Tomás Luis de Victoria was the most significant composer of the Counter-Reformation in Spain, as well as one of the best regarded composers of sacred music in the late Renaissance. His music expresses the Spanish passion for mysticism and religion with simple lines and homophonic textures, but also seeks rhythmic variety and the use of surprising contrasts. His writing is more melodic and makes use of more dissonance than that of Palestrina. O Vos Omnes is often sung during Holy Week as part of the Tenebrae Responsories. The text is adapted from the Latin Vulgate translation of Lamentations 1:12.

Robert H. Young was a professor of music at Baylor University and founder of the Baylor Chamber Singers. He has written over a hundred choral pieces, all of which show artistic integrity and exemplify beautiful music. Tenebrae Factae Sunt (text from the Liber Usualis) recounts the final moments of Christ’s life. This piece starts with four-part tenors/basses and that lush sound continues throughout the piece which moves slowly and majestically to its conclusion. The final utterance is “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Celeste Woloschuk – soprano
Barb Milner – soprano
Alfonso Bolarin Guillen – tenor
John Dodman – tenor
Todd Hanson – baritone

Claudio Monteverdi was the greatest of the Italian Renaissance composers. As one critic writes, “He revolutionized the music of the theatre and the church with his dramatic and imaginative use of instruments and voices, and with his daring harmonies.” Beatus Vir was composed around 1630 and published in the composer’s 1641 collection Selva Morale e Spirituali. The motet for six voices, a setting of Psalm 112, is a superb example of Monteverdi’s dramatic style. It contrasts pairs or small groups of voices with the weight of the full chorus, a technique known as stile concertato. This lively setting of Beatus Vir unfolds over a walking bass, which is repeated throughout much of the piece. The middle sections is in a more flowing triple meter into which Monteverdi has inserted a sixteen measure section for solo voices – two sopranos, two tenors, and one bass. That is then followed by a return to the opening subject with some wonderful word painting. For example, the word “irascetur” (is angered) is expressed with fast repetitions, while the word “aeternum” (eternity) is set in long notes, and the word “peribit” (perishes) is illustrated with falling figures that gently disappear at a cadence.

Celeste Woloschuk – soprano
Elaine Thaller – alto
Dave Woloschuk – tenor
Tim Nickel – bass

Most people when they hear the name Glenn Gould conjure up the picture of a man hunched over the keyboard playing Bach and often humming along as he played. Gould was not only a pianist extraordinaire but also a composer. Gould wrote the words and music for So You Want to Write a Fugue? for the final television show of The Anatomy of a Fugue which was broadcast on March 4, 1963 by the CBC. This piece is a satirical, tongue-in-cheek composition for four voices and string quartet or piano, that outlines the way one should go about writing a fugue. Both the text and the music are “parodies of the rules and compositional techniques of the genre, as well as the intellectual methods and artistic intuition in the creative process.” The piece also includes quotes from various works of classical music, most notably the “famous sequence of notes B-A-C-H and the second Brandenburg Concerto.”

The first words are barely heard—“In the beginning was the Word”—suggesting the tiniest spark in the darkness. Then the voices start to enter alternately, busily overlapping and building, as though assembling the world from that nothingness. The middle section is more lyrical and reflective (“All things were made that hath been made, nothing was made—He has not made”), with fluid horizontal lines suggesting flowing water or streaming light. The final section introduces a driving ostinato in the basses, overtop of which the voices again build contrapuntally, coalescing at the end with a bright declarative final chord: “The Word Was God!”
And the world is made.

Robert Dick – tenor

Salvador de mi Alma was commissioned by Faith and Life Singers from Winnipeg for their tour to South America. The piece is characterized by a gentle bossa nova rhythm, with lyrics in Spanish.

Refrain: “Te adoro, te alabro, amante de mi alma.” “Jesus Christ, I adore you, I worship you, Saviour of my soul.”

The song goes on to express love for Christ by listing various references to Jesus found in Scripture.
These include: Lily of the Valley, Rose of Sharon, the Beginning and the End, Great Creator, Lover of my Soul, Lamb of God, Light of the World, Bread of Life, Living Water, Gentle Shepherd, and Bright Star.

Oli Guselle – mezzo-soprano
Saskatoon Men’s Chorus

Johannes Brahms’ Rhapsodie, Opus 53 was written in 1869 as a wedding gift for Robert and Clara Schumann’s daughter, Julie. Some suspect that Brahms had feelings for Julie which he may have integrated into the text and music. The text is taken from Goethe’s Harzeise im Winter. Brahms wrote the piece for alto soloist, men’s chorus, and orchestra. The first two sections are composed in a chromatically dense and wandering C minor for voice and orchestra alone. The second section can also be seen as an aria. The third section, in C major, adds male chorus in a “plea to a celestial spirit for an abatement of the wanderer’s pains.” This section has music akin to that of his German Requiem.

Thomas Tallis was a Tudor musician who served during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I and managed to remain in good favour with both Catholic and Protestant monarchs. The Tallis Canon is one of nine tunes Tallis contributed to Matthew Parker’s Psalter (1561) and is a setting of Psalm 67. The piece begins with all voices in unison, then in two voices, and finally in four voices (in canon).

Ruth Watson Henderson is a renowned Canadian pianist, accompanist, and composer. She wrote Kyrie – Fugue in memory of the conductor Elmer Iseler (1927-1998) along with a second piece called In Memoriam. Kyrie – Fugue begins with tenors and basses singing the theme which is very reminiscent of monks in song slowly walking through the cloisters. Henderson often pairs two voices in duet as the other voices sing a countermelody or fragments from previously heard music. As the piece progresses the writing becomes more dense and complex until it concludes quietly with the theme in the alto voice.

Silverly was written by Canadian composer Bruce Ruddell for the Vancouver Chamber Choir. As the notes in the music say, “Silverly is a lullaby for us all. It should be sung with a perfectly gentle and serene expression. The repetition of the piano part and the repetition of the (rearticulated) “ah” sections combine to create a meditation that allows the audience to enter the perfectly safe and exquisite night setting created by Dennis Lee’s text.”

Hugo Wolf is most known for his songs, even though he did compose numerous choral pieces. Im Stillen Friedhof (In the Peaceful Grave) is one such example. Beginning solemnly with chords in the piano, the chorus enters homophonically and optimistically as the words (also by Wolf) capture the beauty of the graveyard in which human hearts lie and which can so easily be forgotten. The piece ends with a fugue (often sung by solo voices) in which the speaker imagines the regal cypress trees that line the pathways standing guard over those lying below and ensuring that the dead are “already not forgotten.”

Johann Sebastian Bach, the master of the fugue, wrote six motets. The sixth, Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden, concludes with a joyous fugal Alleluia. The four voices enter one after the other beginning with the sopranos and that opening theme then keeps popping up in the various voices throughout the piece. The energy and exhilarating momentum of this piece bring the motet to a jubilant conclusion.