HOSANNA OF THE CLOUDS
“The choir returned to the chancel with a small orchestra for Kati Agócs’s Hosanna of the Clouds. This 18-minute cantata was created for Ryan Turner and the musicians of Emmanuel Music for premiere within this Palm Sunday service. A version for larger orchestra was originally commissioned by the Jebediah Foundation for Gil Rose and Boston Modern Orchestra Project.
The Juilliard-trained Agócs (she studied with Milton Babbitt), currently a composition professor at NEC, has been quite prolific and has received numerous commissions. The New Yorker has praised her work for its “elemental strength and generous lyricism.” Agócs had dreamed of making a piece for Palm Sunday that could be performed in the context of the church service. She noted that, with the exception of J.S. Bach’s BWV 182 “Himmelskönig, sei willkommen” (King of Heaven, welcome), it is rare to find music written specifically for this occasion in the church calendar. Agócs wrote of Hosanna of the Clouds:
It is scored for soprano soloist, mixed chorus, and a small chamber orchestra, downsized from the original instrumentation. The Latin text was chosen for the purity of the sound that it evokes. Three areas of the piece feature non-Latin text: a kind of cosmic scat which takes over and leads wordlessly into the Golden Section climax; the word “maranatha,” an ancient prayer in Aramaic meaning “come, o Lord!” or “make room for the master;” and the English utterance “make room.” A progression from inner (intimate) to outer (collective) is articulated over the work’s seven sections.
In the context of Palm Sunday, the opening Hosanna section sounded rather neutral and indecisive, but the emotional scope broadened as the work progressed. The energy at times rose very high, almost with the proclamatory force and rhythmic insistence of Carl Orff. In my favorite section Expecta Dominium/Ecce Venit in Nubibus (Wait for the Lord/Look, He is Coming with the Clouds), Terry Everson’s trumpet solo and Corrine Byrne’s soprano aria consoled us through an almost Puccini-like richness of orchestration and melodic invention. Throughout, the words came through clearly and seemed to matter. Hosanna of the Clouds concluded emphatically, O Jesu, festina! (O Jesus, hurry!). After the post-communion prayer and dismissal we could close our 20-page program books and go forth in silence.”
– THE BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER, “Some Superior Palmistry on Sunday”, 15 April 2025 (Lee Eiseman)