John
Fitz Rogers
Magna
Mysteria (2010)
Innova 924
1. Invocation 7:05
2. Quam dilecta 3:41
3. Reins of Nature 6:29
4. Exaudi orationem meam 6:25
5. Truth’s Paradox 6:37
6. Unam petii 3:33
7. Revelation 11:07
Total
duration: 44:57
Magna Mysteria (2010)
for
soprano, chorus and (optional) children’s chorus, and chamber orchestra
Trinity Cathedral Choir
Cathedral Choir of Boys & Girls
Trinity Chamber Orchestra
Martha Guth, soprano
Jared Johnson,
conductor
John Fitz Rogers’s Magna Mysteria was commissioned by Trinity Cathedral in Columbia, South Carolina to celebrate the restoration of the nineteenth-century Cathedral building. The Cathedral restoration required the landmark building to close for nearly two years, dislocating the congregation from its normal life. The nature of this event led Rogers to examine ideas of home, leaving home, and returning to home; these ideas are something of a recurring theme in Rogers’s earlier works, including his chamber piece Memoria Domi (2004). The context also established that the orchestra be limited to the number of instruments that could fit within the confines of the Cathedral nave, and that the choral writing include parts for adult singers as well as the boy and girl choristers of the Cathedral.
The resulting seven-movement composition deals with big ideas from its very title: “Great Mysteries.” Notice the plural form, “mysteries,” enlarging the scope of the thinking and pointing towards the work’s broad philosophical sweep. Rogers’s text is in itself a great literary accomplishment, weaving together the Neo-Platonic poetry of Boethius with the Vulgate translation of the books of Psalms and Revelation. The text brings to the fore several recurring themes: the idea of home and the seeking of home; the elevation of the idea of home to a metaphorical or spiritual realm; the natures of time and eternity; the image of cycles or circles (“orbem” in Boethius); and the recurring figure of the bird, appearing throughout the text and representing the song of the individual. The Latin text provides a poetic distance for the composer, a certain separation from linguistic home.
From the first sounds of Magna Mysteria, we enter another world. The “Invocation” opens with a chorus for children’s voices. The opening theme is like a memory of Gregorian chant, a primordial starting place for the journey ahead. Rogers’s vocal writing for the trebles is intentionally startling, set extremely low in their vocal register. The timbre embodies a reflection of innocence, and hints at something lost. As the full choir enters, the piece builds to a climax at the words “tu namque serenum (you alone are the bright sky),” but the music seems to contradict the words, with a stormy piling-up of tones at the high point. The peacefulness of the text is revealed by its opposite in the music, and a sense of tranquil rest settles upon the music in the lush E-major sonority that follows.
The second movement, “Quam dilecta,” is an outburst of joy, the jubilant dance of being fully at home. The writing for organ amplifies the sound of the orchestra and creates the illusion of much larger forces. Rogers’s skillful orchestration also provides support for the singers, doubling the choir in the manner of Messiah and the Lord Nelson Mass. The imitative writing in the choral parts hints at the fragmentation of the musical material that will take place in subsequent movements, a pre-echo of the fifth movement. Note the first reference to the bird, happily at home in her nest.
In “Reins of Nature,” Magna Mysteria develops its core ideas, dealing with cycles of time and the nature of eternity. The nature of time is one of the work’s “great mysteries.” Rogers composed this music first of the seven movements, and the organ part was written first of all. We hear rolling, perpetual-motion rhythms, the pitches circling and falling back on themselves. It’s a quasi-minimalist, almost computer-generated sound world. The harmonies move in broad tectonic shifts and support the patient unfolding of the choral melody, again set low in the vocal register. The soaring oboe lines represent the bird. In the middle of the movement the winds take over the organ’s theme, shifting to a dark A-minor: the bird is now caged. As the music returns to the tonic F-minor, the re-entry of the organ and the recapitulation of the opening choral theme (marked “Soaring”) brilliantly coincide to illuminate a key phrase in Boethius’s text: “Repetunt proprios…(All seek out their own path of returning).” The climactic choral phrase set low in the range against the soaring orchestra is another hallmark of this movement.
The fourth movement is the centerpiece of Magna Mysteria. An intensely personal and intimate piece of music, Rogers creates an extraordinary duet for treble choir and solo soprano. The boy and girl choristers open the movement chanting a mournful prayer, “Hear me, Lord.” Rogers beautifully dovetails the entrance of the adult soprano with the last note of the treble choir. The juxtaposition of these two vocal timbres is in itself an essay in the nature of time, as we hear the innocence of the unchanged voice next to the yearning cries of the mature voice. The strings enter “pizzicato” and evoke the ticking of a clock, and a haunting passacaglia unfolds. The idea of home has been entirely lost. There is a sense of lying awake at night, alone, tormented by the clock. The soprano pierces the texture with screams of loneliness on high C’s. The bird is alone on the housetop. There is a passionate sense of longing in this music. We can hear the universal searching of the lost soul, or the seeking of the agnostic who wants desperately to believe.
In “Truth’s Paradox” the world has splintered, its form reduced to fragments that don’t fit together. “What discordant cause tore into pieces all the world’s concord?” The melodic fragments that were hinted at in “Quam dilecta” are here blown fully apart, leading to an explosion of anxiety and frustration. The music of the central section captures the bitter warfare of the text in its combination insistent, unfeeling repeated notes and the torturously chromatic vocal lines. This cold-sweat inducing music begins to dissolve into a memory of its opening (“sed quam retinens meminit summam”) before erupting into one final, raw, cathartic rage.
In the sixth movement, “Unam petii,” the choir transforms the mood of the work as the music begins to point towards home. As the brutal conclusion of “Truth’s Paradox” hangs in the air, the altos take over the pitch that the violins had just hammered home, but two octaves lower, again at the bottom of the vocal register. As they sing in simple unison the word “unam,” we can begin to see around to the other side of the circle, where the end touches the beginning. This movement of Magna Mysteria stands alone as an a cappella choral work (its world premiere was in Canterbury Cathedral in 2009). The expert vocal writing reveals the hand of a composer with a love for the voice and a background in choral singing. The close harmonies of the opening expand and build to a glorious climax at the text, “the fair beauty of the Lord.” Though this high point momentarily feels like home, Rogers seems to emphasize the importance of seeking above all: note the repetition of the text “hanc requiram” at the conclusion, with an extraordinary, shimmering unresolved chord at the last.
The final movement of Magna Mysteria is a tour de force unto itself. The music takes the broken fragments of the earlier movements of the work and reassembles them into a glorious whole. The movement opens with a joyful dance in the orchestra. The flowing sixteenth notes move in small circular motion, the idea of cycles and circles being ever-present in Magna. The counterpoint cascades to a low C, revealing a pure C major triad. The soprano soloist emerges, extremely quietly and slowly, “with wonder and rapture.” The clock is no longer ticking. Her melody remembers the themes from earlier movements and begins to knit them back together. As the French horn enters with the melody that the children sang in the first movement, the soprano continues singing the text from Revelation: “And I saw a new heaven…and I heard a great voice out of heaven saying…”
The soprano repeats three times the word “dicentem (saying),” building suspense and drawing attention to the phrase to come next, wherein the great voice will speak. In the next moment Rogers achieves a profound interlocking of musical and philosophical thought. He brings back the music from “Reins of Nature,” but with the choir singing new text. The music implies the Boethius text, “All seek out their own paths of re-entry,” but the choir now sings, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with people.” These two ideas pile on top of each other, one suggested by the tones, the other by the text, as if to show that the tabernacle of God is our individual seeking. As the soprano soars above this already passionate music, singing “Factum est (“it is finished,” or “it is made”), the choir shifts to the text that the music has been suggesting from “Reins of Nature.” The soprano sings “I am Alpha and Omega” and the end fully touches the beginning. It is no accident that the last word the choir sings here is “orbem.”
The music finishes with a rollicking “Amen.” The trebles finally sing at the height of their range, and the orchestra joyously plays a variation on the theme that opened this final movement. The vocal counterpoint develops the opening theme from the “Invocation,” yet another way Magna Mysteria comes full circle.
At its premiere in 2010, and at the encore performance recorded here in 2014, Magna Mysteria was received with rapturous praise by audience, critics, and musicians alike. It is a major accomplishment deserving of a lasting place in the canon of choral and orchestral works. And true to its commission, the music resonates with the high ideals that a great Cathedral strives to embrace: that all people are welcome through their own paths of entry; that mysteries are holy, and that holiness is a mystery; that big questions are worthy of contemplation; and that our souls, at their deepest and most true, deserve great works of art to help them soar.
—Jared Johnson
Magna Mysteria
Texts: Latin Vulgate: Psalms 84, 102, and 27 (translation: Episcopal Book of Common Prayer); Book of Revelation: Chapter 21 (translation: Revised Standard Version); and Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae (“Consolation of Philosophy”). Excerpts from Boethius's “Consolation of Philosophy” translated by Joel C. Relihan are reprinted with permission of Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright © 2001 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
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I. Invocation
(Chorus) Grant to the mind, Father,
that it may rise to your holy
foundations; Grant it may ring round the source
of the Good, may discover the
true light, And
fix the soul's vision firmly on you, vision keen and
clear-sighted. Scatter
these shadows, dissolve the dead weight of this earthly
concretion, Shine
in the splendor that is yours alone: only you are the
bright sky, You
are serenity, peace for the holy; their goal is to see you; You
are their source, their conveyance, their leader, their path, and their haven. II. Quam dilecta (Chorus) How
dear to me is your dwelling, O LORD of hosts! The sparrow has found her a
house and the swallow a nest where she
may lay her young; by the side of your altars,
O LORD of hosts, my King and my God. Happy are they who dwell in
your house! they will always
be praising you. III. Reins of Nature (Chorus) What
are the reins of powerful Nature, Guiding
the universe? By what statutes Does
her Providence hold the infinite sphere, Binding
and keeping this world of things In
unbreakable bonds? It is my pleasure That
my song sing out to the soft lyre… The
chattering bird in the high branches Now
is imprisoned in the vault of a cage; … And
mourning her loss seeks the woods only, Only
coos “The woods!” in her soft singing… All
seek out their own paths of reentry, Rejoice
in their own private returnings. There
is handed down no lasting order, Except
that each join end and beginning And make for itself one stable circle. |
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Da, pater, augustam
menti conscendere sedem, da fontem lustrare boni, da luce reperta
atque tuo splendore mica; tu namque serenum, tu requies tranquilla piis, te cernere finis, principium, vector, dux, semita, terminus idem. Quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine virtutum! Etenim passer invenit
sibi domum, et turtur nidum sibi, ubi
ponat pullos suos: altaria tua,
Domine virtutum, rex meus, et Deus meus. Beati qui habitant in
domo tua, Domine; in saecula
saeculorum laudabunt te. Quantas rerum flectat
habenas Quae canit altis garrula
ramis Repetunt proprios
quaeque recursus |
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IV. Exaudi orationem meam (Solo Soprano and Chorus) LORD,
hear my prayer, and let my cry come before you; I am but skin and bones. I lie awake and groan; I am
like a sparrow, lonely on a
house-top. My days pass away like a
shadow, and I wither
like the grass. But you, O LORD, endure for
ever, and your Name
from age to age. V. Truth's Paradox (Chorus) What
discordant cause tore into pieces All
the world's concord? What god has decreed For
these two truths such bitter warfare? Each
standing its ground separate and equal, But
drawing the line at joining together. Or
could it be there is no discord— That
definite truths ever cling each to each— Without
the fire of light deep-concealed, Cannot
see the world's bonds, microscopic?… Thus,
whoever searches for true things Has
neither condition: for he does not know, Nor
does he not know, all things completely. With
an eye on the whole, kept and remembered, He
ponders anew the depths he once gazed on, That
he may add to parts that were kept safe Parts once forgotten. VI. Unam petii (Chorus – a cappella) One
thing have I asked of the LORD; one thing I seek; that I
may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of
my life; To behold the fair beauty of
the LORD, and to seek him
in his temple. VII. Revelation (Solo Soprano and
Chorus) Then
I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first
heaven and the first earth had passed away,
and the sea was no more. And I heard a loud voice from
the throne saying, “Behold,
the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with
them, and they shall be his people, and God himself
will be with them.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will
give from the fountain of the water of life,
[freely].”
Amen. |
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Domine exaudi orationem meam: et clamor meus ad te
veniat. A
voce gemitus mei adhesit os meum carni meae. Vigilavi,
et factus sum sicut passer solitarius in
tecto. Dies
mei sicut umbra declinaverunt: et ego sicut
faenum arui. Tu autem Domine in aeternum
permanes: et memoriale tuum in generationem et generationem. Quaenam
discors foedera rerum Igitur quisquis vera requirit Unam petii a Domino, hanc
requiram, ut inhabitem in
domo Domini omnes dies vitae
meae: Ut videam voluntatem Domini, et visitem
templum eius. Et vidi caelum novum, et
terram novam. Primum enim caelum, et prima terra
abiit, et mare jam non
est. Et audivi vocem magnam
de throno dicentem: Ecce tabernaculum Dei cum hominibus, et habitabit cum
eis. Et ipsi populus ejus erunt, et ipse
Deus cum eis erit eorum Deus. Omega: initium et finis. Ego sitienti
dabo de fonte aquae
vivae, gratis. Amen. |
Composer John Fitz Rogers's music has
been performed by ensembles, festivals, and venues such as Carnegie Hall, Bang
on a Can Marathon, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Los Angeles County Museum
of Art, the Albany, Louisville, Charleston, and Tulsa Symphony Orchestras, New
York Youth Symphony, Eastman Wind Ensemble, the MATA, Rockport, Bumbershoot,
Bowling Green, and Keys To The Future festivals, the College Band Directors
National Association national conference, the World Saxophone Congress, and by
individuals and chamber ensembles such as the New Century Saxophone Quartet,
Capitol Quartet, Lionheart, Composers, Inc., and the Meehan/Perkins Duo. Recent premieres included Double Concerto
for two pianos and orchestra, commissioned by the South Carolina Philharmonic,
and Book of Concord, a string quartet commissioned by and premiered at
the Bennington Chamber Music Conference.
Rogers has received
commissions, fellowships, and awards from ASCAP, the American Composers Forum,
American Music Center, MATA and the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, National Flute
Association, MacDowell Colony, South Carolina Arts Commission, and the
Massachusetts Cultural Council, as well as the Heckscher Foundation Composition
Prize.
A dedicated advocate for contemporary music, Rogers founded and directed the Southern Exposure New Music Series, which received the 2005-06 Chamber Music America / ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. He holds degrees in music from Cornell University, the Yale School of Music, and Oberlin College, and is Professor of Composition at the University of South Carolina School of Music and visiting faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Soprano Martha Guth brings consummate musicianship, interpretive intelligence, and a distinctive tonal palette to a wide range of musical styles and periods. In recital, she has performed at the Wigmore Hall and the Leeds Lieder Festival with Graham Johnson at the piano, the Vancouver International Song Institute and the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival with Erika Switzer, world premieres at Lincoln Center, the Liederkranz with pianist Dalton Baldwin, and an all Britten recital with pianist Malcolm Martineau in New York City for the Five Boroughs Music Festival. She has performed extensively throughout the United States and Canada in concerts, recitals, and opera, and her performances have been broadcast live on the BBC Radio 2 in England, the CBC and Radio Canada throughout Canada, and the WDR in Germany. She is proud to have worked under the batons of maestros Seiji Ozawa, Robert Spano, Helmut Rilling, John Nelson, Scott Speck, and Richard Bradshaw, among many others.
Her discography includes the Brahms Liebeslieder waltzes through Sparks and Wiry Cries, Roberto Sierra’s Beyond the Silence of Slumber with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Puerto Rico for Naxos, a first solo disc of all Schubert songs with fortepianist Penelope Crawford for Musica Omnia, and The Five Boroughs Songbook recorded for GVR records and distributed through Naxos.
Martha
curates the Casement Fund Song Series based in
New York City, is a founding faculty member and co-director of the Contemporary
Performance Studies program at the Vancouver International Song institute
(VISI), and is the co-creator and co-editor of “Sparks and Wiry Cries,” a website dedicated to
scholarship, exploration, and performance in art song
(www.sparksandwirycries.com).
Jared Johnson is Canon Organist and Choirmaster of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Columbia, South Carolina, and Instructor of Organ at the University of South Carolina. At Trinity he trains the boy and girls choristers and directs the Cathedral Choir in more than 150 services each year, as well as leading regular tours and recordings. As an organ recitalist he has appeared in major venues throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Australia, and his recordings appear on the Pro Organo and JAV labels.
A native of Ohio, he is a graduate of
Oberlin College and Yale University, where his principal teachers were Haskell
Thomson and Thomas Murray. He has won
numerous prizes for musical and academic achievements, including a Watson
Fellowship in 1997. Before moving to
South Carolina, he worked on the music staffs of Trinity Church, New Haven;
Berkeley Divinity School; Memorial Church at Harvard; and Trinity Church,
Boston.
The Choirs of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral have a long history of excellence throughout their 200 year history. Their principal mission is to provide music for Cathedral liturgies. In addition they undertake regular tours, recordings, and concerts of major works with orchestra. Trinity Cathedral supports separate choirs of Men and Boys; Men and Girls; and Adults. All of these choirs sing together on this recording.
The Choir of Adults is a mixture of volunteers and professional singers who rehearse weekly and sing for services every Sunday of the year. Boy and girl choristers attend a variety of schools throughout Columbia and the surrounding communities. They practice twice each week and receive special instruction in music theory and sight-reading as well as voice lessons. In recent years they have sung in Canterbury Cathedral; Washington Cathedral; St. Thomas Church, New York; Gloucester Cathedral; the American Cathedral in Paris; the Basilica of St. Francis, Assisi; St. Peter’s Basilica; and the Sistine Chapel.
Cathedral Choir of Boys &Girls
Girls
Annie Bauknight
Lucy Grace Burnett
Ruth Dibble
Virginia Dunlap
Kate Evans
Kate Falvey
Mazie Goodlett
Kimberly Green
Hannah Green
Emily Hogue
Elizabeth Hogue
Anne Jackson
Abby Malanuk
Lenora Marterer
Caroline Matthews
Daisy McLeod
Isabelle Mikell
Caroline Moorman
Lucy Owen
Anna Peacock
Harriet Rogers
Helen Rogers
Bailey Rowden
Logan Shainwald
Emma Shealy
Cameron Vipperman
Boys
Graydon Davies
Benjamin Eidson
David Shand Estefano
Jack Falvey
William Fritze
Cravens Godbold
Spears Goodlett
Nicholas Hagen
James Kitchens
James Lucas
Daniel Lucas
Walker McKay
Michael Moran
Matthew Pilat
Xander Postic
Myles Roberts
David Shealy
Paul Smith
Jack Taylor
Walker Weaver
Trinity Cathedral Choir
Margaret Bauknight
Witt Bauknight
Janice Boan
Sarah Cameron
Patrick Dover
Amy Duhan
John Duhan
Evan Farr
Stephen Fenner
Jessica Gibbons
Al Glenn
Gordon Goodwin
Stephen Gunter
Mari Hazel
Ryan Headley
Elizabeth Hill
Hannah Lea
Helen Lupo
Susan Lyon
Jeff Maddox
Sarah Moncer
Mark Mooningham
Becki Moore
Xavier Moses
Anne Pearce
Oliver Postic
Joe Rogers
Joan Sallenger
Ken Sallenger
Matthew Samson
Joe Setzer
Christopher Simpson
Haynes Spelvin
Melissa Thigpen
Stephanie Thompson
Emily Thrash
Jonathan Trotter
Blaire Umhau
Don Whittaker
Scott Wild
Jared Johnson, Canon Organist & Choirmaster
Christopher
Jacobson, Associate Organist & Choirmaster
Dido Heath, Music Administrator
Doak Wolfe, Associate for Liturgy, Music, & Administration
Trinity Chamber Orchestra
Violin 1
Ashley Horvat
Damir Horvat
Pawel Kozak
Erin Althoff
Erika Cutler
Violin 2
Catherine Hazan
Shr-Han Wu
Sarah Land
Andrew Lynn
Emily Wait
Viola
Nathan Schram
Jarrod Haning
Audrey Harris
Cello
James Waldo
Ismail Akbar
Ryan Knott
Double Bass
Craig Butterfield
Jonathan Rouse
Oboe
Rebecca Nagel
Clarinet
Joseph Eller
John Bittle
Bassoon
Michael Harley
Horn
Martha Edwards
Percussion
Scott Herring
Organ
Christopher Jacobson
CREDITS
Recorded in concert at the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Columbia, South Carolina on January 26, 2014. Additional recording on January 25th and 27th.
Producer: John Fitz Rogers
Engineer:
Jeff Francis
Cover image: Rob de Vries/Rookuzz
This CD was made possible by a Creative and Performing Arts Grant from the University of South Carolina Office of the Provost, and by Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. Special thanks to John Ceballes, Jeff Francis, Martha Guth, Hackett Publishing, Tayloe Harding, Dido Heath, Christopher Jacobson, the MacDowell Colony, Joel Relihan, and Doak Wolfe. My deepest thanks and appreciation to Jared Johnson, and to the wonderful musicians and staff of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. This recording is dedicated to them.