Score Of The Week | Christi Crux Est Mea Lux | Joy Decoursey-Porter
Sincerity is never a guarantor of quality. I once met a man who very sincerely believed that plants communicated with him. Despite overwhelming evidence against them, I regularly meet people who sincerely believe that the bagpipes are an instrument that should be played and listened to.
In the world of composition, sincerety is a strange animal. Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote incredibly beautiful, high quality religious music without really believing in the text. There is something grotesque about that in my mind. I think it was Kile Smith in an online conversation one time that wrote something like, “I can’t imagine setting an ‘Alleluia’ without believing it with every fiber of my being.”
If you start exploring the music of Joy Decoursey-Porter, you will discover that it comes from a place of simple sincerety and deeply held conviction. She cares about the text deeply because she believes it. It’s the sort of earnestness that you can’t ignore. Whatever your personal religious convictions, her setting of “Christi Crux Est Mea Lux” is the sort of thing that can grab hold of you. It’s like the homeless man singing in Gavin Bryars “Jesus Blood Never Failed me Yet.”
What surprises me most are the vertical harmonies. It’s music that is largely horizontally motivated. Singable vocal lines are always the driving force. This is so true that some parts of it almost seem to suggest the “successive composition” of early polyphony to me. It’s verticality that sometimes happens accidentally, and I’m always happily suprised when it takes a vertical turn I hadn’t expected.
To hear Joy’s setting of “Christi Crux Est Mea Lux”, click the button below.
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