Chapter 8: ALLELUIA

Alleluia, the finale of Constantinople is a long setting of the word Alleluia. It starts by revisiting the multitude of themes and musical genres that have appeared in isolation in the work so far, often combining two themes from different movements in counterpoint with one another. The main theme of Alleluia, which first appears in the piano, has an interesting story attached to it. It was offered spontaneously by Maria, my daughter who was ten years old at the time, one day as we were driving to Ottawa. She was bored in the back of the car and started making up tunes to occupy herself during the ride. During the days preceding the trip I was wondering how to bring Constantinople to a conclusion. A work like this that had already included so much in it needed something different for its conclusion and nothing that I had tried up to that point was different enough to function in the manner that I expected the closing movement to function. When Maria started making up this "Alleluia" melody, it hit me that a child's song—that particular spontaneous song—was the fitting conclusion to this work. In Alleluia the melody appears in an unabashed manner every time the music raises a dilemma of some kind with regards to one's attitude towards the human condition. It provides a prompting from the heart each time the mind stumbles and stalls. And the mind stumbles a few times in the course of this movement. When for example "Hristos Voskrese", the Serbian Easter chant sung by the English Chamber Choir (the second 'virtual' performer in Constantinople), gradually turns first into a tragic climax and later into a still moment of nowhere to go, the Alleluia theme intercepts the musical indecision by affirming humanity in the midst of human cruelty. When the music of Kyrie returns as a prayer for forgiveness, the Alleluia theme takes over the quietness of the moment of prayer and leads it into the closing celebration of life and perseverance. The theme itself became not only the central element in the closing movement but also the refrain of a pop song, which originally followed the finale of Constantinople but was eventually withdrawn from the work to find its place in a subsequent cycle of songs for Maryem Tollar called Mystical Visitations.