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PHOENIX REPERTOIRE

O Süsses Licht (2001)

Music by Ramona Luengen / Text by Edith Stein (1891-1942)



A remarkable, highly intelligent and inspiring woman, Edith Stein became the assistant to the world-renowned phenomenologist Edmund Husserl at Freiburg University at the age of 25. The Jewish Stein converted to the Catholic faith in 1922 and became a Carmelite nun, taking on the religious name of Teresia Benedicta a Cruce (of the Cross). A noted philosopher and lecturer, by 1932 she was recognized as the intellectual leader of Catholic feminism in Europe. One decade later she, together with her sister, were to die in Auschwitz. Edith Stein was made a Saint on May 1, 1987 by Pope John Paul II.

Sieben Strahlen aus einer Pfingstnovene (1942)
Who are You, sweet light that fills me
And illumines the darkness of my heart?
You guide me like a mother's hand,
And if You let me go, I could not take another step.
You are the space
That surrounds and contains my being.
Without you it would sink into the abyss
Of nothingness from which You raised it into being.
You, closer to me than I to myself,
More inward than my innermost being -
And yet unreachable, untouchable,
And bursting the confines of any name:
         Holy Spirit -
           Eternal love!

Lux Aeterna (2000)

Music by Greg Newsome / Text from the Requiem Mass


Greg Newsome studied composition with the late Russian-Canadian composer Nikolai Korndorf before travelling to Paris to continue his studies with the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Via poetic imagery and structural process he attempts to create symbolic emotional states that uncover meaning in unknowable aspects of human existence. As an exploration of beauty this search necessitates a formalized approach appropriate to that which is sought, and in the case of Lux Aeterna, an eternal, calmly ecstatic moment is symbolized by a single sonorous object that eventually yields significant self-contrast prior to a new understanding.

Lux aeterna from The Requiem Mass
May light eternal shine upon them, O Lord,
in the company of Thy saints forever, for Thou art merciful.
Rest eternal grant to them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them
Eternal light shine upon them, O Lord.
Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord.

Down by the Riverside (2001)

Traditional, arranged Jonathan Rathbone


We Phoenicians first met Jonathan Rathbone in 1996 when we were guests of the Copenhagen Choral Festival and he was there performing with the world renowned Swingle Singers. He had, over the years, provided them with some of their most clever arrangements. Last Christmas we commissioned Jonathan to write Phoenix a new arrangement of What Child is this? and were so thrilled with the result that we asked him to write us one new chart a year over the next five years. Down by the Riverside is our second installment - a brilliant, high-octane modulating (did we say difficult?) arrangement that has the inimitable Rathbone sound·keeping us on as well as tapping our toes!



Do Not Lament

Music by Alexandre Gretchaninoff / Canon for Holy Saturday


Born in Moscow in 1864, Gretchaninoff studied at the Moscow and St. Petersburg Conservatories with Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1925 he left Russia to live in Paris and from 1939 until his death he lived in the United States. Gretchaninoff's choral style is extremely 'Russian', with rich choral textures and opulent harmonic sonorities. Very much influenced by music of the Russian Orthodox Church, his melodic writing is often stepwise and chant-like which he expands into splendid choral textures by composing for as many as 12 to 16 parts.

In the Russian Orthodox tradition, the hymn Do not lament is sung three times during Holy Week, the last time at Vespers before the Easter Service. At the words "for I shall arise," the priest lifts the Holy Shroud from the Sepulchre and carries it back into the Altar area, dramatically representing Christ's impending Resurrection.

Do not lament Me, O Mother, seeing Me in the tomb, the Son conceived in the womb without seed; for I shall arise, and be glorified; and, as God, I shall unceasingly exalt all who extol Thee in faith and in love.



O Rubor Sanguinis

Music and text: Hildegard von Bingen


Famous throughout Europe during her lifetime, Hildegard von Bingen was by any standards a remarkably gifted women: an abbess, visionary prophet, composer, reformer, counselor and poet, she was also a writer of treatises on medicine and natural history. One of the few female writers of the Middle Ages whose works have survived and the first woman composer in the Western tradition whose music is known, Hildegard von Bingen, after centuries of neglect, has become a deeply-researched, often-recorded, fascinating and inspiring spiritual figure in recent times.

O redness of blood,
which has flowed down from that height which divinity touched:
You are the flower that the winter of the serpent's breath never withered.

O Nata Lux

Music by Thomas Tallis / Text from Lauds on the Feast of the Transfiguration


Thomas Tallis began his career in pre-Reformation England and was organist at Waltham Abbey at the time of the dissolution of monasteries in 1540. Due to his considerable musical talents, he had not difficulty in gaining a position in the Royal Chapel and served there under four successive sovereigns until his death. In 1575 he was granted, with William Byrd, the monopoly of music publishing. His technical accomplishments were of the highest level, but he was also an inspired composer. Tallis' music is rich with telling dissonances and false relations, the special characteristics of English music up to the time of Purcell, which result from the simultaneous use of the ascending and descending forms of the minor scale. This is very much in evident in O Nata Lux, a spectacular example of the inspired marriage of clarity of line and unexpected, expressive disonnances.

O Light from light begotten, Jesus, redeemer of the world, In your mercy deign to hear the praise and prayers of the supplicants. You who once deigned to clothe yourself in mortal flesh for beings lost in sin, Grant that we may become part of your most blessed body.