Silent Night
for chamber choir, children's choir
and cello
2017
A pale sun greets us, through the haze and mist and smoke and dirt
Silent Night was commissioned by the Luminescence Chamber Singers.
When the ensemble first approached me to write a Christmas piece for them, I knew instantly that I wanted to write something meditative and a little unusual. Coming from a European family, what had always struck me about Christmas was this sense of quiet holiness, where people come away from the loud, consumeristic build-up to their own rituals and traditions – a dichotomy of quietness and noise.
I have always found the intersection between Christmas and the First World War incredibly interesting. One need only think of the Christmas Truce of 1914, where unofficially and quite spontaneously, a ceasefire spread across the Western Front and soldiers crossed the trenches. I am fascinated by rituals in times of chaos, and I wanted to explore the implications of this later in the war, in 1916, where there was a pervasive atmosphere of death and destruction.
When the choir suggested I set Russell Buzby’s text Silent Night: 24th December, 1916 to music, I was taken by its intersection of mythical imagery with pieces of the church mass and very modern, violent wartime images. The music aims to reflect these visceral juxtapositions, and constantly rotates between beauty and destruction; between the vile and the holy; between clamour and mediative silence, reverence and ancient holiness.
COMPOSER / Meta Cohen
TEXT / Russell Buzby
PERFORMERS / Luminescence Chamber Singers, Luminescence Children's Choir,
Samuel Milch, cond. AJ America
Past Performances.
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Luminescence Chamber Singers: Christmas Program
15 December 2017
Luminescence Chamber Singers, Luminescence Children’s Choir
and Samuel Milch, cond. AJ America
All Saints Church, Canberra ACT, Australia
Join the Luminescence Chamber Singers and Children’s Choir for a moving concert of Christmas music for voices and cello.Herald in the festive season with the sublime sounds of the Luminescence Chamber Singers and Children's Choir. Set in the stunning surrounds of All Saints Anglican Church, Ainslie and accompanied by guest artist, Samuel Milch (cello), this concert includes uplifting reimaginings of well-known and much loved Christmas music. Music from composers such as Byrd, Prätorius and Britten are juxtaposed with contemporary carols by Australian composers and the world premiere of a newly commissioned work by composer Meta Cohen. In Meta's mournful meditation on Christmas during the First World War, the nostalgic warmth of the holidays confronts the clamour and chaos of the Western Front and the pervasive presence of death - eternal silence, eternal night.
Score available through the Australian Music Centre