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The University of Minnesota Singers

Cantus Jubilus (cantus, Lat., ‘song’, ‘melody’; jubilus, Lat., ‘shout of joy’), a work for unaccompanied mixed choir and soloists, takes its title from a name often associated with a joyful setting of a song without text – a type of chant more typically described as the long melisma on the final syllable of the refrain ‘alleluia’. While the melodic melismas in the work’s two main sections are composed on this principle, they are much freer in their design. Their inner forms almost resemble the unfolding of a spiral, with each lattice, or phrase, based on various patterns of repetition and transformation: in the first section producing an effect of slowly evolving melodic appearances, and a ritualistic impression of driving dances in the second. The musical syntax of the work was inspired by perceptual principles of harmony perception. Its harmonic language is based on my newly developed Sonance Modes, and it reflects my interest in musical gestures inspired by self-generative circular systems as formative schemas for representations of melody and form.

Cantus Jubilus was awarded the Craig and Janet Swan Composition Prize at the University of Minnesota School of Music. It received its first performance by the University Singers under the batons of Kathy Saltzman Romey and Matthew Mehaffey in April of 2011 at St. Olaf Church in Minneapolis, MN. The Swan Composer Prize competition, underwritten by the Swans, is an annual event and the emphasis rotates among choral, wind ensemble, and orchestral works. The competition was created in response to the generosity, vision and abiding interest in music as a living art on the part of Craig and Janet Swan.

One Response

1. Christophe Looten says:

   November 8, 2011 at 5:24 am

   Bravo, Zvonimir !
   I like this piece very much !
   
   C.