Score
Sydney service : alto solo, tenor solo, SATB choir, unaccompanied / music by Brett M McKern.
Library shelf no. 782.55525/MCK 4 [Not for loan]
Work Overview
This setting is a modern-sounding work despite the 450 year old text. It employs contrasts in the most up-front way. Dissonance is prepared but is boldly presented before arriving at a point of rest which is not always a simple resolution. Indeed, resolution is often significantly delayed. There is contrast between striking modernist-sounding discords and tonality. There is contrast between long sustained chords and stridently-rhythmic sections. There is contrast between polyphony and hetrophony. There is also contrast between chorus and solo, and between repetition of musical motives but with new words (eg: just before the Gloria Patri in the Magnificat). There are also differences in the Gloria for each movement, as opposed to a slavish copy in the Nunc Dimittis, which also has a harmonically fuller ending.
Work Details
Year: 2010
Instrumentation: Alto solo, tenor solo, SATB chorus, unaccompanied.
Duration: 8 min.
Difficulty: Advanced
Contents note: Magnificat (5 min.) -- Nunc Dimittis (3 min.).
The composer notes the following influences on this work:
Influenced by Renaissance polyphony, but reinterpreted in a more modern way.
Subjects
- In the form/style of: Christian music
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