Seasonal favourites: Morten Lauridsen - O magnum mysterium

The last of my seasonal favourites uses one of the oldest texts heard at Christmas • 'O magnum mysterium' has been used as a chant on Christmas morning for well over a millennium, & may date from as far back as the 6th century • As so many Christmas-related texts do, it explores the immense contrast of sacred & secular, here between the great mystery of God born as a human being & the fact that He lies in a manger, watched around by animals—the profound & the prosaic, cheek by jowl • Throughout the last 500 years, many composers have been drawn to this text—the settings by Palestrina, Victoria & Poulenc are among the most well-known—but the setting by Morten Lauridsen, composed in 1994, has become not only the most celebrated in recent times, but also one of the most-performed contemporary Christmas pieces of the last two decades • One doesn't need to listen to much of Lauridsen's music to realise that he has a decidedly single-minded approach to composition • Lauridsen has, it seems, little time or interest in the drama & dissonance of life, opting instead for untroubled subject matter & an indefatigably tonal palette • Heard in large quantities, i find Lauridsen's music to be both stifling & disingenuous; but taken in small doses, as in O magnum mysterium, there's much that rings true, much to celebrate •

Despite the obvious differences, the composer who comes most readily to mind when listening to this piece is Maurice Duruflé • Like Duruflé, Lauridsen is deeply interested in chant, but instead of taking existing chants & harmonising them (as Duruflé did, most famously in his Requiem), Lauridsen's O magnum mysterium is, fundamentally, a piece of contemporary plainchant • Its melody comprises the very same kind of short & long durations one finds in that music, & its contour matches closely the emotional undulations of the text, sounding both natural & comfortable • Furthermore, the element of repetition—so prevalent in chant—is of singular importance here too; Lauridsen's main melody occurs no fewer than three times (the overall structure is AABA), ensuring it's well-retained in the memory • 'Tonality', as used in contemporary music, needs to be defined afresh for each composer who employs it, & for Lauridsen it consists of extremely simple triadic relationships that are enriched through additional diatonic notes • The result is a lush, humid brand of tonality that is undeniably inviting, but as i said before, becomes both dull & rather cloying when heard for long periods • In this context, it wins unconditionally, becoming one of the most ethereal paeans to the Nativity ever composed •

A dry acoustic will absolutely massacre this piece, as its chant-like rhythms will become dessicated & dead; hence why pretty much every recording of it (& by now there must be easily over a hundred), has been made in large, resonant spaces • The best i've heard—& it's the best by a very large margin—is by the choir of Canterbury Cathedral on their 1998 album A Canterbury Christmas (CD) • Directed by David Flood, the choir achieves a simultaneous lightness of touch & richness of texture that is breathtaking; recorded in the cavernous space of Canterbury Cathedral gives Lauridsen's music the room it needs to become a vast, unbroken line • Of course, the dense diatonic clusters depend on the lower parts, but it's the trebles who are most outstanding, floating through the material & positively soaring at its high points • It's a sumptuous, spine-tingling, utterly transparent performance of a real Christmas masterpiece •

Morten Lauridsen - O magnum mysterium
FLAC [23Mb]
MP3 [v0 vbr | 11Mb]
text [wiki]