James Whitbourn · Son of God Mass
Whitbourn grew up in the county of Kent, in southeastern England, where he had started composing while still a high school student. He also sang in the choir of St James Church, where he acquired a lifelong love of choral music. Right after his studies in composition, he was hired by the BBC as a composer, conductor, producer and presenter. For the Daily Service – a short Christian service broadcast on BBC Radio 4 – he had to find a suitable piece of music of no more than two minutes. Because there were few such works available, he started writing them himself:
‘I felt like I was a 20th century kapellmeister! This was in the 1980s, before email, and I would return to the office to hear secretaries taking phone calls from listeners, commenting on the music and sometimes asking where they could find copies.’
These positive reactions encouraged Whitbourne to keep on writing, even if composing tonal music in that period was not so highly regarded. The success of the short pieces also led to a series of commissions, including for music for major events such as D-day 60 and the commemoration of 9/11. His responsibilities at the BBC also grew, from radio to the TV world. He spent about thirty years working as a producer for the TV specials Carols from King's and Easter from King's, a job he combined with working as producer of the music and video label Opus Arte of the Royal Opera House.
One of Whitbourn’s best known compositions is the oratorio Annelies, a grand work based on the diary of Anne Frank, with a libretto by the poet Melanie Challenger. She asked Whitbourn to work with her on the piece after hearing his Son of God Mass. The Mass came out of the music that Whitbourn wrote in 2000 and 2001 for the BBC documentary series Son of God. For that series, the BBC developed a fact-based reconstruction of the story of Jesus Christ, in which biblical places like Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth were shown as Jesus would have known them. The images of the vast and sacred landscapes inspired Whitbourn to write poignant orchestral music that he soon thereafter reworked in the form of a Mass.
In addition to the traditional parts of the Mass, Whitbourn added a few interludes to his Son of God Mass: ‘Because – with the exception of the Kyrie and Gloria – I have taken portions of liturgical Mass settings not intended to be heard in a row to serve as linking meditative sections that reflect the course of the liturgy and cite fragments from it.’ Where choir and organ play the parts of the Mass, Whitbourn chose a soprano saxophone for the connecting parts: ‘The use of the soprano saxophone comes from a vigil that was held a few years ago for war-torn Bosnia, and for which I had written a few short, mantra-like passages, sung initially by the choir and then by the entire church community, and on which the saxophonist John Harle improvised. I returned to this sound world when I wrote Son of God Mass.’ The result is an unusual, warm colour combination that fits perfectly with the selection of British Christmas carols that close the programme.
