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US Premiere of Arvo Pärt's Christmas Lullaby with the Yale Camerata

Nov. 23, 2015

US Premiere of Arvo Pärt's <em>Christmas Lullaby</em> with the Yale Camerata

The Yale Camerata rings in the holiday season with the US premiere of Arvo Pärt’s Christmas Lullaby, alongside performances of Which Was the Son of… and Adam's Lament. The performance takes place on December 5 at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music in New Haven, Connecticut, led by Marguerite L. Brooks. 

Christmas Lullaby is a text setting from Luke 2:7 emphasizing the incongruity of a manger as a resting place for the savior of the world. It was written for and dedicated to Jordi Savall and his Ensemble Hesperion XXI in 2002. Which Was the Son of… also sets a passage from Luke, a seemingly endless list of men’s names that compliments Pärt’s repetitive and ritualistic approach to composition. Adam’s Lament invokes his fascination with the theology of St. Silouan of Athos, a Russian Orthodox monk who wandered Greece as an ascetic and recorded his thoughts about a variety of subjects. Pärt says of the piece:

For me, the name Adam is a collective term not merely for the whole of humanity, but for each individual, regardless of time, era, social class, or religious affiliation. And this collective Adam has suffered and lamented on this earth for millennia. Our ancestor Adam foresaw the human tragedy that was to come and experienced it as his own guilty responsibility, the result of his sinful act. He suffered all the cataclysms of humanity into the depths of desperation, inconsolable in his agony.

An abundance of performances of Pärt’s sacred music occurs throughout the month, including Te Deum at University of Iowa on December 2, Fratres for violin, percussion and strings with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra on December 3 and 5, Fratres for string orchestra and percussion at the Colburn School conducted by Robert Spano, Da pacem Domine with Seattle Choral Company on December 11 and 12, Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte with Idyllwild Arts Academy of December 12, and Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten with the Dalton School on December 17.

For more information on Arvo Pärt, visit universaledition.com.

Arvo Pärt
Christmas Lullaby (2002/2006)
for female choir or one voice and string orchestra
3’ 

Which Was the Son of… (2000)
for mixed choir a cappella
8’

Adam’s Lament (2009)
for mixed choir and string orchestra
24’

Te Deum (1984-1985/1992)
for 3 choirs, prepared piano, string orchestra and tape
30’

Fratres (1977/1992)
version for violin, string orchestra and percussion
11’

Fratres (1977/1991)
version for string orchestra and percussion
10’

Da pacem Domine (2004/2006)
for mixed choir or soloists (SATB) a cappella
6’

Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte… (1976/2001)
for piano, wind quintet, string orchestra and percussion
1.1.1.1-1.0.0.0-1perc-pno-str
6-7’

Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten (1977/1980)
for string orchestra and bell
6’

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