Another Two Post-Threni Shorter Sacred Oratorios: Daniel Kellogg's 'The Fiery Furnace' And Peter Bannister’s 'Et iterum venturus'

Two new sacred oratorios in the wake of Stravinsky's Threni of 50 years ago ...

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The Fiery Furnace

Music and Libretto by Daniel Kellogg
Text taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
Commissioned by Soli Deo Gloria, Inc.

I. Prayer of the Israelites
II. Nebuchadnezzar erects an image of gold
III. Praise for the image of gold
IV. Refusing to worship the image of gold
V. Prayer of hope
VI. The burning fiery furnace
VII. Praise the God of Judah

all movements are performed without break

Program Notes

Music Sample and Complete Oratorio Music file [$2.69].

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Peter Bannister's seven movements of Et iterum venturus est:

1) Fall and Protoevangelion
2) Prophecy
3) Incarnation
4) Kenosis
5) Resurrection
6) Ascension
7) Parousia (Second Coming)

Premiered, in Paris, by Soli Deo Gloria in 2008.

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Header: Antologion, Lviv, Ukraine, Future European Union. Stavropygian Brotherhood Printing Press. 1649 CE.

Image credit: (c) The Ukrainian Museum and Library of Stamford, Connecticut: the oldest Ukrainian cultural institution in North America. 2006. Copyright controlled. All rights reserved.

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Unresearched Areas in Interpreting Byzantine Semiography

"Although the manuscripts belonging to the Putna school have been the object of a variety of attentive research world-wide, they still contain highly challenging areas left almost untouched until today. Evstatie the Protopsaltes appears as the last writer of his time to use in his cryptographic liturgical texts an encryption procedure that had been known in 14th century Europe as keyed writing, best exemplified, among others, by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. By its very dimension and complexity the cryptographic procedures used in his 1511 Antologion are of the most remarkable if not entirely unique in medieval European literature: 87 cryptograms, with 108 combinations in 7 alphabets. An unusual type of cryptic writing is well exemplified in Evstatie's 1515 manuscript by the numerous anagrams used especially in papadic and melismatic chants, normally sung "in extenso" at vespers, and referring to the structure of the poetic text used. Besides those the ideograms, exemplified in the Sofia Antologion, and the repetition signs, invented by Evstatie himself, combine with special other signs such as those used to mark the cadences to offer a truly rich and unexpectedly challenging picture of Putnean semiography. These unusual semiographic aspects also contribute to a large extent in transforming each particular manuscript into a highly specific work, bearing the marked personality imprinted by its author."

Titus Moisescu, Musicologist and Byzantinologist, Iaşi, Romania, European Union.

Centre for Byzantine Studies at Iasi, Romania

Dedicated to the advancement of research in and performance of musical and visual arts of the Byzantine tradition with special emphasis on Eastern chant of the Byzantine tradition and with general emphasis on ecclesiastical chant of the Christian European tradition.

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The Section of the Lviv Art Gallery — The Museum of Art of the Ancient Ukrainian Book