If you are listening to A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, De Virgine Maria is this years special commission for A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at Kings College. Carl Rütti, its composer has a personal page, but we dont see a public page. The text can be found on the colleges website in the program: As lyrics for this miniature work of about three minutes I chose a medieval hymn to the Virgin Mary in Latin. It derives from the 12th century, the period of Minnesang in Germany, of Trouvères in France, of Saint Francis in Italy, who always felt as a troubadour. The hymn praises the Virgin Mary as a noble court lady. I gave the first troubadour part to a boy who will only be accompanied by a tambourine rhythm played by a soft organ stop. The second verse then will be sung by a male solo voice carried by treble voice chords. Stephen Cleobury and I agreed that our carol should have a refrain. The music of this refrain is very short (only eight bars long) and happy, but its words are extremely heavy: ‘Verbum caro factum est’ (‘ the Word was made flesh’) and still remain mysterious even after the fifth return of the refrain. These famous words of the prologue of St. John’s gospel ‘Verbum caro factum est’ are followed in the gospel by the words ‘et habitavit in nobis’ (‘and dwelt among us’); yet in the carol the singers turn again softly to the Virgin Mary, the noble court lady, with the words ‘de Virgine Maria’ (‘through Virgin Mary’), with always the same tune. In order to illustrate this ‘Verbum caro factum est’ we find strong pictures in the hymn as in verse three ‘Stella Solem protulit’ (‘A Star brings forth the Sun’) which gives choir and organ the opportunity for a brilliant sound, and in verse four ‘Fons de suo rivulo’ (‘a Source from its own river’) which lets crispy organ stops and treble voices rejoin into a blending water sound. For the final verse, the doxology to the Holy Trinity, I first felt like writing a splendid loud ending; but then I remembered the beginning of this carol with the boy singing in front of the Virgin Mary. So I decided to write a finale with a soft choir sound. In the very last three bars of the carol you will hear a little bird up in the organ singing - a short tribute to a wonderful soprano of my choir Cambridge Voices who died at the very time when I finished this carol. --- Carl Rutti kings.cam.ac.uk/news/2014/rutti-carol.html
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 16:11:00 +0000
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