Gloria

An annual music festival and competition, the Gloria is truly a week-long celebration. It culminates in a High Mass, held in the Grand Concert Hall on the Day of Harmony.

Music

Competition

The music of the High Mass is traditionally composed by the same person who leads it. In recent years, this person is the winner of a competition which takes place in the weeks before the Holy Day. The competition, which is the most prestigious event for singer/composers in Crescent, is rigorous, taxing, and long, and tests both their composition, their vocal ability, and their ability to lead a choir and lay audience through the hour-plus long mass.

Format

Gloria High Masses usually contain:

• An overture, for instruments alone.
• Various arias, sung by the mass leader or other featured soloists.
• Choruses, often monumental and meant to convey a sense of glory. Traditionally sung by the Luminaux Symphonic Choir.
  • The arias and choral movements typically alternate, with two of one and three of the other, depending on compositional needs and artistic demands.
• Final aria, sung a capella by the mass leader.
• Cantata, featuring both audience and choral movements, as well as the mass leader. The culmination of this cantata is traditionally when the miracle is performed.

Miracles

By tradition, the lead singer is allowed to use the divine power generated by the ritual to perform a miracle. Past miracles have included resurrections, weather intercessions, and mass healings of the sick or infirm.

Notable Miracles

• Valanthe Amakiir's destruction of the defenses of the Jade Tower
• The resurrection of Phantos RustyWing
• The return of the Holy Temple at Mt. Daneasus

History

First Gloria

Tradition holds that the first Gloria was held many centuries ago, when Uriel Lochevsky composed the Magnificat to his love, the Archangel Hagar. She, being an archangel, had spurned his mortal love, but when Pelor himself interceded, she deigned to sing the soprano part with him at the Spring festival. Such was the beauty of his music to her that at the end of the vocal symphony, she ascended back into the heavens with him in her arms, forever united.

First Modern Gloria

The first of the Modern Glorias was held only 370 years ago, when a series of terrible floods on the LightningStroke river threatened to destroy the whole of the City of Luminaux. At that time, Pelor sent a vision to a bard-priest by the name of Gabriel. He was to seek out the human woman Rachel Lost Child, an orphan adopted by the White Sand clan of halflings, marry her, and bring her to Luminaux to sing a mass on the Day of Harmony. He did so rather directly, choosing to believe that the vision of the Morning Star gave him license to essentially kidnap her. Though eventually love did blossom between them, their relationship was as much rivalry as partnership.

When given the choice of music, she chose for them the Magnificat, an implicit challenge, as the difficulty of that music is unparalleled. She further upped the stakes by refusing to tell him what she had chosen until the last moment, by singing the opening notes of the first movement, acappella.

They both rose to the occasion, becoming only the second mortal man, and the first mortal woman, to successfully perform publicly the entirety of the symphony alone. To this day, they remain the last who have done so.

The power and beauty of the music moved Pelor to intercede in the weather patterns, averting the floods and saving the city.