Advent Antiphon: O Adonai (2010)

As so often with Tavener’s music, a musically simple structure gives a profound and aurally complex result. Here the Latin words of the ‘O’ Antiphon ‘O Adonai’ are sung to an ecstatically climbing melody that returns (by a slightly varied inversion of pitches) to its starting point on a G. The melody is repeated in canon between first and second sopranos, and then harmonized in first inversion chords – all underpinned by sustained a G on ‘Ah’. Dynamics start at poco f and rise to ff. The effect is of an ever-intensifying cry to ‘Adonai’ to come and redeem us: music that fulfils the composer’s opening mark of ‘joyful, expectant’. Both soprano parts need crystal-clear top As, approached and left by an interval of a minor sixth.