Well I remember my first Christmas Concert singing with the Chorale of the College of St. Catherine.
Having abandoned all pretense of being a band director by the end of the first semester of my sophomore year in the music department at the College of St. Thomas, I began to intensely focus my musical studies on piano (my major instrument) and voice (my minor instrument). At the beginning of my second semester of my sophomore year, I auditioned and made it into the Chorale of the College of St. Catherine, a mixed SATB choir comprised of women from the College of St. Catherine and men from the College of St. Thomas. I also fell under the influence of Dr. Maurice A Jones, the director of the Chorale. He was the finest professor I have ever had and greatly influenced me as a musician. After I graduated he, became my mentor and friend.
Maurie introduced to me the choral music of some of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland, Carlo Menotti, Samuel Barber, Gabriel Faure, and Francis Poulenc. He demanded much from his choir and we, in turn, were willing to do anything for him.
My first Christmas Concert singing with the Chorale was held in Our Lady of Victory Chapel on the campus of the College of St. Catherine. Women in black concert dress, men dressed in black tuxedos, we processed from the entrance of the chapel to the sanctuary, women processing on one side of the chapel, men processing on the opposite side. As we processed, we sang an Medieval Latin Trope “Alle Psallite Cum Luya” in a 3 part round. The sound danced about the chapel, the music reverberating off the smooth stone surfaces of the chapel.
All the music of the concert that evening was a cappella, which means unaccompanied by instruments. Within each section of the choir was a person with a pitch pipe from which we would receive our opening pitch. The concert was no more than 45 minutes. Maurie Jones, knowing the limits of an audience, would rather have an audience complain about a concert being too short in duration rather than a concert being too long in duration. “We want to keep them wanting more,” was a favorite saying that Maurie preached to us in choral conducting class.
Among the carols we sang that night, were some common carols, for instance, “Angels We Have Heard On High”. Our breath control was tested to the limit, for Maurie demanded that we sing the “Gloria in excelsis Deo” of the refrain in one breath (try it and see if you can make it to the end without gasping for air). From the Oxford Book of Carols, we sang “Pat-a-Pan”, and “Bring A Torch Jeanette Isabella”. We sang an arrangement of “Masters In This Hall”, with its resounding refrain “Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel sing we clear! Holpen are all folk on earth, Born is God’s own Son so dear! Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel sing we loud! God today hath poor folk raise and cast a-down the proud!”
The centerpiece of the concert was Francois Poulenc’s “4 Motets pour le temps de Noel” (Four Christmas Motets). We sang three of the four motets: “O magnum mysterium,” “Videntes stellam,” and “Hodie Christus natus est.”
Of those three motets, it was in the first motet, “O magnum mysterium,” that the mystery of the Incarnation of Jesus first impacted my life most profoundly. “O magnum mysterium et admirabile sacramentum ut animalia viderent Dominum natum jacentem in praesepio. Beata Virgo cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum. O great mystery and wonderful sacrament that even the animals saw the new-born Lord lying in a manger. Blessed Virgin, whose womb
was worthy to bear our Lord Christ.”
The harmonies evoke within the singer and the listener the mystery of the Incarnation. How Poulenc was able to capture that mystery in music and human voice is wondrous. I feel a chill pass within me upon every hearing of this motet.
We ended the concert as we began. We processed out from the sanctuary to the entry of the chapel singing the Latin chant for Christmas, “Divinum Mysterium”.
Of all my Christmas memories, this perhaps is my favorite music memory. That cold December night in the beautiful chapel of Our Lady of Victory, I encountered the mystery of Jesus in song. My dad recorded that concert on what was a state of the art 3M cassette recorder. Through the hiss on the tape, I can still make out the “Alle Psallite Cum Luya” reverberating through the chapel, and the oh, so mysterious pianissimo opening of “O magnum mysterium” evokes the mystery of which it sings.
