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Stephen Watkins presents music and texts that seek to enlighten the path untravelled, the idea unravelled. JS Bach leads. Others (and often the unexpected) follow. The seasons are reflected and the hour is respected with space and contemplation.
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The end of the Christian year announces Last Judgement, thrones, servitude and splendour. Choirs hail a King, a loving Shepherd coming with clouds descending, while all moral flesh in awe keeps silence. The year’s seasons have come and gone, accompanied of course by music, and a first century scribe summarises Jewish lore: When the Son of Man will come in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne and gather his sheep to his right. They will have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, visited the sick, buried the dead and freed the captive. Bach’s imagination, theology and musical craft is inspired. His Cantata BWV70, ‘Watch, pray, pray watch!’ sees pilgrim ‘sheep’ leaving the slavery of Egypt and a Saviour arriving in the clouds of the firmament, the gates of heaven lifted high. Scottish composer James MacMillan paints with a different brush; from his Strathclyde communion motets, ‘Sedibit Dominus Rex’ (The Lord will sit on his throne forever) and ‘Christus Vincit’ (Christ conquers, Christ is King). The year ends with Psalm 100, ‘Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Enter his gates with thanksgiving’. Max Reger invests Psalm 100 with Luther’s chorale ‘Ein feste burg’ and Sir William Walton his with British year-end fireworks, while Pachelbel opens FOR THE GOD WHO SINGS with Psalm 100 as a motet and closes, again with Luther’s chorale, and not a little exhortation, as a cantata.
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Unwittingly the Patron Saint of Music bestows melodious charms. Having sacrificed nuptial bliss for virginal purity, this 3rd century martyr might have been better described as patron for those who can resist musical ecstasy rather than those who fashion it. Posthumously rising through the musical ranks, Cecilia was little more, at first, than a noble Italian girl who retained her vow of chastity, even into marriage. Come the Early Renaissance, heady with the cult of the Virgin Mary and unprecedented status for artists and artisans, the talent scouts were out for Cecilia. Her musical curriculum vita carried one reference to the art, those musicians on her wedding night that nearly drowned her prayers. Nevertheless, she was soon patron to the guild of organ builders and eventually succeeded Gregory, David and Job (with their chants and lyres) as she stepped ever closer to the footlights. Three quarters of tonight’s music is Scarlatti’s Vespers in her honour. He stood head and shoulders over Cecilia in musical talent (for all Purcell’s accolades ‘Here the deities approve’), yet talent of this kind has little to do with a passing parable, the Parable of the Talents. Here, talents are money and wise investment, at least, at first sight (Fauré: ‘Behold the faithful servant’). The program begins with a recent contribution to the Festival of St Cecilia in London, associated to the Musicians Benevolent Fund, Julian Anderson’s ‘O Sing unto the Lord a new song’.
The parable of Wise and Foolish Virgins has Bach gloriously stationed on the battlements with a Patriarch. Joshua, we’re told, took Moses’ mantle, crossed the Jordan and conducted a raucous symphony of brass to rattle the mortar of Jericho’s walls. At life’s end, he gathered the settlers, gave one more oration and received renewed fidelity to the God who had delivered Israel's reward. Franz Waxman’s oratorio ‘Joshua’ has a telling narration by Maximilian Schell. Joshua’s Jordan-crossing has long held eschatological hope, as has a parable about an Eastern wedding. ‘At that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five of them were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps, but no extra oil. The bridegroom was long coming and sleep fell. At midnight, the cry rang out, "Here is the bridegroom". Only those virgins able to re-fill their lamps went with him to the wedding banquet, and the door was shut’ (Matt.25). Bach wrote one of his most loved cantatas on this parable (BWV140 ‘Sleepers Wake’), sensuously rendering the intimacy of the wedding chamber. The ninth fruit of Bach's prolific procreation, Johann Christoph Friedrich later carried his father’s mantle to the text. Sir John Tavener evoked moods and prayerful contemplation in this same parable for Anonymous4 and the Chilingirian Quartet. Then, for Remembrance Day, he reflected, as Mark Blatchly did, on the tragedy of young lives forced to cross the bar too early.
Music played on For The God Who Sings with Stephen Watkins on November 16 | 9 | 2 | October 26 | For earlier dates, start at the index of Archived Music Details.
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