Title, Duration, Place, Year, Publisher, Dedicated to, Premiere (performer(s), place, date)

VENI, VENI, EMMANUEL for SATB choir and organ, 10', Chatou, 2019, U.M.P., to Justine Doswell, BBC singers, Sofi Jeannin, conductor, Temple Church, London, 20.12.19.

« Yet to all who did receive him,

to those who believed in his name,

he gave the right to become children of God –

children born not of natural descent,

nor of human decision or a husband’s will,

but born of God. » John 1, 12-13

This is a setting for mixed choir of the Advent hymn Veni, veni, Emmanuel. 5 stanzas of the text appear for the first time in the Psalteriolum Cantionum Catholicarum (Cologne 1710) and 2 others in the Cantiones Sacrae published by Joseph Hermann Mohr en 1878, to complete the reference to the respective 7 O antiphons on which they are based. The melody is an adaptation by Thomas Helmore in 1851 of a setting of the Libera me (15th century, France).

My composition follows the structure of the text, tone painting the smiling acrostic of Ero cras (common to the O antiphons and Veni, veni, Emmanuel) and the approach of the Beloved, hence the use of the ascending circle of fifth, with one key per stanza : Veni Emmanuel in D - Veni Rex gentium in A - Veni O Oriens in E - Veni Clavis Davidica in B - Veni O Jesse virgula in F# - Veni Adonaï in C# - Veni O Sapientia in G#. The modulations between the different stanzas increase the rhetorical tension. The suspensive final cadence symbolises the « children of God » welcoming the Word.

Naji Hakim