Ave Maria

Vocal score

Forces or Category: SATB (with divisions) unaccompanied

New Horizons

for SATB (with divisions) unaccompanied
This is a deeply compelling setting of the familiar text. The piece commences with a series of ...

Ave Maria

Vocal score

Description

for SATB (with divisions) unaccompanied
This is a deeply compelling setting of the familiar text. The piece commences with a series of contemplative exchanges between the upper and lower voices; the ensuing, unexpected changes of key and texture are potently effective, and typical of Jackson's compositional style. This very fine motet is suitable for the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary and for concert purposes.

Programme Notes:

Why compose yet another Ave Maria? After all, there are innumerable other settings of the Angelic Salutation, many of them great masterpieces. Yet any new treatment of even the most familiar words can, I hope, say something unique about them.

I have divided the bipartite text into three sections. In the first, divided sopranos and altos lead the hymning of the Virgin. After an impassioned and anguished outburst ("Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis"), there follows a solemn and hushed prayer-chorale, while two solo sopranos soar heavenward in imploration.

Ave Maria was commissioned by the Exon Singers who gave the first performance, directed by Matthew Owens, in Buckfast Abbey on 28 July 2004.
Copyright Gabriel Jackson

Ave Maria

Vocal score

Gabriel Jackson

New Horizons

Composer Information

Gabriel Jackson (b.1962)

One of Britain's foremost composers, after three years as a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral, Gabriel Jackson went on to study composition with Richard Blackford and John Lambert at the Royal College of Music. Particularly acclaimed for his choral works, his liturgical pieces are in the repertoires of most of Britain's cathedral and collegiate choirs and he is a frequent collaborator with the leading professional groups of the world. From 2010-2013 he was Associate Composer to the BBC Singers. In 2014 his hour-long The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, commissioned for the 750th anniversary of Merton College, Oxford, was premiered in its chapel. May 2015 saw the premiere at the Latvian National Opera of Spring Rounds for soprano, choir and orchestra, commissioned by the Riga-based youth choir Kamer for their 25th anniversary. He was recently commissioned by The Marian Consort to write Stabat Mater to mark their 10th anniversary.

Gabriel Jackson's website

Ave Maria

Vocal score

Gabriel Jackson

New Horizons

Reviews and Awards

"There are strategically placed frissons of key-change in his Ave Maria, and corresponding, but subtle, changes of tempo too, as a consequence of which the motet moves persuasively towards the goal of its last five pages, an almost Poulencian melismatic rhapsody for two solo sopranos soaring above the choir." - Peter Dale, Choir & Organ Sept 06