Quire Cleveland
The Song of Songs: Choral Settings from Medieval to Modern
Friday, February 27, 2015, at 7:30 pm
Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist
1007 Superior Ave East
Downtown Cleveland
Saturday, February 28, 2015, at 7:30 pm
St. Bernard Catholic Church
44 University Avenue
Downtown Akron
Free-will offering (no tickets required)
Settings by such masters as John Dunstable, Giovanni da Palestrina, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Heinrich Schütz, Edward Bairstow, and Healey Willan.
The Song of Songs stands alone as one of the most remarkable books of the Bible. Written in ancient Hebrew around the 3rd century BCE, the poem recounts a young woman and man’s passionate love for each other. Many people find it surprising that the book is in the Bible at all. Its sensuous celebration of sexual awakening, its wondrous and explicit description of the lovers’ bodies, and the fact that the name of God is never mentioned seems to place The Song outside the usual themes of Holy Scripture. Christian and Jewish theologians, both ancient and modern, have wrestled with the place and meaning of The Song, often developing allegorical interpretations to explain the book’s presence in the Bible. Most mystical interpretations adhere to the literal meaning of the poem - the desperate longing and ecstatic joy of lovers as a fitting metaphor for the relationship between the soul and God.
In medieval times the text became closely associated with worship of the Virgin Mary, and was incorporated into liturgies in her honour. Once sections of the poem were accepted as liturgy, it was natural for composers to set them to music. The Song of Songs has provided composers from across the centuries the occasion to lavish some of their most sensual musical resources on a sacred text.