Gloria

Bursting with rhythmic energy, brass fanfares and surging choral swells, John Rutter’s Gloria (1974) is one of the British composer’s most popular works—typical of his musical directness, gift for melody and ability to write supremely effectively for performers of all abilities. While the Gloria sets text from the Latin Mass, it’s music for the concert hall rather than the liturgy—a 20-minute anthem whose three movements carve up the familiar words into three distinct, contrasting movements “roughly corresponding (according to the composer) to traditional symphonic structure”. The opening “Allegro vivace” (whose mood Rutter describes as “exalted”) rumbles into life in a roll of timpani and a distant spark of brass, summoning a volley of fanfares that set the scene for the voices. The singing appears gentler and more restrained at first, as the choir’s music clings close to plainchant, but is gradually pulled into the instruments’ dancing eagerness. The central “Andante” (“devotional”) has a bucolic quality, plainchant reinvented as something otherworldly—shimmering distantly at first, swelling briefly to a foreground blaze before fading out of reach again. Bringing back music from the first movement, the closing “Vivace e ritmico” transforms ceremonial rejoicing into an all-out spiritual knees-up: a syncopated dance, bubbling over with excitement as ripples spread through instruments and voices.