Description
“Magnificat anima mea Dominum” sang the Virgin Mary, “My soul magnifies the Lord”….
The title of this Cantata is chosen to represent the “soul” of Manchester, which is its Cathedral, so the central point is the Cathedral,dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, St George of England and St Denys of France. Ever since it was built, a life of prayer, intercession, worship and thanksgiving has continued within its walls. It has become the focus of the religious life, and needs, of the city of Manchester.
The opening treble solo (Magnificat anima mea) leads us back to the earliest days of the church when – as the words of the chorus remind us – there was only a small township sharing the site above the protective loop of the river Irwell. The days were punctuated by the regular call of the bells summoning the members of the college of priests for whom the church was built: their vow was to praise God “from the rising of the sun to its setting” [a solis ortu usque ad occasum]. Seven times a day they assembled in the choir stalls.
In the next section, the chorus recalls the days when the view from the church was rural and the seasons ordered the agriculture.
The peace of this picture is interrupted by accented sounds introducing the tenor soloist, who reminds us of the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, which radically changed the environs of the Cathedral. The chorus joins in with visions of blast furnaces, the relentless beat of machinery in the cotton mills and the danger and suffocating dust of the coal mines which even seeped into the miners’ ears and caused deafness. The world had become obsessed by commerce and the gentle sounds of nature were replaced by the hard noise of clogs on sett-paved streets.
By 1819, Manchester had begun to grow up the hill from the Cathedral, but even so, there were still fields not very far away. One August day there was a gathering on one such field by St Peter’s. The following section evokes the massacre there, dubbed “Peterloo”. Under the sabres a child dies.
The phrase with which the tenor introduces that tragedy is reiterated for another: the Second World War; but here the trebles represent the many prayers offered in the Cathedral, both publicly and privately, during that evil time when even the Cathedral itself suffered attack.
An instrumental interlude follows as we wait in hope for victory over evil. The Cathedral again takes the central place, as it was filled with praise and thanksgiving in 1945, with a crescendo of “Magnificat! To the greater glory of God”. It was for this that it was built, and for the comfort and consolation of all who still come to pray for peace and hope in the strong calm of its walls.
Forces:
Tenor and treble solos, trebles, chorus, semichorus, piano, organ