Anthems for Baritone and Piano

Duration: 4:00
Completed: 2011
Instrumentation: Baritone and Piano

Program Notes

These Anthems are composed on poems of the English poet Richard Crashaw. Crashaw emerged from a time of great unrest between factions of Christianity in England, and unlike contemporaries such as John Milton, reflected the world that he saw in his work (thus, he is sometimes called the only English Baroque poet). Crashaw’s poems did not make him well loved, though, and most contain a farrago of elements that include at least one or two that would make them unwelcome in almost any venue. Thus, how could I help but be fascinated by them?

II – Luke 11 “Blessed be the Paps which Thou hast sucked”

Suppose He had been tabled at thy teats,
Thy hunger feels not what He eats:
He’ll have His teat ere long, a bloody one,-
The mother then must suck the Son.