Resurrexit

• Published in 2019, Resurrexit is a piece for orchestra commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony in celebration of conductor Manfred Honeck’s 60th birthday.

Program Notes by the composer:

Composers from Bach to Mahler have set the Resurrection in large-scale choral settings, but the story has not been animated in the purely symphonic, kinetic form that attracted me.  Resurrexit challenged me to consider a subject and soundworld I had never explored musically, a biblical narrative full of mystery and the supernatural.

The piece opens in darkness, with the dusty mystery of the Middle Eastern evoked by exotic modes and sonorities, as a throaty melody laments the death of Christ. The entrance of the beautiful Easter chant “Victimae Paschali Laudes” signals the first stirrings of life, conjured by trills, altar bells, and the remarkable Semantron (a large wooden plank hammered by huge mallets used by Byzantine monks as a call to prayer). Mystery turns into magic as the ‘re-animation’ is illustrated by quicksilver textures that whirl and flicker, building to exhilarating finale which features a soaring reprise of the Easter chant.

• As part of the instrumentation for the work, Bates included Catholic altar bells (Semantron), which originated in the fifth Century when St. Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, introduced them as a means to summon monks to worship.¹

1. “Resurrexit,” Mason Bates, accessed February 11, 2025, https://masonbates.com/music-portfolio/resurrexit/.