Feb

6

SDG commissions oratorio: ‘Et iterum venturus est’ by Peter Bannister

Filed Under Bannister: Et iterum venturus est, Concerts, Commissions | 1 Comment

Signing commission agreement: Composer Peter Bannister & SDG Chairman Richard GieserSoli Deo Gloria has commissioned a new oratorio from composer Peter Bannister. The new work, Et iterum venturus est, will be scored for chorus, orchestra and vocal soloists, and is being written in honor of the 2008 centennial celebration of the birth of composer Olivier Messiaen. (Click here to download this article as a PDF.)

Composer Peter Bannister came to the attention of conductor John Nelson, Soli Deo Gloria’s Artistic Director, during the early years of Nelson’s decade-long post as Music Director of L’Ensemble Orchestral de Paris. Since then the orchestra has twice commissioned and premiered works by the Paris-based composer. A graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, Peter Bannister is the recipient of various national and international prizes and awards; his works have been performed in Berlin, Paris, Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles and New York, and broadcast on Italian and American public radio.

Nelson’s idea to commission an Advent-related piece from Peter Bannister met with early interest from American physician and Soli Deo Gloria board member Kathy Albain, who later became the project’s chief fundraiser and spokesperson. “I was spurred by the realization that great concert works associated with the season of Advent—works like Handel’s Messiah, which are performed year after year—are so very few in number. There have hardly been any such works written in over 100 years,” writes Albain, an organist and avid lover of music, “The coming of Christ is as vital a theme as ever and worthy of a fresh setting by a brilliant composer.”

The New Testament writings of another physician—Luke’s Gospel and its ’sequel’, the Acts of the Apostles—will feature prominently in the libretto of the new work which will be assembled by the composer. The title, Et iterum venturus est, is taken from the Nicene Creed and is translated “and he shall come again.” Bannister intends his oratorio to dually celebrate the birth of Christ and the anticipation of his second coming, and in so doing pay homage to the eschatological focus of much of Olivier Messiaen’s music.

Conductor John Nelson comments on the commissioning of Et iterum venturus est.
Audio courtesy of WFMT, December 2008.

Peter Bannister shares his thoughts on the themes of his new piece:

ADVENT

Advent pulls the imagination in two directions. We turn our minds to the universal longing for God that is given voice in the Jewish scriptures, the yearning toward the “desire of all nations.”[…] Christmas is the moment of recognition, the moment when what he have always secretly known is set out in plain and fleshly terms. And at the same time, “Woe unto you who desire the day of the Lord” and “Who may abide the day of his coming? For he is like a refiner’s fire” […] Christmas is a beauty that is the beginning of terror: the Burning Babe, who has come to cast fire upon the earth. Before his presence, the idols fall and shatter.[…] we are perpetually “on the eve” of God’s coming, knowing and not knowing what it will be.

- Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury), Advent

Peter BannisterIt is a characteristic of prophetic literature in both the Old and New Testaments that many texts seem open-ended, suggesting more than one possible historical fulfillment. For example, Isaiah 9’s celebrated proclamation that “for unto us a child is born” can be interpreted in terms of contemporaneous events but also points beyond them to the birth of Christ. Similarly, if Christian exegesis since the earliest days of the Church has frequently pointed to the fulfilling of Old Testament expectations in the Incarnation, a careful reading of the words of Zechariah, Micah and other prophets leads to the conclusion that a substantial portion of the literary genre known as Jewish apocalyptic looks beyond first-century Palestine to the coming of the Messiah at the end of time to usher in God’s ultimate rule, the New Heavens and the New Earth.

ET ITERUM VENTURUS EST

The historic creedal statement “et iterum venturus est” (’and he shall come again’) reminds us that the Christian faith not only calls us to remember the Word’s becoming flesh but also to live in anticipation of Christ’s return. Et iterum venturus est is conceived as a work pulled in the “two directions” of which Archbishop Rowan Williams speaks, focusing on Christ as both the promised Savior and Judge of Christian eschatology. For a long time I have felt that during the liturgical season of Advent (which will be the context for the first performance of the piece in December 2008) a great deal of attention is paid to recalling the (not-so-burning) Babe of Bethlehem and relatively little to the Crucified and Risen Christ’s future coming in glory … ‘to judge the living and the dead’ in the words of the Creed. The danger of this is that the awesome, unfathomable mystery that is the Incarnation becomes domesticated, dissociated from the transformational call to repentance and its implications for both our individual lives and God’s world. While being careful to avoid any kind of speculation on the time-frame for the parousia, I intend to juxtapose scriptural texts regarding these two comings of Christ within one work in order to demonstrate their inseparability within the Biblical witness and, to paraphrase leading theologian Jürgen Moltmann’s view of the importance of eschatology in his classic ‘Theology of Hope’, to interpret the past in the light of the future.

It is precisely this idea of looking at the world from the perspective of the eschaton that is one of the most startling characteristics of Olivier Messiaen’s output right from the early Apparition de l’église éternelle through such pieces as Quartet for the end of time, Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, Couleurs de la Cité céleste, Eclairs de l’au-delà, etc. Indeed I would say that the whole of Messiaen’s oeuvre, including those pieces with no overtly religious reference, is eschatological to the core (in its innovative language, approach to form, poetics …). Whereas so much of even the greatest sacred music is essentially orientated towards a recollection of the past, I would argue that Messiaen’s work propels us towards God’s future in a manner that has few parallels in 20th century Western art.

In a post-WWII climate in which Christianity was generally held in polite or not so polite contempt in Western European cultural circles as outmoded, irrelevant and intellectually empty (serious criticisms which should not be hastily dismissed), Olivier Messiaen was one of very few composers of international stature to combine theological orthodoxy and engagement with modernity at the highest musical level, upholding the credibility of Christian art in a secularized environment and attaining the respect of believers and non-believers alike. Sixteen years after his death I feel there is a real need for younger European composers to draw the implications from Messiaen’s trajectory and to explore its potentialities in their own work.

In this context, the opportunity to write a piece in his memory for performance in his own church on the eve of what would have been his 100th birthday (it ought to be remembered that he was also perhaps the greatest musician of the 20th century to have worked in the service of the liturgy) is as immense a privilege as it is a musical and spiritual challenge.

The historic La Trinite Church, where Messiaen held post for over 60 years, will be the site of the world premiere of Et iterum venturus est. Conductor John Nelson and L’Ensemble Orchestral de Paris will present the work on December 9, 2008, in the culminating concert of the year-long Messiaen celebration at La Trinite. Click here for festival details.