Download May Magnificat note

Malcolm Hayes
May Magnificat
May Magnificat was composed in December 2010 – partly as an antidote to the extremely cold
winter weather that month which I’m sure everyone remembers! The piece takes its example, and
some of its methods, from the choral motet which flourished in the Gothic cathedrals of Europe
in the 12th and 13th centuries. These settings would use more than one text at the same time,
often in more than one language.
And there are two texts here as well. One of them is the Latin plainchant Gaudeamus omnes in
Domino (Let us all rejoice in the Lord) – this celebrates the feast-day of the Assumption of the
Virgin Mary. And the other is the poem May Magnificat, by the 19th-century Catholic priest
Gerard Manley Hopkins.
The medieval motet grew out of a situation where choirs had been singing the same undecorated
Latin plainchant for several centuries, and by then they must have been fairly desperate to try
something different. So the idea started up of punctuating the chant by taking groups of notes
from it, and using these as the foundation stones of passages of polyphony built around them.
(Polyphony means ‘many voices’.) The effect in musical terms is like the illuminated letters in a
medieval manuscript – or the way that the foundations and walls of a cathedral hold up the roof
and windows and towers above them.
The chant is sung mostly by the tenors and basses, and each section of this is usually first heard
by itself; then it’s repeated in slow motion as the other voices sing around it. When we get to the
words in the poem where a ‘magic cuckoo-call/Caps, clears and clinches all’, the music breaks
free of the plainchant, and three solo voices – two sopranos and an alto – have their own special
celebration of Spring. Then the chant finishes off the piece – almost, because there’s a surprise
ending.
M.H.
© 2012 Malcolm Hayes
www.malcolmhayes.co.uk
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