“On the first day of Christmas………” Yes - I know the words of the song (and so do you, having heard it every year since 1781). But it seems to me that most of us in these United States really don’t know what the twelve days of Christmas are, or indeed when they’re celebrated. I know that I and many of my friends assumed that they were the twelve days leading up to the 25th of December instead of Christmas Day being the first day of the twelve. Since many of the best of the carols (in many languages) focus on Advent, I decided to investigate the music that might tie in to the various ‘labeled’ days of the twelve days of Christmas, especially pieces written by art music composers. What is the music from the time between Christmas day and Epiphany? Most often these are associated with various feasts, most often celebrated in churches with established calendars and saints. Here is a very unofficial sampling with some history and some commentary.
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As musician and composer, playing Messiah is always one of the highlights of the Christmas season; I look forward to it every year. It is was in the middle of performing a 2018 production of Messiah that it occurred to me that for a work with such depth and popularity, there had never been a sequel, modern, or complementary work written to Messiah.
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On November 13, a new album of my music entitled Mysteria Fidei was released worldwide (though physical copies are already available on Innova Recordings’ website). The project is the fruit of a six-year collaboration between me and Far Song, a husband-and-wife art song duo from South Carolina. Featuring three sacred chamber works, Mysteria Fidei explores the notion of “searching amidst life’s many difficulties—searching for understanding, searching for rescue, searching for hope, searching for fulfillment, searching for joy, searching for God.” Along the way, it deconstructs hymns spanning nearly two millennia and recontextualizes them within our polarized, fear-stricken, and increasingly isolated 21st-century milieu.
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The first musician we would like to introduce in this month’s Composer Spotlight series is Dr. Tatev Amiryan. She is an award-winning Armenian composer and pianist now living in San Francisco. Tatev’s music reflects a love of folk music and has been performed in the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East by such renowned ensembles and performers as, German Chamber Philharmonic of Bremen (Germany), CMEA Central Coast Honors Orchestra (USA), Carpe Diem String Quartet (USA), Ensemble Oktoplus (Germany), Metropolitan Choral of Kansas City (USA), pianists Jeffrey Jacob (USA), Hayk Melikyan (Armenia), and thereminist Thorwald Jørgensen (Netherlands).
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It’s a question that is so familiar to those of us involved in and passionate about new music. By “new music” I mean that genre of newly composed contemporary classical music made by living composers that seems to uproot and defy so many labels, so for now please accept this term as an oversimplified but necessary tool for discussion. And to be honest, we know: It is a fair question! New music is not always as “easy on the ears” as other genres. For Christians, the question compounds itself with moral concern. Should we be drawn to this type of music that can be strange, erratic, and harsh? Why would we stray from attractive sounds or traditionally ordered melodies and rhythms? ...Is it even right to do so?
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