When Chanticleer asked English composer Roxanna Panufnik to compose the first section of its new work, The Boy Whose Father Was God, she knew nothing about the source material: the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, an apocryphal text that portrays the young Jesus of Nazareth less as a holy do-gooder and more as a trickster figure resembling the unintentionally terrifying, all-powerful mutant kid in the famous Jerome Bixby story and Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life.” Although Panufnik was raised in the Church of England and became a practicing Catholic at age 21, it’s no surprise that she was unfamiliar with the episode from Jesus’ childhood: It’s from one of many noncanonic gospels used by various sects of the early Christian church but eventually suppressed by the establishment church leaders. Still, she instantly connected with one episode in which the youthful son of God seeks to console a grieving mother whose infant daughter has just died, and revives the child.
“I’m a mother myself,” says Panufnik, who was born in 1968. “I have three small children, and I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose one.”
Panufnik’s qualifications went beyond her own motherhood. She’s one of England’s most popular composers, her music appears on many CDs, and she’s written in a multitude of genres, including ballet, opera, film, chamber ensemble, television, and more. But she admits a special affinity for choral and other vocal music in general, and sacred or spiritual texts in particular, including her well-regarded Westminster Mass. Enchanted by Chanticleer’s recordings and international reputation as the world’s leading male choral ensemble, she had approached the Bay Area–based chorus to work on another project, and the group asked her to contribute to this multimovement, multicomposer, musical portrait of the life of Jesus, which also contains pieces by San Francisco’s Mason Bates and by Arvo Pärt, John Tavener, and Ivan Moody, plus another commission, from Peter Michaelides. Chanticleer will sing the entire compendium at four Bay Area churches March 26–April 1.
To obtain a libretto for her opening section, Panufnik sent the Thomas text to her friend and frequent collaborator, the novelist and music journalist Jessica Duchen, who suggested bringing in other parts of the tale from the Gnostic Gospels to explain why the grieving mother and family initially rebuffed Jesus’ offer of assistance, thus providing a dramatic conflict and narrative structure for the musical work.
“I was very moved by the story and this resistance by everybody to let the young Jesus help, because he had the reputation of being mischievous with his unique powers,” Panufnik recalls. “It’s so different from the story we all know from the New Testament.”
Like the story, the music for “Let Me In,” the 10-minute setting Panufnik composed to Duchen’s text based on the Thomas tale, also originated in Jesus’ time and place. Duchen, who grew up in a Jewish family, told Panufnik about the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. They began researching the music of the time and discovered an ancient setting from Yemen that’s chanted in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. “It’s the oldest Kaddish that anybody knows about, and probably the closest to what would have been sung at the time of Jesus,” Panufnik explains. “It starts with a declaration of grief, and that runs as sort of a backdrop. It’s a beautiful melody with all this Middle Eastern ornamentation. It has a strong flavor of the East and feels very ancient, very evocative.”
Next week, Bay Area audiences will be the first to hear how Panufnik (who’s flying in from England for the April 1 performance) and Duchen transformed these ancient sources into a musical tale for our time — one that you don’t have to be a Christian, or even a mother, to appreciate.