Growing up as a chorister boy at the Cathedral of All Saints in NewYork, a fascination with the music of Arcangelo Corelli, and a commission by Thomas Jefferson High School were the inspirations that helped the legendary Adolphus Hailstork curate the unicorn piece Sonata da Chiesa. By this point in his career his works had been recorded and performed by some of the world’s greatest orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Sonata da Chiesa was premiered in 1992, and the title implies a style that hearkens back to seventeenth century religious music. Curiously, Hailstork chose to title the movements of this sonata using the standard choral liturgy. The Dona Nobis Pacem, filled with monophonic chant-like music exploring open and parallel harmonic motion, flows seamlessly into the Finale Exultate, a vigorous chorale verging on ecstasy. Hailstork ingeniously portrays the cathedrals; large stone walls feature large blocks of sound and expansive chordal voicing. While the Dona Nobis is highly reverent and functional yet it’s also wandering and contrapuntal, the Exultate evolves into a boisterous, dance-like theme that eventually returns to the monophonic harmonic motion. The piece spans generations stylistically as Hailstork weaves his own harmonic language with the reverent tonal counterpoint of the seventeenth century.

— Aaron King Vaughn