SSAA choir SKU: CA.964420
No. 3 from Three Marian Motets. Composed by Ko Matsushita. Contemporary Choir Music. Hodie Beata Virgo Maria Fass.Ssaa. Sacred vocal music, Advent, Feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Hymns in praise of the Virgin Mary. Full score. Carus Verlag #CV 09.644/20. Published by Carus Verlag (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.
