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A Note from the Artistic Director
One does not ordinarily consider a concert of Sacred Music as the featured event on a date night. Yet the timing of this concert on the weekend preceding Valentine’s Day is not an accident.
The presence of the book “The Song of Solomon” (sometimes more poetically called “The Song of Songs”) in the Hebrew Scriptures is a mystery. A mildly erotic compendium of love poems, there is little or nothing overtly spiritual about it.
Yet it caught the fascination of Medieval Christians, who saw it as a metaphor for God’s love for his Church, which is often referred to as feminine, or even as “the bride of Christ.” This metaphor did not seem to work for more recent Christians – particularly Victorian Christians – especially as they encountered language such as: “Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts its clusters. Let me ascend into the tree to get its fruit.” Not the stuff of Sunday School or puritanical preaching (what affect it might have on evangelism, however, has not been observed)!
There is a rich tradition from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a growing body from more recent times, which set these love poems to music, most of it celebrating the sensual nature of the text, and providing a glimpse into the alternately tender and passionate passages, and various composers’ interpretations of them. Palestrina alone wrote an extended set of 29 motets drawn from “The Song of Songs” (we will sing three of them).
I have selected works from as early as John Dunstable (1390-1453) and as late as William Walton (1902-1983) to illustrate many of the themes from “The Song of Songs,” and, as is characteristic of Cameo Concerts, these will form the topic of my discussion with the audience.
Timothy J. Krueger
February, 2011
© 2011 Timothy J. Krueger |