Festival Te Deum (Britten)

The Festival Te Deum, Op. 32, a sacred choral piece by the English composer Benjamin Britten, is a setting of the Te Deum from the Book of Common Prayer. It was composed in 1944 to celebrate the centenary of St Mark's Church, Swindon, and was first performed there in 1945.

Festival Te Deum
by Benjamin Britten
St Mark's Church, Swindon, which celebrated its centenary with the premiere of the Festival Te Deum
KeyE major
CatalogueOp. 32
TextTe Deum
LanguageEnglish
Composed1944 (1944)
Performed24 April 1945 (1945-04-24): St Mark's, Swindon
Scoring

History

The Te Deum is one of the standard canticles of Anglican Morning Prayer. Benjamin Britten set it in 1934 (his Te Deum in C).[1] He wrote the Festival Te Deum, scored for treble solo, four-part choir (SATB) and organ, on 8–9 November 1944. It takes about five minutes to perform.[2][3] The work was commissioned for the centenary of St Mark's Church, Swindon, an Anglo-Catholic church with a strong choral tradition.[3] It was first performed there during a service on 24 April 1945 by the choir of St Mark's with choristers from three other Swindon churches (St John's, St Saviour's, and St Luke's). The soloist was Peter Titcombe, the organist was G.W. Curnow, and the conductor was J.J. Gale.[2]

Music

Britten wrote the vocal parts for the abilities of a parish church choir, but a demanding organ part. The work begins with the choir singing in unison, imitating the "freedom of Gregorian chant".[3] The chant sounds as if it is in free time,[4] but is "carefully notated in a variety of time signatures".[3] The organ provides a contrast with chords in regular 3
4 time,[3] embellished with "pseudo-Baroque ornaments".[4] On the text "The glorious company of the Apostles praise Thee", the voices begin imitation but return to unison. In the middle section the text "Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ" is exclaimed in fanfare-like motifs in the voices, matched by "short dramatic outbursts" on the organ. The work ends with a reprise of the organ chords and a treble soloist, joined by the choir, bringing it to a "gentle conclusion".[3]

gollark: Where else would they go?
gollark: What? Of course they are in our universe.
gollark: Those aren't heaven and hell, silly.
gollark: > The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, “Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.” Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas. Revelations 21:8 says “But the fearful, and unbelieving … shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C. – “Applied Optics”, vol. 11, A14, 1972
gollark: This is because it canonically receives 50 times the light Earth does.

References
  1. Spicer, Paul. "Britten Choral Guide with Repertoire Notes" (PDF). Boosey & Hawkes. p. 9. Retrieved 16 November 2013.
  2. "Festival Te Deum". brittenproject.org. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
  3. Spicer, Paul. "Britten, Benjamin: Festival Te Deum op. 32". Boosey & Hawkes. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
  4. O'Donnell, James (2008). "Festival Te Deum in E, Op 32". Hyperion Records. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.