Hail, Queen Of Heaven Choral Octavo

The piece begins with a simple two-part chant for alto voices. The other voice parts enter weaving a wordless chorus around the chant with the sopranos creating a mystical halo to greet the 'Queen of Heaven'. There follows more use of free rubato which extends the vocal canvas whilst the sopranos and basses sing a chant in parallel tenths.
At the end of each verse, the last two lines form a kind of refrain and Dubra returns each time to the same resonant chords. For the passage 'O gentle, chaste and spotless Maid' the texture changes completely. Here Dubra wishes to capture the essence of medieval dance to reflect a naive, more theologically uneducated view of life. 'Remind thy Son that He has paid / The price of our iniquity' constitutes the most impassioned part of this hymn before returning again to the refrain.
To conclude, Dubra returns to the opening two-part 'Hail, Queen of Heaven' motif and builds an ever-more colourful and complex soundscape until the final blazing chord of E major.
Commissioned in 2008 by the Baltic Voices festival in Ireland for a visit by the "State Choir Latvija". Dubra's first work composed in the English language. - from notes by Rupert Gough © 2009