ANIMATED – April 26, 2026

from olagjeilo.com: The Ground is based on a chorale from the last movement of my Sunrise Mass (2008) for choir and string orchestra. The chorale, beginning at Pleni sunt caeli in that movement is the culmination of the Mass, and it’s called The Ground because I wanted to convey a sense of having ‘arrived’ at the end of the Mass; to have reached a kind of peace and grounded strength after the long journey of the Mass, having gone through a lot of different emotional landscapes.

I wanted to make a version that could be performed independent of the Mass and one that was also more accessible in terms of instrumentation, with a piano & optional string quartet accompaniment.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s setting of Ave verum corpus (K. 618) was written for Anton Stoll (a friend of his and Haydn’s) who was musical co-ordinator in the parish of Baden, near Vienna. It was composed to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi and the autograph is dated 17 June 1791. It is only forty-six bars long and is scored for choir, stringed instruments, and organ. Mozart”s manuscript itself contains minimal directions, with only a single sotto voce at the beginning.

Mozart composed this motet while in the middle of writing his opera Die Zauberflöte, and while visiting his wife Constanze, who was pregnant with their sixth child and staying in a spa near Baden. It was less than six months before Mozart’s death.

Ave verum corpus is a short Eucharistic hymn dating from the 14th century and attributed to Pope Innocent VI (d. 1362), which has been set to music by various composers. During the Middle Ages it was sung at the elevation of the host during the consecration. It was also used frequently during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

Vittoria Aleotti (c. 1575 – after 1620) was an Italian Augustinian nun, a composer, and organist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. She is recognized as one of the earliest known female composers to have works published, contributing to the development of sacred and secular vocal music.

Aleotti was a nun at the Convent of San Vito in Ferrara, where she composed and performed music. Her published works include madrigals and sacred motets, notably appearing in the 1593 collection “Il giardino de’ musici di Donne.” Some scholars believe she may also have been the composer known as Raffaella Aleotta (c. 1570 – after 1646), who also published a collection of sacred motets in 1593, however this has not been historically proven. After 1593, Vittoria disappeared from the historical record, while Raffaella gained tremendous fame.

Vittoria’s contributions to music were significant in an era when female composers were rare, and her works remain a subject of interest in studies of women in Renaissance music.

“Hor che la vaga aurora” was first published in 1593, which means Vittoria Aleotti would have been 18 years of age (or less) at the time of composition.

When you try your best but you don’t succeed,
When you get what you want, but not what you need,
When you feel so tired, but you can’t sleep.
Stuck in reverse.

And the tears come streaming down your face,
When you lose something you can’t replace,
When you love someone, but it goes to waste.
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones,
And I will try to fix you.

And high up above, or down below,
When you’re too in love to let it go,
But if you never try, you’ll never know
Just what you’re worth.

Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones,
And I will try to fix you.

Tears stream down your face,
When you lose something you cannot replace.
Tears stream down your face,
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes.
Tears stream down your face,
And I…

Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones,
And I will try to fix you.

George Chung (b.1986) enjoys playing the piano and the violin, having received an ARCT from the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) for both instruments. His was an accompanist for the Coquitlam District Chorus and was most recently the regular accompanist for the Coastal Sound Youth Choir. He performs on the violin with the Solaris Piano Trio, a Vancouver-area group. In addition to his musical endeavors, he earned a doctorate in Medical Genetics from the University of British Columbia and is currently residing in New York City for post-doctoral training in the field.

We plough and sow, we are so low, that we delve in the dirty clay,
′Til we bless the plain with golden grain
And the vale with the fragrant hay.
Our place we know we are so low, down at the landlord’s feet.
We′re not too low the bread to grow but too low the bread to eat.

We’re low, we’re low, we are so low yet from our fingers glide
The silken flow and the robes that glow
′Round the limbs of the sons of pride.
And what we get and what we give we know and we know our share:
We′re not too low the cloth to weave but too low the cloth to wear.

Down down we go, we are so low, to the hell of the deep-sunk mine,
But we gather the proudest gems that glow
When the crown of the despot shines.
Whenever he lacks upon our backs fresh loads he deigns to lay.
We’re far too low to vote the tax but not too low to pay.

We′re low, we’re low as to war we go to fight some foreign country
That was yesterday our greatest friend but today′s our enemy.
“God bless our boys!” the papers scream
“Praise them!” the churchmen cry.
When the war is won and home we come, who cares if we live or die?

We’re low, so low, into boats we go to flee war in our home country,
And we′ll try to make a better life when we land across the sea.
But it’s “Send them back!” the press cries out
“Back to where they came!”
We’re far too low to feed and clothe but not too low to blame.

We are so low but soon we know that the low folk will arise,
And the tyrants in their tow′rs of gold shall hear the people′s cries
No more shall they hold us in thrall;
their lies we will not heed.
But every heart shall hear the call and the people will be free.

Notes from Windborne: “Song of the Lower Classes came out of the Chartist movement for voting rights in the UK in the 1830s and 40s. A leader of the Chartists and a prolifc poet, Ernest Jones was thrown in prison for his writings, which were considered seditious but continue to ring true over a century later. His words have inspired many others to add to this piece over the years, including us. We wrote our verses in 2016 at the height of the crisis in Syria, which was the particular reference for our verse about refugees, although that tragedy is far from the only situation either in which people have been forced to flee their homeland because of violence and persecution.”

This song also changed the course of Windborne’s professional trajectory, when a video of them singing it outside Trump Tower in New York City just before the inauguration in 2017 went viral. They were flooded with people asking to bring music of protest and resistance to their communities, and they made the decision then to dive into touring full time.”