Daughter Ecstatic

SATB and Soli Quartet

One of the warhorses of choral repertoire for the “holiday” season has always been Handel’s oratorio, Messiah. I love that piece dearly but I’ve always felt it suffered from a bit of overexposure so, when I was asked to write something for a December concert series, I jumped at the chance to work with something from the old warhorse. What I ended up deciding on was a soprano aria from Handel’s piece and then tried “deconstructing” the basic elements before folding them into my own harmonic language. It begins with an ecstatic explosion of sound from the choir which eventually settles down into the recognizable melodies from the aria. The middle section collapses into icy music for a soli quartet before the choir signals the return of the original material.

Daughter Ecstatic was commissioned by The Singers - Minnesota Choral Artists (Dr. Matthew Culloton, conductor) and received its premiere on December 4, 2010.

The Text

From the Bible (Zechariah 9:9, 10)

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee. He is the righteous Savior…And he shall speak peace unto the heathen.

Bonus

And, just to prove my choral cred a bit, below are some pictures I took during a 2022 trip to Dublin where I took a brief pilgrimage to Fishamble Street to visit the former sit of the Great Music Hall, where Handel premiered Messiah in 1742 in order to benefit The Charitable and Musical Society for the Release of Imprisoned Debtors. By 2015, the only remaining structure was the two-story entrance arch which, at the time, was being used as a gateway to the courtyard of an apartment complex.

Performed by The Singers - Minnesota Choral Artists
(Dr. Matthew Culloton, conductor),