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Track(s) taken from CDA67679

Mass of the Holy Spirit

composer
24 June to 26 July 1955, except Agnus April 1956, Benedictus June/July 1956; Communion Service for unaccompanied mixed voices; first complete performed given by the Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society under G Wallace Woodworth on 22 March 1957
author of text

Schola Cantorum of Oxford, James Burton (conductor)
Recording details: March 2008
Exeter College Chapel, Oxford, United Kingdom
Produced by Adrian Peacock
Engineered by Andrew Mellor
Release date: October 2008
Total duration: 32 minutes 56 seconds

Cover artwork: The Peaceable Kingdom (c1833) by Edward Hicks (1780-1849)
Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts / Bridgeman Images
 

Reviews

‘A vivid response to words is paramount in the 1936 sacred motet sequence The Peacable Kingdom … the performances do full justice to this little-known repertoire’ (Choir & Organ)
Some twenty years after The Peaceable Kingdom, Thompson’s Mass of the Holy Spirit was given its first complete performance by the Harvard Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral Society under the direction of G Wallace Woodworth on 22 March 1957. The ‘Kyrie’, ‘Gloria’, ‘Credo’ and ‘Sanctus’ were composed from 24 June to 26 July 1955, the remaining ‘Agnus Dei’ and ‘Benedictus’ over a period of a few days the following year. Compositionally, the Mass is a far more mature and sophisticated work than The Peaceable Kingdom. While its harmonies are, for the most part, still based on triads, there is a somewhat expanded use of added-note chords and dissonances, enriching the harmonic palette. And the melodic ideas, formal structures, text treatment and contrapuntal devices in the Mass display the work of a composer grown even more secure in his craft.

Whereas Thompson looked to the Baroque as a compositional springboard for The Peaceable Kingdom, the musical materials of the a cappella Mass owe more not only to the eighteenth-century but also to the style and characteristics of Renaissance counterpoint, especially as seen in the music of Orlandus Lassus. Thompson taught modal counterpoint for years at Harvard University and his essay ‘On Contrapuntal Technique’, delivered at a meeting of the College Music Association in 1950, extols the importance of that subject in the Liberal Arts Curriculum. He felt that the underlying practical and aesthetic techniques in composing modal counterpoint were especially applicable in composing choral music.

The bold chordal opening of the ‘Kyrie’ soon evolves to a lyrical and sequential melody based on a falling sixth motif, at first presented by the sopranos and then by the basses. The canonic ‘Christe eleison’ is influenced greatly by Renaissance motet models, and the quiet return of the initial ‘Kyrie’ material and its subsequent motif of the descending sixth (this time presented by the altos and tenors) shows a reconfiguration, rather than exact restatement, of the opening materials.

A more Baroque-influenced melody, accompanied by a rapid scale figure harmonized by parallel triads, opens and closes the exuberant ‘Gloria’, offset by a central double-choir setting of ‘Thou that takest away the sins of the world’. The text of the multi-sectional ‘Credo’ is set in a straightforward, traditional triadic manner and displays Thompson’s fondness for the suspension figure as a dissonance, especially in setting ‘And was crucified’. Like his Renaissance counterparts, Thompson paints musically the words ‘rose’ and ‘ascended’ with the expected rising lines.

The angelic opening of the ‘Sanctus’ recalls the Renaissance practice of fauxbourdon—parallel first-inversion chords. The seven-part continuation displays a full and rich choral sound with widely spaced triads accompanying lines punctuated by suspensions and retardations. The rollicking ‘Glory be to Thee’ trades off the theme among the various voices in close imitation with an effective use of hemiolas. The tranquil, canonic ‘Benedictus’ setting ‘Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord’, affecting in its simplicity, closes over a prolonged and sustained pedal point in the basses. The brief, jubilant ‘Hosanna’, recalling the spirited middle section of the ‘Sanctus’, leads to the concluding, serene ‘Agnus Dei’, once again set in neo-Renaissance imitation, featuring head motifs based on an ascending perfect fifth and later a minor third. The Mass for the Holy Spirit ends with an aura of quiet devotion.

from notes by Morten Lauridsen © 2008

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