Caroline Shaw wrote and the swallow in 2017 in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Taking its text from Psalm 84, the piece conveys “a yearning for home that feels very relevant today,” Shaw said. Just as the swallow in the psalm is looking for a nest where she may lay her young, so too are families looking for a place where they can keep their family safe. Starting in low homophony, the sopranos soar wordlessly upward, mimicking the bird’s flight. Soon, the rest of the choir joins in with overlapping ascending hums. Shaw, known for her fondness for extended vocal techniques, then evokes the sound of the autumn rain with a bed of soft repeated “n’s” under the final phrase.

Although Felix Mendelssohn is best known for his instrumental music and large-scale choral works like Elijah, the composer wrote a surprising number of intimate unaccompanied choral pieces called part-songs. While he only released four volumes of part-songs during his lifetime, another three sets were published posthumously, and others remain in manuscript form. Mendelssohn intended for many of these part-songs to be sung outside and even subtitled this set of Six Songs, op. 59 “Im Freien zu singen,” or “to be sung outdoors.” In a letter to his mother dated July 3, 1839, Mendelssohn recounted the joy of singing with a small amateur chorus in the forest outside of Frankfurt: “How lovely the song sounded, how clearly the sopranos trilled in the air, and what a glow and charm enveloped all the pitches, everything so quiet and furtive and yet so clear—that I couldn’t have imagined . . . it was magical in the forest solitude, so that tears almost came to my eyes. It sounded like pure poetry.”

Mendelssohn composed Six Songs, op. 59 between 1837 and 1843. Mirroring their intended performance venue, many of the songs feature texts on the Romantic themes of nature and springtime. Most are simple strophic settings, where the same musical material is used for multiple verses. Only occasionally does Mendelssohn employ imitative counterpoint for contrast, as in “Die Nachtigall.” Otherwise, the homophonic textures maximize the accessibility of the songs and the comprehensibility of the text. Given its artful simplicity, the elegiac “Abschied im Walde” gained particular popularity and even folksong status.

Before turning his professional sights to composition, Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds studied at the Latvian Baptist Theological Seminary for two years. Still deeply religious, Ešenvalds often turns to religious subjects for his works. In paradisum, an antiphon from the Latin Requiem Mass, is traditionally sung when the body is taken from the church for burial at the end of the funeral service. Dedicated to his grandmother Irma, who passed away the morning of the work’s premiere in 2012, the piece evokes the gentle beating of angels’ wings as they guide the soul to its eternal rest in paradise. In the beginning, the chorus is barely audible, humming and singing wordlessly under the solo cello’s elegy, before opening up into a slow-moving, chant-like statement of the text. The chorus recedes into the background again, reappearing with increasingly impassioned declamations before dissipating again like a fading heartbeat.

Although Anton Bruckner is most often remembered for his monumental symphonies, sacred music dominated much of the composer’s career. It served as a direct expression of his deeply held Catholic faith instilled in him as a child singing at St. Florian’s monastery near Linz, Austria. Much of Bruckner’s sacred music reflects the ethos of the Cecilian reform movement that dominated Catholic church music in the late 1800s. The aim of the movement was to restore the dignity and purity of church music, which its proponents believed had become corrupted by the “worldliness” of post-Enlightenment secular music. Dedicated to the music director at St. Florian’s, Os justi meditabitur is a prime example of Bruckner’s adherence to this philosophy. Written in 1879, the motet is informed by Gregorian chant and the 16th-century polyphony of Palestrina. It is also set in the Lydian church mode and strictly avoids the use of any sharps or flats, lending it an ancient feel.

One year before his death, Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály wrote, “Our age of mechanization leads along a road ending with man himself as a machine; only the spirit of singing can save us from this fate.” Vocal music was important to Kodály throughout his life and formed the foundation of not only his compositional output but also his scholarly work and the pedagogical method that bears his name. In the early 20th century, Kodály and his friend Béla Bartók went on tours of rural Hungary, recording thousands of folksongs on phonograph cylinders in an effort to preserve and codify their musical heritage. Of the nearly 150 unaccompanied songs Kodály wrote, many are arrangements of these folksongs or have folk-inflected rhythms or melodies. Composed in 1933, Öregek (“The Aged”) is set to a poem by Sándor Weöres. The plodding, descending motion in the lower voices captures the slow movement and perhaps resignation of a person in later life. In contrast, Túrót eszik a cigány (“See the Gypsies Munching Cheese”) is an arrangement of a playful Romani dancing song. As a result of its accessibility and lightheartedness, the song is a popular choice among children’s choirs.

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is best known for his minimalist, serialist compositional style inflected by traditional melodic and harmonic elements of Renaissance, Medieval, and Eastern Orthodox sacred music. It perhaps comes as no surprise, then, that he would choose to set a highly repetitive portion of Luke’s Gospel in Which was the son of... The context of the commission drew Pärt to this text that painstakingly outlines Jesus’ genealogy. In 2000, Pärt was asked to compose a work for the youth choir Voices of Europe, which was gathering in Reykjavik to celebrate the city’s status as the European Capital of Culture that year. Knowing Iceland’s passion for genealogy and tradition of passing on names from one generation to another, Pärt turned to this rarely set passage of Luke’s Gospel and its string of ancient names.

In lesser composers’ hands, this text might become like a recitation of the phone book. Instead, Pärt avoids monotony by employing a variety of musical characters and textures. The piece opens assuredly, calling to mind Spirituals in its use of call and response between the upper and lower voices. A more flowing section in 9/8 follows, building to a climax with the recitation of the names Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham in a gleaming C major. Finally, Pärt leads us through the circle of fifths to a simple resolution on “which was the son of God”—the whole crux of the passage.