

Bendita sea tu pureza: what is not known

The text of Bendita sea tu pureza is a décima of popular transmission. We have found no reliable source documenting its author, its date or the indulgences frequently attributed to it, nor the origin of the melody to which it is sung in Andalusia.

II. Context: the East, Leipzig, Paris, Sicily and the renewed liturgy

Constantinople and the theology of the Theotokos

If the Akathistos was born, as Peltomaa proposes, in the years following the Council of Ephesus (431), which defined Mary as Theotokos, Mother of God, the hymn develops that definition in images: every greeting to Mary is also a statement about who her Son is. Its liturgical use is linked to the Annunciation, and today it is sung at Orthros on the Saturday of the fifth week of Great Lent, anticipated on the Friday evening.

Bach in Leipzig

The orchestral suites belong to the music Bach directed outside the church, probably in the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, the society of musicians that played at Zimmermann’s coffee house. The Air is instrumental music with no liturgical function. Its presence in this programme reflects its role in the history of reception: the nineteenth century made it an emblem of serenity and contemplation.

Paris, 1852–1859

The Méditation shows an attitude very typical of the nineteenth century towards early music: treating Bach as a foundation on which one may build. The version with the text of the Ave Maria carried it into the salon and church repertoires of all Europe.

Italy, 1890: verismo

Cavalleria rusticana won the one-act opera competition announced by the publisher Edoardo Sonzogno in 1890 and was first performed at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 17 May that year. Its libretto adapts the play Giovanni Verga drew in 1884 from his own short story of 1880; Verga was one of the writers of verismo, the movement that brought the lives of poor people to the stage. The Intermezzo is music without words within a drama of jealousy, and its place in the action, during the Easter Mass, explains its religious tone.

After the Council

The constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium opened the liturgy to living languages and asked that the singing of the faithful be fostered. In Spain and the Americas a new repertoire in Spanish emerged within a few years, written mostly by priest-composers for parishes. Gabaráin, Erdozáin and Alcalde belong to that generation. Manuel Castillo, on the other hand, was a concert composer who wrote for the liturgy on special occasions, such as the Eucharistic Congress of 1993.

III. Formal analysis and questions of performance

Eight of the eleven works are heard in arrangements by the conductor. The analysis that follows describes the form of the original works on the basis of their editions and the bibliography cited. The criteria for the arrangements are set out at the end.

Akathistos

The hymn belongs to the genre of the kontakion: a prooemium followed by stanzas (oikoi) of identical structure, linked by an alphabetical acrostic. The odd-numbered stanzas end in series of salutations (chairetismoi) built in parallel, all culminating in the refrain Χαῖρε, Νύμφη ἀνύμφευτε, ‘rejoice, unwedded Bride’. That repetition is the key to the form: the variation lies in the images and the stability in the refrain.

Bach, Air

D major, common time, binary form with both sections repeated. The texture has three planes. Above, the first violin sings a melody of long notes, with suspensions and ties that make it float. In the middle, the second violin and viola fill in the harmony with lines of their own. Below, the basso continuo walks in regular quavers, by step and by octave leaps. The expressive tension arises from the contrast between the rhythmic freedom of the melody and the regularity of the bass.

Gounod, Ave Maria

Bach’s prelude is a succession of arpeggiated chords with the same pattern in every bar, moving through a harmonic progression that leads away from C major and returns to it over a long dominant pedal. Gounod does not alter that plan. His melody follows Bach’s harmonic rhythm, one chord per bar, and reaches its highest point in the area of greatest tension in the prelude, before the final pedal.

Mascagni, Intermezzo

A short piece for orchestra, with a broad melody in the strings over a sustained accompaniment. In the opera it separates the two parts of the action and lasts about three minutes. Its effectiveness depends on the dramatic context: it comes at the point in the action when the stage is left empty, before the dénouement.

Lloyd Webber, Pie Jesu

The text interweaves the couplet that closes the sequence Dies irae, Pie Iesu Domine, dona eis requiem, with the Agnus Dei of the Mass for the Dead; that interlacing is the hallmark of the piece. The melody is simple and of narrow range. In the original it is sung by a soprano and a treble.

Castillo, Cristo, luz de los pueblos

The hymn is designed to be sung by a very large congregation, with a choir to support it and an organ to accompany it. That function determines its form: verses and refrain, a melody of comfortable range and a rhythm learnt on a single hearing.

Criteria for the arrangements

San Miguel is a church with three naves and a timber roof over the central one, covered in the seventeenth century with plaster vaults that were removed from the central nave at the beginning of the twentieth century. The walls and the apse belong to the first Gothic building campaign in Córdoba, in the last third of the thirteenth century. The church has been protected as a monument since 1931. There are no published acoustic measurements of the church. The placing of the orchestra and choir and the balance between them are decided at the dress rehearsal.

IV. Theological reading

The title of the concert comes from the Canticle of Simeon: lumen ad revelationem gentium, ‘a light to enlighten the nations’ (Lk 2:32). Simeon takes in his arms the Child presented in the Temple and recognises him as the light Isaiah had announced for the nations (Is 42:6; 49:6). The Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church takes up that image in its first sentence: Lumen gentium cum sit Christus, ‘Christ is the light of the nations’. The programme is built in two movements: the waiting, represented by Mary, and the light that comes, which is Christ.

Advent: the season of waiting

The concert takes place in the first week of Advent. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that in celebrating the Advent liturgy each year, the Church makes present the waiting for the Messiah: she shares in the long preparation for the first coming and renews her desire for the second. The figure who best embodies that waiting is Mary, and that is why the first half of the programme is dedicated to her.

Mary in East and West

The Akathistos and Bendita sea tu pureza are separated by many centuries and by the distance between two traditions. The first, Byzantine, contemplates Mary as Mother of God and protector of a city; the second, popular and Andalusian, praises her purity four days before the Immaculate Conception. Between the two, La Virgen sueña caminos presents her in her simplest human condition: a woman expecting a child. On 4 December the Latin Church also remembers St John Damascene, the great theologian and hymnographer of the Christian East, which makes it fitting to begin the programme with a Byzantine hymn.

The call and the plea

The second half moves from Mary to Christ. Pescador de hombres takes up the account of the calling of the first disciples (Mk 1:16–20; Lk 5:1–11): Christ goes out to meet people in their workplace. The Anima Christi is a prayer of union with Christ that ends by praying for the hour of death: in hora mortis meae voca me. The Pie Jesu takes up that same plea in the liturgy for the dead. The sequence moves from the call in life to the call in death.

The Eucharist and the light

The programme ends with two Eucharistic songs. Salve, cuerpo verdadero is the Spanish version of the Ave verum corpus, which greets the body of Christ born of Mary: once again, the Mother and the Son. Cristo, luz de los pueblos was born for a Eucharistic Congress and joins the two ideas of the programme: Christ as the light of all nations and as presence in the bread of the Eucharist.

Instrumental music in a sacred concert

Bach’s Air and Mascagni’s Intermezzo have no text and no liturgical function. Their place in the programme is of another order: Bach’s prepares Gounod’s Ave Maria, built on another of his works, and the Intermezzo evokes Easter morning, when a whole village is in church.

Accessibility

What will happen

The concert lasts between fifty and fifty-five minutes, without an interval. The lights stay dim and steady. There are no sound effects or sudden changes of lighting.

A choir, a string orchestra with organ and a solo soprano perform. There are eleven pieces, nearly all between two and five minutes long, one after another. Two of them, the fourth (Bach) and the ninth (Mascagni), are instrumental only, without voices.

The music is calm almost all the time. There are no very loud moments. The ending, Cristo, luz de los pueblos, is the most solemn moment.

In the third piece, Bendita sea tu pureza, the audience may sing with the choir if they know it. It is not compulsory. The words are in this programme.

There is a low-stimulation area; the front-of-house staff can take you there. Applause comes at the end. 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. Primary sources, critical editions, scholarly reference works, official publications, catalogues of institutions and publishers, and published studies are cited.