by Paul Matheson

Just in time for Christmas 2023, the award-winning British vocal ensemble The Gesualdo Six has released an album of sacred music for Epiphany.

The various pieces performed here all express wonder at the ‘mystical alchemy’ of God becoming human, while remaining God. Across many centuries the Feast of the Epiphany has inspired numerous composers to communicate the incomprehensible mystery of the eternal, divine Godhead choosing to be incarnated as a tiny, fragile, vulnerable human child, in order to accomplish the work of redemption. This music of Epiphany seeks to convey the emotionally overwhelming spiritual revelation that He became more like us, so that we might become more like Him.

A festive service

This album’s musical programme is designed like a festive service. Renaissance and contemporary compositions on the theme of the Nativity are alternated with exquisitely sonorous traditional Latin plainchants taken from the Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory and Communion of the Mass on the Feast of the Epiphany.

The programme begins with the open emotional appeal of the popular and warmly lyrical carol Three Kings from Persian lands afar, by the German composer Peter Cornelius (1824-1874).

The four-voice motet Ecce Advenit (‘Behold He Comes’) was composed by the English composer William Byrd (1540-1623) as Introit for Mass on the Feast of the Epiphany. While the piece celebrates the birth of the Saviour, its elegant, melancholy harmonies hint musically at the terrible price that the Holy Child is destined to pay for our salvation.

Byrd invites us to contemplate the deeper sacred mysteries of the Epiphany, and his invitation is picked up by contemporary British composer Joanna Marsh (b1970) in the next  composition on the album. Marsh’s setting of Jane Draycott’s haunting poem In Winter’s House responds to the poem’s portrait of homelessness, squalor and deprivation being transfigured by divine light. The sweetness and careful dissonance of Marsh’s composition conjures a musical language of comfort and joy juxtaposed with discomfort and sorrow. We are invited to contemplate the immanence of Christ in every human being who suffers or is excluded or is denied love. And this music reminds us of the teaching that the adult Jesus would later give during His ministry:

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’ (cf. Matthew 25:34-45).

Paul Matheson is a music reviewer and diversity officer with the police 

The Gesualdo Six: Morning Star – Music for Epiphany

(Hyperion CDA68404)