Cantate Domino

It’s a Christmas anthem about singing!

This is the first of the “Five Christmas Fanfares” for 8-part choir, all of which use antiphonal textures where the men and women of the choir sing in response to each other in alternating blocks of contrasting music. All five fanfares also have distinctive rhythmic characteristics and are short and dramatic in style. The texts are all in Latin and were found in a Roman Missal given to me on the occasion of my babyhood baptism by my paternal grandparents, Samuel and Florence Camm.

Cantate Domino was composed around the same time as yesterday’s Sheep-accompanying music, Hilda’s Whimsy, and is also influenced by Indonesian musical characteristics – this time in the interlocking rhythmic patterns of the sopranos’ and altos’ melodic lines, which are lifted from a piece of Balinese Gamelan music! The tenors and basses have a section (quia mirabila fecit) of heterophonic mellifluousness, where the four parts essentially sing the same music, but at different speeds, creating a kind of out-of-synch-ness.

The piece was composed for and first performed by Concentus, the chamber choir based at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. This is their world premiere performance at St. John’s Cathedral in the city under the vibrant conductorship of Ed Bolkovac. The piece has been performed several more times both on its own and also as part of a performance of the full set of five.

Cantate Domino canticum novum:
quia mirabila fecit.
Gloria Patri.
Puer.

Sing a new song to the Lord,
for he hath worked wonders.
Glory be to the Father.
A child.  (Ps.97,1)