Popule Meus after Tomás Luis de Victoria (2021) for SATB choir unaccompanied

Commissioned by: The Benedict XVI Institute

Durata: ca. 7 minutes

World Premiere:  Ensemble Invocatio, Daniel Knaggs, cond., Bydgoszcz and Warsaw, Poland, March 26-27 2022.

North American Premiere: Band of Voice, Alfred Calabrese, cond., San Francisco, CA

Hear Popule Meus after Victoria below, performed by Band of Voices:

Program notes:

Popule Meus (after Victoria) is my response to a motet of the same name by Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611). Subtle similarities can be heard in our rhythmic settings of the text and in our predominantly homophonic texture. But perhaps more striking are the differences which figure prominently in our contrasting approaches to melody, harmony, and text organization.

To my ears, Victoria’s setting of Popule Meus casts a stoic and restrained light on the text, perhaps to convey a sense of exhaustion and resignation that would be justified, given the various events the text recounts. This is not Victoria’s most adventurous writing, and he probably did not mean for it to be so. I always find Victoria’s compositional choices to be both insightful and intuitive and his Popule Meus is no exception. But the text elicited a different response from me and I was led to set it accordingly.

Although this text is often referred to as the Divine Reproaches, these are not reproaches in the sense of condemnatory or bitter protests demanding vindication. These are an appeal to the human sensibility of the listener—an appeal from heart to heart. This realization helped me to order and color selections from the text in a way that might communicate this dimension of compassion.

To structure the text, I chose to set five of the reproaches, inserted between repetitions of “Popule Meus”. These reproaches are tinged with the pain of betrayal and a broken heart. Thus, the unsettling harmonies to which the reproaches are set reflect the poetic irony found therein. Meanwhile, each “Popule Meus” is always imbued with affection and warmth, as if to represent an uninterrupted merciful glance toward the listener while the question is being posed: “My people, what have I done to you…?”

The above question essentially goes unanswered. Instead, the response from the “people” is a cry for mercy. The five reproaches are followed by this cry for mercy in alternating Greek and Latin translations of the Holy Trisagion, a hymn from antiquity. Whereas I preserve the same melodies for the Greek iterations that Victoria set monophonically, I set these in a densely chordal and climatic way. My setting of the Greek phrases here pay tribute to sacred music of the East while the Latin phrases that follow them pay tribute to the Western tradition of sacred polyphony. Both treatments, although distinct, are meant to flow together and complement one another in a varied yet coherent musical tapestry. The piece finally draws to a close in an open-ended way, not yet having received a direct answer to the question posed…

Translation:

My people, what have I done to you?
Because I led you out of the land of Egypt,
you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
My people . . .
I opened up the sea before you,
and you opened my side with a lance.
My people . . .
I fed you with manna in the desert,
and on me you rained blows and scourgings.
My people . . .
I put in your hand a royal scepter,
and you put on my head a crown of thorns.
My people . . .
I exalted you with great power,
and you hung me on the scaffold of the cross.
My people . . .
Holy God, (Greek)
Holy God, (Latin)
Holy Mighty One, (Greek)
Holy Mighty One, (Latin)
Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us. (Greek)
Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us. (Latin)
My people, what have I done to you?
Or how have I grieved you?
Answer Me…
My people . . .