Motet notes - Harbison

In this companion piece to "Wherefore I Put Thee In Remembrance," the atmosphere is one of great tenderness, but there is a hint of ambivalence as well. The opening phrases are a musical metaphor: an angular, circuitous melody, hinting at many tonalities and ending back where it started. Love is of God, and by loving our fellow man we return God's love. The motet is strictly polyphone and imitative – the voices never sing exactly together – except for the phrase "the propitiation for our sins." At the end the injunctions "to love one another" expand in intervals of greater reach and embrace at each repetition, but also each statement exists in a kind of isolation – they project a wistful hope, or even a question, rather than a confident assertion.