Don Freund's Nativitas! 2024 - Eric Smedley, IU Symphonic Band
Performance video:0:00
Performance and score: 8:40
Eric Smedley conducts the Indiana University Symphonic Band in this 2024 performance of Don Freund's Nativitas! Fantasy on Perotin's 12th-century Alleluia. Commissioned in 1996 by David G. Matthews and the North Hills (Pittsburgh) High School Band, Nativitas! is a fantasy on the 3-voice organum Alleluia: Nativitas composed by Perotin, one of the first music masters of Notre Dame Cathedral in medieval Paris. Actually, the musical style of organum is in itself a fantasy on Gregorian chant; Perotin's organum is built over a plainchant Alleluia (which is played by the winds in octaves over driving drum rhythms in the middle of Nativitas). In Perotin's organum the lowest voice sings the chant at an extremely slow tempo creating monumental drones, while the top pair sings a lilting contrapuntal dance. Nativitas! uses great blocks of Perotin's polyphony, juxtaposed and superimposed at multiple tempos and embroidered with some new materials echoing the Gothic style, celebrating this ecstatic, powerful sound from the 12th century.
Perotin's Alleluia Nativitas performed by the Hilliard Ensemble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfWZAPfblrQ
Score only video with 1998 performance by Stephen Pratt and the IU Symphonic Band: https://youtu.be/xlHomOCObX4
To hear the North Hills High School excellent premiere performance conducted by the composer and download the score visit http://donfreund.com/media/works/2502-2/nativitas
Scrolling Score videos of all Don Freund's works for Concert Band/Wind Ensemble:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhHS5JAC-cY&list=PLZwd_hjx1_U8Dzq43gFbP0v-OKfHFT9z-&pp=gAQBiAQB
A note regarding tempos:
Lovers of early music can hear performances of Gothic rhythmic-modal music performed at a variety of tempos: slow and grand, gently lilting, or fast and driving; Nativitas! presents al of these, juxtaposed and even occasionally superimposed. There are three basic tempos in this piece which have a 2:3:4 relationship, that is, the beat of the fast tempo (dotted 8th = 132) is twice as fast as the beat of the slow tempo (dotted quarter = 66); the note values of these two tempos have the same speed —it is only the beat groupings which create the different tempos. A "Moderately Fast" 3/4 tempo (dotted quarter = 100) feels "half-again" as fast as the slow tempo; here also the note values have the same speed (8th always
equals 200) —when these consistent 8th's are grouped in dotted quarter beats the beat tempo is 66; when grouped in quarter-note beats the
tempo is 100. To make things more interesting, there is another variety of the "Moderately Fast" tempo (beat = 100)
which arises when the meter is 6/8 and dotted quarter's get the beat (dotted quarter = 100); the note values are here moving 150% faster than the other tempos (e.g., 8th = 300; notice that in this tempo, the dotted 8th equals 200, the same speed of the 8ths in the slow tempo - see the trombones in m. 308). Conductors and performers who practice making these tempo shifts while keeping their inner subdividing metronome constant to preserve the relationships will find that it's a very useful musical discipline and a lot of fun!
Main tempos: Slow (dotted quarter = 66)
Moderately Fast 3/4 (quarter = 100)
Moderately Fast 6/8 dotted quarter = 100)
Fast (dotted 8th =132)
To shift from "Slow" to "Fast"
subdivide the dotted quarters into pairs of dotted 8ths before making the shift.
To shift from "Slow" to "Md. Fast 3/4"
keep 8ths constant while shifting from groups of 3 to groups of 2.
To shift from "Md. Fast 3/4" to "Md. Fast 6/8"
keep beats constant while shifting subdivision from groups of 2 to groups of 3.
Scores and recordings of all Don Freund's works for band at http://donfreund.com/media/works/2502-2
Nativitas! is published by Lauren Keiser Music Publishing