At the Creche/Wondrous Love

Program Notes

Most years my friend and frequent poet collaborator, David Brendan Hopes (also a prize-winning author and playwright), sends out a new Christmas-themed poem to his friends at the Holidays. For a few years I had wanted to set his “At the Creche,” a brilliant and often dark ode to the “rougher”  beasts of the world who matter as much as the gentle ones and who reminds us that the Christ Child’s and our journeys will not always be smooth sailing.

When I proposed a commission for the piece to Simone Bernhard, Music Director of the Asheville Gay Men’s Chorus (NC mountains), in which the text’s author has sung for many years, I was told the theme of the upcoming Christmas concert would be gospel and Appalachian folk music. I thus chose the famous Appalachian folk hymn, “Wondrous Love,” to provide not only a regional connection but also a gentler counterpart to Hopes’ often angular imagery.

The music, like the text, while devotional, is anything but a carol. The relatively dark tone puts it in the category of “nocturne” (“night music”), hence the subtitle. The folk hymn appears 3 times, initially as the first choral entrance. The tune is hummed only and the tonality is blurred by the piano bass octaves. The words emerge for the second iteration, where the tune is sung in harmony, but the tonality is again different from the original. The hymn closes the piece, now in unison and in its familiar key.

The melodic material of the Hopes text sections are derived from that of the hymn. The opening three verses contain some subtle polyphony, while the final two, which focus more closely on the Babe, are firmly chordal. As is typical with most of my work, the piano part throughout is decidedly independent, not simply a choral doubler.

At the Creche
David Brendan Hopes

When I set my crèche, the attending beasts 
Shall be basilisk and cobalt snake, 
Unconventional in quality of voice, 
But-O!-what din of praise they make. 

Welcome those who divide the watchful air, 
Who pronk upon the plain, who creep.
Let mayfly dedicate her moment; 
Squid hail from the mazes of the deep. 

It’s not that one has heard it all, 
Or transcended the expected thing, 
But one has walked the shadowlands 
And known what secret throats desire to sing. 

We wish, O lovely child of God and man, 
For you to pillow on the spotless lamb, 
Yet foresee the coming days will bring 
The jackal’s tooth, the vulture’s wing. 

Some cannot come to Bethlehem 
Even to adore the starry child. 
The rough beasts permit us to rejoice, 
For we will find you in the wild.