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- John Harbison
The Supper at Emmaus (2013)
- Associated Music Publishers Inc (World)
The Supper at Emmaus is part of the 'Sacred Trilogy'
- 0.2+ca.0.1/0000/org/str
- SATB
- 20 min
- English
Programme Note
Text: (En) Luke 24:5-8 (KJV)
Composer note:
David Hoose wrote to me at the end of July 2013, asking if I would be able to compose a piece for the Cantata Singers 50th anniversary. I described to him a long-contemplated cantata, The Supper at Emmaus, which our friend Craig Smith discussed with me some years ago — for both of us a favorite Biblical passage. Completing it now, in Craig's memory, suggested a collaboration with Emmanuel Music, which the leadership of both organizations was able to arrange.
The main narrative, Historia, sets the Biblical report of the story in Luke 24 (KJV) for four soloists and orchestra. Before and after this chronicle comes a Prelude and Postlude, chorus and orchestra.
The chorus first sings the words from Luke of the guards (are they Angels?) who confront the women coming to the tomb seeking Jesus' body. The Postlude text is from a letter of Paul. Its tone is common and personal; Heinrich Schütz composed, in the Geistliche Chormusik, this same text in memory of his friend, the composer Johann Hermann Schein.
When Craig Smith and I talked about this subject we started with Bach's great Cantata 6, in which the themes of abandonment and loss are expressed as collective anguished lamentation, and as intimate loneliness and uncertainty. We also paid attention to many paintings, especially the two by Caravaggio, the first theatrical, the second later one meditative, with a mysterious new female figure, whose role, we decide, involves us. All the figures, including Jesus, were approachable, familiar. (In some of Caravaggio's other painting his historic figures have dirty feet.)
A special hint for the composer came from Duccio's marvelous painting The Road to Emmaus. Jesus is talking with the two disciples; he is disguised as a traveler, with broad-brimmed hat, knapsack, and walking stick.
One of the archetypal story beginnings: A Stranger Comes to Town.
And the strangeness, the mystery, the fervor, felicity, and awkwardness of the Scriptural account, a glowing recalcitrant found object, taken on just as it comes.
It is a great privilege to write another large piece of sacred music for two such cultivated institutions as the Cantata Singers and Emmanuel Music. I am very grateful to both organizations and their Executive Directors, Jennifer Hughes and Pat Krol, to both Music Directors, David Hoose and Ryan Turner, and to the generous sponsors, David Rockefeller Jr., the Mattina R. Proctor Foundation, and Epp K. Sonin.
— John Harbison
Composer note:
David Hoose wrote to me at the end of July 2013, asking if I would be able to compose a piece for the Cantata Singers 50th anniversary. I described to him a long-contemplated cantata, The Supper at Emmaus, which our friend Craig Smith discussed with me some years ago — for both of us a favorite Biblical passage. Completing it now, in Craig's memory, suggested a collaboration with Emmanuel Music, which the leadership of both organizations was able to arrange.
The main narrative, Historia, sets the Biblical report of the story in Luke 24 (KJV) for four soloists and orchestra. Before and after this chronicle comes a Prelude and Postlude, chorus and orchestra.
The chorus first sings the words from Luke of the guards (are they Angels?) who confront the women coming to the tomb seeking Jesus' body. The Postlude text is from a letter of Paul. Its tone is common and personal; Heinrich Schütz composed, in the Geistliche Chormusik, this same text in memory of his friend, the composer Johann Hermann Schein.
When Craig Smith and I talked about this subject we started with Bach's great Cantata 6, in which the themes of abandonment and loss are expressed as collective anguished lamentation, and as intimate loneliness and uncertainty. We also paid attention to many paintings, especially the two by Caravaggio, the first theatrical, the second later one meditative, with a mysterious new female figure, whose role, we decide, involves us. All the figures, including Jesus, were approachable, familiar. (In some of Caravaggio's other painting his historic figures have dirty feet.)
A special hint for the composer came from Duccio's marvelous painting The Road to Emmaus. Jesus is talking with the two disciples; he is disguised as a traveler, with broad-brimmed hat, knapsack, and walking stick.
One of the archetypal story beginnings: A Stranger Comes to Town.
And the strangeness, the mystery, the fervor, felicity, and awkwardness of the Scriptural account, a glowing recalcitrant found object, taken on just as it comes.
It is a great privilege to write another large piece of sacred music for two such cultivated institutions as the Cantata Singers and Emmanuel Music. I am very grateful to both organizations and their Executive Directors, Jennifer Hughes and Pat Krol, to both Music Directors, David Hoose and Ryan Turner, and to the generous sponsors, David Rockefeller Jr., the Mattina R. Proctor Foundation, and Epp K. Sonin.
— John Harbison