Long, Long Ago

Herbert Howells was a British composer, organist, and teacher, known for a large and beloved output of Anglican church music. Howells grew up without much means, but was able to begin music lessons at 13 thanks to a local politician who’d taken an interest in his organ playing at the local Baptist church. While studying with famed British composers like Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry, much of Howells’s music was orchestral. Later in his career, Howells found stability in an organist position at St. John’s College, Cambridge, which also led directly to many of the works for which he is most remembered.

Long, Long Ago was written during Howells’s prime while at St. John’s College, chronologically bookended by an introit for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (Behold O God our Defender) and his greatest critical success (Hymnus Paradisi). The text was written by John Buxton in 1940 while a prisoner of war in Bavaria. Howells’s unison, almost chant-like opening line hearkens back to the musical styles of “long ago” referenced in the text. Adding to the homage to older music, we also hear false relations throughout, including the altos’ G-natural as they first take charge of the melody, overtop the tenors’ G-sharp. As he moves fluidly from E minor to A dorian, we get a harmonically rare moment from Howells as he depicts “God’s son” with a bright, A major triad with only an added ninth—a sound that would become commonplace in the generation of choral composers to follow. Listeners may also notice shockingly unprepared dissonances at each iteration of the world’s “woe”, and militaristically dotted rhythms at “making wars to cease”. The piece ends with a cadence rivaling that of his famed A Spotless Rose, which is sung later this evening: beginning in Howells’s patented mode, the cadence grows to a climax which twists and turns through C-sharp minor harmonies, only to arrive finally at an inevitably simple final two measures, resting on a picardy third of the same E minor in which the piece began. 

Sally Beamish began her musical career as a violist with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the London Sinfonietta. She was also a founding member of the Raphael Ensemble. In 1990, she moved away from performing to devote herself to composition. Beamish returned to performing in 2015 after her daughter, a luthier, built her a viola. 

In the stillness sets a contemporary Christmas text by Katrina Shepherd. Beamish writes: “This short carol beautifully captures the hushed rapture of a small parish church in a snowbound landscape, just before Christmas.” She treats Shepherd’s words with aptly simple, strophic, music filled with subtle shifts to reflect the text. Towards the end of the first verse, Beamish modulates from G major down to C major to shift the singers lower in their range, painting an even more vivid picture of the choir which “softly sings” at the start of the second verse. Where Shepherd breaks the poem’s pattern in the penultimate line, Beamish introduces a new melody, paralleling the shift in the text. 

Last performed: Sweet Was the Song, January 2019

Recorded on: My Lord Has Come (2019)

Michael Praetorius was a composer and organist of the German renaissance period. The son of a Lutheran pastor, he is credited with significant contributions to Protestant hymnody. His first published compositions appeared around 1602, almost 15 years after beginning his work as a church organist. Even from his first motets, the influence of the growing Venetian school is clear, eventually leading him to develop the polychoral chorale concerto form.

Though the author of this text is unknown, we do know that this Christmas hymn first appeared in print in 1599. Based on the text of Isaiah 11:1, the text references Isaiah’s foretelling of the birth of Jesus. The melody, which can also be sung as a canon, has been used as the base for many choral and instrumental works, including one of Brahms’s 11 Chorale Preludes, Op. 122. This version, the most popular harmonization, was written in 1609 and published in Praetorius’s sixth book of sacred music. This hymn is more commonly known to English speakers as “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming,” also translated by Catherine Winkworth as “A Spotless Rose.”

Last performed: Traditions Renewed, January 2023

Joanna Marsh’s choral setting of Jane Draycott’s poem “In Winter’s House” was commissioned by Tenebrae as a companion piece to A Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten. The vocal range of the piece sits quite low, calling for an ensemble of altos, tenors, baritones, and basses, which adds to the imagery of a dark, winter scene so beautifully depicted in Draycott’s poem. There is no set, consistent meter, which adds a freedom to the textual expression of the piece. Text painting is used frequently —the sparse, low harmonies on the text “cold as steel,” a stunning high F major triad on the word “gleams,” and the descending, lilting melody on the word “rain” are just a few examples. 

The tone of the poem shifts in the third stanza. While the first two stanzas illustrate the cold, less-welcoming qualities of winter, the third stanza introduces a “child asleep in a dream of light.” Correspondingly, the music here introduces higher and “brighter” harmonies on the words “light” and “flame” (both on a B-flat major chord). The fourth stanza continues with a fiery theme (“of fire that catches and travels for miles”) where the music becomes more animated with an ascending line, as if to illustrate a fire spreading, arriving on a shimmering G major chord on the word “miles.” In this piece, Marsh and Draycott have succeeded in bringing text and music together to create not just a story, but a wintery scene and emotional tapestry upon which the story is told. 

Last performed: The Town Lay Hushed, January 2020

Recorded on: The Town Lay Hushed (2020)

Violist and composer Rebecca Clarke is most known for her instrumental chamber works, particularly her Piano Trio and Viola Sonata—her choral compositions are relatively unknown. This Ave Maria was published in 1937, around the time Clarke began exploring the registers and timbres of the treble voice; it was her first published choral work. The setting uses modal scales and Renaissance techniques to pay tribute to the history of the text. The particular version of the Marian prayer Clarke chose to set contains some alternative text, the source of which is unknown—but it has also been set by other composers such as Josquin des Prez and Tomás Luis de Victoria, as well as by Ola Gjeilo in a setting titled Second Eve, which we have also performed before.

Reena Esmail is a highly celebrated composer, receiving performances from orchestras, choirs, and chamber ensembles across the world. She is the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s 2020-2025 Artist in Residence, and has been in residence with Tanglewood Music Center, Spoleto Festival, and Seattle Symphony. Her work in composition and academia often explore the marriage of Hindustani and Western Classical music. 

From the composer: “This set of three carols, on new texts by poet Rebecca Gayle Howell, traces a journey through the solstice, the longest night of the year. The texts follow the canonical hours of Evensong, Matins and Lauds, and the music maps onto Hindustani raags* for those same hours (Raag Hamasadhwani, Malkauns, and Ahir Bhairav). This set is a meeting of cultures, and of the many ways we honor the darkness, and celebrate the return of light.”

After contracting Graves’ disease in 1915, Howells struggled financially as he required constant trips between London and Lydney for treatment. In 1917, his friends arranged for a grant to pay for Howells to assist Richard Terry at Westminster Cathedral, editing the Latin Tudor repertoire Terry and his choir were reviving. Through this work, Howells studied and absorbed the English Renaissance style he came to imbue in his own compositional style, and soon got to work on his first choral works to be significantly performed: Three Carol-Anthems. The pieces were written in consecutive years between 1918 and 1920, and they grow more musically adventurous with each year.

Felix Mendelssohn was one of the most celebrated composers of the early German Romantic period. He and his sister, Fanny, were famously child prodigies–while he only lived to 38, his output still rivals those of composers who lived much fuller lives. He was known for being among the first to look back to the masters who came before him, heavily influenced by his time with the Berliner Singakademie, dedicated to building community and reviving great music of the past.

Weihnachten comes from his Six Motets, Op. 79. While the motets were published posthumously in 1850, the pieces were written between 1843-1846, with Weihnachten written in 1845, two years before his death. The piece is written for eight-part choir, and he sets the “hallelujahs” in an antiphonal, double-choir setting. This exuberant setting reflects the text, rejoicing in the coming of the promised Redeemer.

David Briggs is a British composer and organist, regarded as one of the world’s finest improvisers. Formerly the organist of Truro and Gloucester Cathedrals, he now works as a concert organist and composer of choral and organ music. His daughter is also a noted composer, Kerensa Briggs.

Written for a wedding in 2011, Briggs’s Set me as a seal is an impassioned setting of this oft-used love text. He builds drama throughout by starting with all voices together, and interrupting the homophony with smaller sections of the choir passing the text back-and-forth until they return to each other at the peak of the phrase. The piece winds through key areas with an impressive ease, flowing much like the “many waters” of the text, before settling in a distant F-sharp major.

Last performed: Sweet was The Song, January 2019

Recorded on: My Lord Has Come (2019)

Morten Lauridsen is one of the most widely performed choral composers alive today. He served as composer-in-residence for the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994 to 2001, and taught at the USC Thornton School of Music from 1967-2019. Lauridsen was named an “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts, and received a National Medal of Arts from the president for his contributions to the choral arts. 

One of the most captivating and well-known choral pieces by a living composer, Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium is a serene setting of a common Christmas text, perfectly depicting the “great mystery” of Jesus’s birth. The piece, written for the L.A. Master Chorale, is filled with examples of text-painting, though its most striking use comes on the word ‘virgo’. Lauridsen writes here a note outside of the key–a G-sharp in the alto, the only note of this sort in the entire piece–used very specifically in this instance to foreshadow the Virgin Mary’s pain at her son’s crucifixion years after his birth.

Last performed: Sweet was The Song, January 2019

Recorded on: My Lord Has Come (2019)

Born in Bayreuth, Stefan Claas studied church music and choral conducting in Munich and Frankfurt. He was conductor of the chamber choir Ars Antiqua Aschaffenburg, winning several prizes and competitions nationally and internationally alongside them. In 2012, they won the City of Aschaffenburg’s Culture Prize for their exemplary work with young talent. 

Maria durch ein Dornwald ging is a German Christmas carol of murky origins, first published no later than 1850. Stefan Claas’s setting of his home country’s carol sets three verses, first featuring just the tenors and basses, then only the sopranos and altos, and finally the full choir in the last verse. This final verse begins in unison, gradually peeling off into a robust major chord on the Greek liturgical phrase “Kyrie eleison”–”Lord, have mercy.”

Ken Burton, a British composer, performer, producer, and presenter, is widely known for his appearances on UK television programs like BBC1’s Songs of Praise. He has conducted and directed choirs for major films, most notably for Black Panther. Growing up, Burton engaged with a wide array of music-making, including Western classical, steel pan, and gospel. His music often draws on these experiences, combining an array of musical styles, most often gospel and Western classical.

Many are The Wonders was commissioned by Suzi Digby and the Ora Singers as a modern reflection of Thomas Tallis’ Loquebantur. The composer writes, “The Latin text in the Tallis setting tells of the apostles declaring the wonders of God in different languages (or ‘tongues’) on the day of Pentecost. This reflection brings the account into the first person, using a variety of musical languages. In the incipit, the soloist… has permission to further embellish, and slightly flatten the third degree of the scale as in jazz/gospel/spirituals. Likewise, the first choral response, which should have a freedom of expression in keeping with the church of the American Deep South, hence the ‘Hallelujah’ version of the word (which is later ‘Alleluia’). 

“The long Alleluias at bar 49, subsequently bar 62, represent the ‘declaring of the wonders in different tongues’... Each of the seven parts is based on a different scale… As with music of the Renaissance, the superimposition of different modes creates a subtle harmonic tension, when major thirds and minor thirds coincide.”