Celebrating 'Gloria' in all its forms

This Christmas, we hear some of the glorious "Glorias," from Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Sebastian Bach to Leonard Bernstein, John Rutter, and Daniel Pinkham.

The music is written to reflect praise, as in the "Gloria" section of the Catholic Mass. Ron Cohe, host Robin Young's former chorale director at John F Kennedy High School in Plainview Long Island New York, takes a look at some notable "Glorias" in history.

We start with the "Gloria" portion of Bernstein's theatrical musical work "Mass," which was commissioned by former First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971.

British composer Rutter's "Gloria" was commissioned and performed a few years later in 1974. Cohen feels Rutter was highly influenced by Bernstein's bracing piece.

Vivaldi wrote his "Gloria" most likely around 1715 for the choir of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage in Vienna for girls, where he was a priest and a music director.

Cohen says Vivaldi paved the way for the greatest "Gloria" of them all, the "Babe Ruth of 'Glorias,'" from Bach's "Mass in B Minor," which he started composing in 1733
and completed in the 1740s, near the end of his life, when he had already gone blind.

Pinkham is an American composer who died in 2006, his "Christmas Cantata" also contains a "Gloria" and is notable for its double brass choir.

"Angels We Have Heard On High" is a traditional Christmas hymn born from the French folk song "Angels in the Countryside."

Robin Young produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Emiko Tamagawa and Todd Mundt. Young also adapted it for the web.