This song is based on a motet I composed as a Christmas present for my parents in 1990. This is the text I had written for the motet.
Most wondrous mystery, Word
of God Incarnate,
In your humanity, you raise us up to heaven.
Sweet sacrifice of our redemption,
within your infant form
lay the source of our creation.
Most wondrous act of love
from the heart of God’s great love,
in your small hands contain
freedom from our sin and pain.
Sweet child nestled on your mother’s breast,
within your heart so small
dwells our source of all hope, peace, and rest.
(c) 1990, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
In the text, I attempted to express the divine paradox we hear expressed in the Prologue of John’s Gospel. The One through whom all life was created, and through whom salvation would come to our world, is at the same time One who embodies the most vulnerable and most weak form of humanity, that of an infant.
Of all the human revolutions that have rocked and changed our world, the greatest revolution that utterly changed our world was that of Jesus’. He tipped our world on its axis, and used love, not weapons, to effect the change in our world.
The song is in a musical form called “Variations on a Theme.” In the world of piano music, some of the most famous of variations on a theme are Beethoven’s Eroica Variations (based on a theme from his “Eroica” Symphony #3), and Felix Mendelssohn’s “17 Variations On A Theme”, which I played in my graduation recital.
I use the motet as my theme, and what follows are six variations on that theme ending with a recapitulation of the theme. Just as an anecdote, I composed the majority of this piece at the kitchen table on Halloween of 2018. I kept on getting interrupted by tricker treaters at the door. I would compose a variation or a bit of a variation, run to give candy at the door, sit down, compose a few more measures, get up and give candy at the door over a period of 2 1/2 hours. I was relieved to when I shut off the light outdoor and closed the door. I finished the song somewhere around midnight of All Saints Day. I number it as one of the best piano songs I have composed in my life.
