Cecilia Virgo

Vocal score

Forces or Category: 6S 6A 6T 6B unaccompanied

New Horizons

Part of the New Horizons series
Text celebrates St Cecilia
Very beautiful and rewarding music

Cecilia Virgo

Vocal score

Description

for 6S 6A 6T 6B unaccompanied
This expansive piece requiring 24 singers sets an anonymous 16th-century text of supplication to St Cecilia. From the cascading imitation of its opening to the monolithic triads of its close, it remains spellbinding and invokes a powerful sense of the divine. Inspired by the great motets of the Eton Choir Book, this is seriously beautiful music with particular appeal for committed choirs.

Programme Notes:

The florid, ecstatic music of the Eton Choirbook is a particular obsession of mine so I was very excited that Cecilia Virgo was to receive its first performance alongside pieces from that miraculous repertoire. My first attempt to engage with this extraordinary music, A Vision of Aeroplanes (premiered by the BBC Singers in 1997) took its cue from the ever-changing combinations of voices and ornate, complex counterpoint characteristic of early Tudor polyphony. Cecilia Virgo is more concerned with sonority and density of texture, which relates it to the multi-part 16th-century tradition as exemplified by Tallis's 40-part Spem in alium and Carver's 19-part O bone Jesu; the harmony is often static, animated rhythmically from within, as befits a piece designed for the resonant acoustic of Canterbury Cathedral.

The opening invocation, whose music recurs, extended, at the end, is written in twelve parts - a series of overlapping descending scales (at different speeds) spreads through the choir until it coalesces onto an F major chord; much of what follows is homophonic, with contrasts of scoring and rich harmony (hushed at 'Iuncta voce' and fiercely bright at in 'paradisi gloriam') and at 'tuosque pupilos' there is an extended section for six solo sopranos which harks back to the Tudor practice of gimell - the division of a line into multiple parts of equal range.

Cecilia Virgo was commissioned by the BBC and was first performed by the BBC Singers, directed by Stephen Cleobury, in Canterbury Cathedral on October 26th 2000.
Copyright Gabriel Jackson

Cecilia Virgo

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

Cecilia Virgo

Vocal score

Gabriel Jackson

New Horizons

Reviews and Awards

"Ever increasing in popularity, Gabriel Jackson's distinctive and memorable style prevails throughout these three very different pieces . . . Well worthwhile for those choirs with the forces available to tackle a piece of these dimensions . . . These three anthems are all refreshingly original as well as being accessible to singer and listener alike." - Church Music Quarterly June 05

". . .the resultant peel of bells that cascades from one voice to another is a distinctive and inspired effect, introduced by Jackson to start the piece and brought surging back at its exulatnat climax. For a choir that can muster a few basses with bottom Ds and sopranos with top Bs, the eight-minute Cecilia Virgo would be an excellent addition to the repertoire: tonal yet innovative; engaging yet unpredictable." - Armin Zanner, Music Teacher March 2005

"Cecilia Virgo would set accomplished choirs a challenge, though a rewarding and far from insuperable one." - Matthew Greenall, The Singer, June 2004