O Emmanuel

Composer: Barna Szabó
Words from composer

My relatively short and simple piece O Emmanuel was composed in 2021 at the request of conductor Árpád Tóth and the Csíkszerda choral family for a special occasion: a concert in Budapest, held at the Lutheran Church in Józsefváros, featuring settings of antiphons associated with the Christmas season by seven different Hungarian composers, all performed in a single evening.
Like all the O Antiphons, this work, too, is imbued with the spirit of Advent: a sense of absence, longing, and waiting, tinged with a touch of melancholy. Yet, faintly, as if emerging between the lines of the score, one can also hear echoes of György Orbán’s Ave Regina and his setting of Psalm 126.