Ubi Caritas

Musical memories haunt the score of Ola Gjeilo’s anthem Ubi caritas (1999). It’s a piece that grows directly out of the Norwegian composer’s earliest choral experience: singing Maurice Duruflé’s setting of the same text—“Where charity and love are, God is there”—in his school choir. The Duruflé piece itself emerges out of plainsong, the Christian church’s earliest melodic tradition, so the Gjeilo feels like a musical palimpsest: layers of sonic history that coalesce into something new and distinctive. While the music blooms into smudgy four- and five-part harmonies, it’s a work that constantly tugs back to unison—to plainsong’s shared, unadorned melody. While Duruflé draws on traditional chant, Gjeilo’s influence is more abstract—more about sensation than direct quotation. The anthem swells outward from a single soprano line, blooming into greater density and harmonic daring before returning to the original theme, now newly enriched, bringing the piece’s two worlds together.