John Tavener is best known for his glorious religious choral music. For Mother’s Day, this is his “Hymn to the Mother of God”. It is a transcendental experience to listen to it; like many things in the spiritual realm, it is simultaneously simple and complex.

The piece is scored for two choirs of approximately ten voices each. It’s harmonically driven (the melody isn’t particularly prominent or memorable), yet the harmony itself is simple – a choral hymn which doesn’t stray far from the home key. There are really only three phrases in the whole piece, and the third phrase is identical to the first. So what makes it sound other-worldly? First, each ten-voice choir is singing in a huge range in thick chords; second, each choir sings the same music three beats apart. The second choir ends up sounding like an echo of the first. This causes lots of notes to momentarily clash in dissonance, but then resolve to form a powerful consonance.

Short, simple, but wow does it pack a punch!

… Shines the Morning Star.

A friend of mine called the German hymn Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern “the Queen of Chorales.” The hymn was written in the first century after the Protestant Reformation, and remains a staple of Lutheran hymnody to this day (well, sort of.) There’s something about the shape of the melody and the dance rhythms that make it stick.

I adore the cantata that Bach wrote which features this chorale. The spirit of joy is captured perfectly, and is found in every movement, even though the chorale itself is only found in the first and final choruses. The piece speaks for itself, so I’m going to sit back and let you listen:

side note: BWV is a catalog of Bach’s works. BWV 1 doesn’t mean it’s the first piece he wrote – in fact, he was middle-aged when he wrote it – it just happens to be the first piece listed in the catalog.