SKU: SU.80300296

Christina Rossetti’s poem extolls Mary, the mother of Jesus, exploring in images from nature the paradox of a divine, yet helpless, infant born to a human mother: The Sun of Righteousness her Son, she was His morning star. Eleanor Daley’s setting combines rich harmonies with a mood of hushed awe, in textures which sensitively move from unison to two-part passages, then open out to four-part harmony.SSAA, a cappella Published by: Treble Clef Music Minimum order quantity: 8 copies.

SKU: CA.964420

ISBN 9790007143497. Text language: Latin.

The aged Simeon takes the new-born Jesus in his arms, recognises his significance and celebrates this moment in a paean of praise as the fulfilment of his life. In Matsushita's motet this song of praise, the nunc dimittis, stands at the centre of the composition. Here, the triad of C-F sharp-G, used for the word hodie - today at the beginning, symbolically combines with a Gregorian-like motif, revolving around the central note of B flat in whole-tone movement, and which is used to represent the Virgin Mary. The work ends with a mystical wash of sound, a whole-tone cluster which emerges from the aleatorically repeated basic motifs of the work, and fades away to nothing.