Sanctus
Sanctus comes from a somewhat earlier time in my career, though is still an accurate reflection of my choral roots. Even at this time I was particularly interested in ensemble texture as the foregrounded musical feature.
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The sanctus text breaks down into two parts, and each is taken from a different biblical passage. The first is the book of Revelation. In a vision the author is brought into God's throne room, where four angelic beings hover at the edge of the dais. They raise their voices in perpetual song, singing of God's holiness. The second piece of the text is taken from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and details Jesus' fateful procession into Jerusalem. In this scene, Jesus rides a donkey into the city of David while his disciples and followers hail his arrival with palm branches and raised voices, shouting "hosanna!" (which means, "the Lord saves").
Sanctus' opening materials are based on these open octaves, and the movement of the individual voices up through them into fuller harmony. These opening phrases reach a point of climax before descending once more, and this kind of motion is found throughout the piece. It should be noted that the opening sanctus' number only 2. Typically, a setting of the sanctus will have three utterances, in keeping with the three-fold holy of Revelation. More on that momentarily.
This precise figure returns following the manifold hosanna. As the the choir pronounces the blessedness of the name of God, they rise up through those open octaves into exuberant adulations: Domini and hosanna.
There is one more appearance of this figure, at the very end. Here it bears a resemblance to the sevenfold amen from Biebel's Ave Maria– particularly with the arrangement of the ascending figures in the tenors, altos, and sopranos against the basses' slow step-wise descent.
This figure occurs a total of three times in the piece, somewhat satisfying the threefold convention of most sanctus settings. And while the word sanctus does not recur a third time, there is a reason for this: my Sanctus is meant to illustrate the yet-to-be fulfilled longing for the new age mentioned above. The piece sets out that there is, in other words, an aspect of God's holiness which is yet to be fully experienced.