Cantate, Laudate - Scott Wheeler

Composer: Scott Wheeler

Text: Psalm 148

Instrumentation: SATB chorus and organ

Duration: Approx. 6 minutes

Date Written: 1990

Text:

Cantate Domino.
Laudate Dominum.

Praise God from the heavens;
Praise God in the heights;
Praise God, all you angels;
Praise God, all you heavenly hosts.
Praise God, sun and moon; Laudate Dominum.
Praise God, stars that glow;
Cantate Domino.

Praise God, you highest heavens,
And you waters above the heavens.
Laudate Dominum.
Let them praise the name of God,
Who commanded and they were created.
God established them forever and ever
And gave a law which shall not pass away.
Cantate, Laudate.
Cantate Domino.

Praise God all the earth, you sea monsters and all the seas,
Fire and hail, mist and snow,
Storm winds, at God's will you blow.
Cantate Domino.
You mountains and all you hills,
You fruit trees and flying birds.
All things that grow,
Cantate Domino.

Let the rulers of the earth
Young men and maidens, elders and children
Praise the name of God whose name alone is exalted;
Whose majesty is above earth and heaven,
And who has raised up strength for the people
And praise, praise for all God's saints.

Laudate, Cantate Domino.
Praise for all God's saints.
May God be praised by the faithful,
By the children of Israel, the people near to God.
Cantate Domino. Laudate Dominum.
Alleluia.

Additional Information: Cantate, Laudate was commissioned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the choir of Christ's Church in Rye, New York. My wife Christen Frothingham, herself an alumna of this choir, supervised the choice and adaptation of the text. As it happened, Psalm 148, the psalm appointed for the Sunday of the premiere, was also the psalm at our wedding at Christ's Church. The psalm's emphasis on the importance of faithful worship and praise seemed apt for the occasion. For the anthem, Christen helped me to combine a contemporary paraphrase of the psalm with bits of older translations, adding Latin psalm titles as refrains, and rearranging a few words to create rhymes ("storm winds at God's will you blow/Cantate Domino"). The title of the piece reflects both the "Laudate Dominum" opening of Psalm 148 and the "Cantate Domino" that the Christ's Church choir uses as its warmup exercise and as the title of its newsletter

Musically, the work reflects various traditions of church chant and hymnody. The alternations of English and Latin in the text find a corresponding (though not always exact) alternation of "chant" and "hymn-tune" melody in the music. For the occasion of this centennial, the line "Praise to all God's saints" seemed particularly germane, so it is repeated to begin a unison hymn to end the anthem. In this respect, Cantate, Laudate follows the musical tradition of acknowledging the congregation, as Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams do at the end of their large choral works. I was especially conscious of one hundred years of Christian saints both in the choir and in the parish that has nurtured my wife and has welcomed me. So though the dedication of Cantate, Laudate is to the choir, it extends especially to their director Stephen Rapp, and more generally to the parish as a whole

Mr. Rapp also deserves special acknowledgement for his astute and generous assistance regarding numerous practical details of the anthem's composition and notation. In particular, I have gratefully adopted his various indications of organ registration for this edition

Performance note: The use of the treble choir (children) is optional. Though suggestions for treble and descant are provided in the score, they may be rearranged at the discretion of the director.