Welcome All Wonders: A Christmas Celebration

Program Notes Welcome All Wonders: A Christmas Celebration includes five songs with texts carefully selected by the composer from four different English and American poets. It is a sacred, religious work in the tradition of an oratorio or cantata rather than a secular grouping of five carols. One will not find references to reindeer or chestnuts in the poems, or sleighbells in the orchestration. Instead, Mr. Redford takes his inspiration in part, from his travels to Europe. The sights, sounds and smells of the cathedrals built during the middle ages and Renaissance stirred his own devout Christian beliefs. He set about flavoring Welcome All Wonders with some of that Medieval/Renaissance character in a number of ways. Two of the poets lived during the Renaissance. Antique cymbals, similar to those announcing various stages of the mass are used. Harmonically, Mr. Redford relies heavily on quartal structures (chords built on fourths) which, while modern in sound, hearken back to the modalities of the Medieval and Renaissance eras. The first poem, "Welcome All Wonders" by the seventeenth-century poet Richard Crashaw greets the birth of Jesus and salutes his mission. In Redford's setting, the number four takes on importance. A splashy opening theme announces the poem's title with a descending and rising fourth, then a descending fifth (the inversion of a fourth). Responding to the choir, the woodwinds use hemiola a metric device not uncommon to the Renaissance. Redford employs a sectional form for this first movement where both theme groups make four appearances each. To conclude, the opening theme quickly cascades from the sopranos down to the basses with four statements of "welcome all wonders" in imitative counterpoint
ASIN: B00000587G
VSKU: DBV.B00000587G.G
Condition: Good
Author/Artist:Utah Chamber Artists|J.A.C. Redford
Binding: Audio cd
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