INVITATION TO A MARRIAGE (2013)

SATB Choir
Duration 4:40

Commission and premiere November 16, 2013
Macalester Concert Choir
Michael McGaghie, director

Followup performance November 22, conducted by McGaghie, with choral forces of the University of Hawaii Manoa, Miguel Felipe director.

View Sample Score (PDF) (several pages omitted)

Premiere recording, Macalester Concert Choir

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TEXT and PROGRAM NOTE

The Macalester Concert Choir and director Mike McGaghie commissioned this piece for premiere in Fall 2013, both at the college and for performance during church services. I hunted for a text that would be interesting and fun for the fantastic singers in the choir (hopefully with interesting and fun music to match), and that could serve in both sacred and secular contexts. I found the following in The Chemical Wedding, an alchemical book published anonymously in 1616. At the start of the story, the narrator receives a mysterious invitation, written in gold:

Today – today – today
is the wedding of the King.
If you are born for this,
Chosen by God for joy,
You may ascend the mount
Whereon three temples stand
And see the Thing yourself.

Take heed,
Observe yourself!
If you’re not clean enough,
The wedding can work ill.
Perjure here at your peril;
He who is light, beware!

Sponsus et Sponsa [Bridegroom and Bride]

~ trans. Joscelyn Godwin

I loved the text and read all sorts of meanings into it, but I realized that these were quite personal, so I reworked it to bring out those meanings. This is the result:

Soon, soon, soon,
the wedding of the Queen and King.
You are all born for this magic,
God chose you for joy;
Come climb the spire
And see for yourselves.

Regard, you King, you Queen,
Regard, you gathered company,
Regard your own hearts with care!
If you’re not true enough,
The wedding can work ill.
Perjure here at your peril;
If you come with a shut heart, beware!

For this marriage is a clean flame
Its alchemy burns to a bright bliss.

Marriage, or any close, intense relationship, is a space in which one ultimately won’t get away with dishonesties. If one is not self-aware enough, “true” enough with oneself and one’s partner, then the marriage of two souls can be painful and even dangerous; the interaction with the other inevitably bares inner truths that may be uncomfortable or destructive. But in those dangers there is a fierce beauty, and the possibility of a more direct, meaningful existence. This is why I added the last two lines: embracing the “clean flame” of marriage could ultimately lead to an even deeper, more intense joy.

My first idea for the title was simply Wedding Invitation; I changed it to Invitation to a Marriage to add a little ambiguity: is this an invitation to attend a wedding, or to be married? If the latter, who is asking to marry, and who is being asked… who is the “you” addressed in this text? Is it the queen and king? the gathered company? the hearer of this piece? Perhaps most mysterious of all: who is the person or being speaking to us through this message? What would it be like to encounter that being?

The text suggests religious and spiritual possibilities as well: the risks of not being true might apply in a marriage of the soul with God, or the church as bride with Christ the Bridegroom. There’s also a theme of magic and alchemy, as the source book The Chemical Wedding has connections with mysticism and the Rosicrucian or ‘Rosy Cross’ order, a pre-Christian mystical philosophy.

Some other changes I made from the original: “today” became “soon” to give a sense of excitement and anticipation, and because it sings better. I added “queen” for more balance, and reversed the word order from the usual “king and queen” because musically I wanted a “long-short” vowel pair (queen-king); I also liked the unexpectedness of it. I added the word “magic” because I consider marriage to be a form of interpersonal magic, and that seemed to go with the idea of alchemy. “Mount” became “spire,” for the beauty of the word. “Clean” became “true” to bring out the idea, mentioned above, of being true to oneself and others.

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