“ Interestingly, the work that tried to please the least was the most compelling. Hayes Biggs’ piece Ave Formosissima harkens back to the dance-mad, melismatic and slightly raucous music of the Middle Ages. But the score, with its zig-zagging lines and pungent dissonances, is genuinely contemporary.”
—New York Times
“ A Consuming Fire, a short, zesty trio by Hayes Biggs, led off the evening. The piece is framed by some engagingly angular rhythmic writing, with a lyrical nougat at the center.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“ [The] most convincing and coherent performance [was] Hayes Biggs’ homage to his composer/pianist colleague Eric Moe, E.M. am Flügel, a short piece with romantic gestures and echoes of Berg and Stravinsky.”
—Aufbau
“ The Mass for All Saints would be an exciting challenge for those choirs skilled in precise intonation and rhythmic agility. Biggs writes with knowledge of and respect for the expressive capabilities of the human voice.”
—Choral Journal
“ Hayes Biggs’s wedding motet Tota Pulchra Es, here being sung for the first time, impressed by its quiet solemnity and neat working of its expressive opening motif: not empty fanfares but a reminder of the seriousness and privacy of love.”
—New York Times
“ Mass for All Saints by composer Hayes Biggs releases shadows transformed into tendrils of light by the arabesque of the vocal line. Contrapuntal procedures are used to their utmost expressive effect. [It] is a work of a melodist of talent in the manner of Puccini, or better yet, Respighi.”
—La Liberté
“ The Biggs song, Northeast Reservation Lines, is a real party piece... the sneakiness of the changes, the liveliness of the music and the verve of the performance worked handily... a potential recital hit in the vein of Bernstein’s I Hate Music cycle.”
—The Village Voice
“ All the works tried a return to tonality typical of the decade; the most successful made the return oblique and ambiguous. Hayes Biggs’ O Sacrum Convivium took off from the motet of Tallis, yet it handsomely reconfigured early modes in a modernistic scheme of free tonality.”
—New York Times
“ Hayes Biggs’ To Becalme His Fever... is a vivid evocation of anxiety, fits and repose. The language embraces pointillistic colors, romantic lines and prickly episodes when the demons hover. Biggs claims a forceful and subtle dramatic hand, along with a keen command of instrumental resources.”
—The Plain Dealer
In honor of the advent of Advent, I offer links to recordings on SoundCloud of my motet O Sapientia, beautifully sung by C4, conducted by Christopher Baum, and the first two movements of my String Quartet: O Sapientia/Steal Away, which make use of that motet.The quartet movements are played by the amazing Avalon String Quartet, in a smoking hot performance on my Manhattan School of Music faculty recital this past January.
Here is the text, along with a translation:
O Sapientia quae ex ore Altissimi prodisti, / Veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiæ.
O Wisdom that proceeded from the mouth of the Most High, / Come and show us the way of prudence.
The text comes from the so-called “O Antiphons” (O Sapientia, O Adonai, O Radix Jesse, etc.), best known to many Christian worshipers via the Advent hymn Veni, veni, Emmanuel (“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”).
Strictly speaking, these antiphons are appointed for the week before Christmas, with O Sapientia coming first on December 17, so it is a tad early yet for this text. Since, however, I have thus far composed but one Advent motet, it will have to suffice for this purpose. Enjoy!
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