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Duke Ellington: “Music from Sacred Concerts” “If a human being is worried groans and cries when praying. If a human being understands that what one enjoys in this life happens only for God’s grace, rejoices, sings and sometimes dances. Every man prays in his own language.”
Duke Ellington In his last years Edward Duke Ellington composed three sacred music concerts that represent the spiritual will of this great XXth century composer. It’s a music of extraordinary beauty to which the Duke worked with articular devotion personally caring for big band and chorus arrangements and texts mainly inspired to the Old and New Testament. This concert is an exclusive production for Notti di Luce; about fifty chorists and musicians of Notti di Luce Orchestra, the festival has always particularly cared, will exhibit. Duke Ellington, since 1965, when he executed his first Sacred Concert in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, widespreaded his sacred concerts in the whole world in the most important churches and cathedrals, in the concert halls and in the university in order to spread his faith message through music. Ellington, grown up with a deep religious background, considered himself a messenger against atheism. His beliefs reflect in the texts of the Sacred Concerts, in the titles and in the acted pieces, he also authored. This music, composed in the years of the struggle of Afroamerican people for theiremancipation, has also a strong social value: it outspoke what should be said in a convinced and penetrating way, but not clashing and provocative. Significantly the suite “Freedom”, that closet the work with a strong message of hope, lasts more than ten minutes. The Sacred Concerts represent the end of the line in Ellington’s artistic career: they include all his style ideas, tecniques and practices he acquired and show also new elements like the use of the chorus, of modal jazz of the ’60s and ‘70s, of recitative singing in the form of poetic reading with deep gospel and also R&B influences.
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