Wojciech Kilar - Angelus (1984)

Описание: Orchestra - Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra
Choir - Polish Radio And Television Choir - Cracow
Conductor - Antoni Wit
Soprano - Delfina Ambroziak
Producer - Jacek Złotkowski
Engineer - Michał Gola

Label - Polskie Nagrania
Cat. Number - SX 2334
Recorded - 16-18.09.1985 (Katowice)
Released - 1986

Notes:
ANGELUS by Wojciech Kilar is a musical prayer to the text of the „Angelic Salutation." The composer conceived the idea in the famous monastery of Jasna Góra and wrote the piece as a votive offering on the unveiling of the main altar after its renovatien. Angelus has a symetrical form. The prayer repeatedly said by the choir, growing in intensity, turns into singing: a musical entreaty and then imploration to the Virgin Mary. Finally the prayer returns in its spoken form, as at the beginning, and slowly fades away. The piece's tonal structure is made up of three chords: B major, E major and A major, at first in this centripetal order tending with its dissonance dominant tension towards the centre of A major, and ending up in the perfect cadence in E major. And just this universal tonal structure seems here to be symbol of our existential drama: Man is his own centre and at the same time he constantly transcends his existence in his desires and strivings. The growing, extatically curved line of the prayer determines also the way the text is sung: the soprano invocation is initially based on a single tone, then the build up of melodic motives turns into long waving phrases. The repetition of melodic motives, pulsating invocations, is sustained by a progressively rising motion, with the corresponence between the solo voice and choir growing more and more intensive untill they reach culmination on the exclamatory words Jesus-Now-Mary. These are the three key words in the Kilar interpretation of the „Angelic Salutation." The subject of that supplication to the Holy Virgin is an entreaty to get help here and now. The mystic aloofness of God, feeling of eternity conveyed in beautiful contemplative chorales, are contrasted by an imploration for an immediate intervention and succour. Angelus was first performed in October 1984 in the Katowice Centre of Culture.