The version of “Es its ein Ros entsprungen” (Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming) which Chicago Chorale will sing in our December concerts has a noteworthy history.
The anonymous words of this Advent hymn date back to the 14th century. They were first published in 1582 in Gebetbuchlien des Frater Conradus. The rose in the German text is a symbolic reference to the Virgin Mary. The hymn refers to the Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah, which in Christian interpretation foretell the incarnation of Christ, and to the Tree of Jesse, a traditional symbol of the lineage of Jesus. The melody, also anonymous, first appears in the Speierisches Gesangbuch in 1599. German composer Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) published his harmonization of the melody in 1609, in his sixteen-volume collection Musae Sioniae (Zion’s Music). This melody and harmonization have been the familiar, standard version of the hymn, sung through the Christian world, ever since.
Swedish composer Jan Sandström (b.1954) has taken the original , unaltered Praetorius harmonization, for mixed chorus, and composed an additional four-part “soundscape” around it which transforms the listeners’ experience. The resultant work, composed in 1990, has become one of the most performed and recorded “high-end” Advent/Christmas choral pieces of our era.
Sandström grew up in Stockholm, then studied at the School of Music in Piteå, a small city at the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia. He later returned to Piteå in the 1980s as professor of composition. I studied at that school, myself, about thirty-five years ago, in a program called “Sommarmusik i Piteå;” Sandström was very likely teaching there at the time, though I was unaware of him. I was quite surprised to find such an institution, at what seemed like the end of the world. I don’t think the sun went below the horizon for the duration of my program, but the other participants (all of them Scandinavians) seemed nonplussed by the constant light; they were more concerned about the constant clouds of mosquitoes. I heard, and performed, a lot of wonderful music, with outstanding colleagues and in state of the art facilities. I had gone there because of an interest in Scandinavian vocal music; I returned home hooked on it.
Sandström's compositional output includes music for various ensembles: choir, opera, ballet, radio theater, and orchestra. Like most Swedes, he began his musical career as a chorister, and his work list includes a high percentage of vocal music.
Reviewer Dan Morgan commented on Sandström's setting of “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen”: "From its dark, monastic beginning rising to a radiant, multi-layered crescendo, this is the disc's crowning glory. ... It's an extraordinary fusion of old and new, a minor masterpiece that deserves the widest possible audience." Stefan Schmöe compared the "schwebende Klangflächen" (floating soundscapes) of the added second chorus to an acoustic halo. John Miller describes Sandström's addition as a "timeless, atmospheric, dream-like soundscape of poignantly dissonant polyphonic strands".