Composer Notes

I conceived Jó! as an imagined moment in Transylvania centuries ago. It is 1568, and a group of women have just heard about the Edict of Torda, which promises to keep their country safe from the violence and religious persecution plaguing the rest of Europe. They cannot wait to tell everyone in their village the good news!

“Jó” is an all-purpose good feeling Hungarian word, like “okay,” “alright,” or “hunky-dory” — a reassuring word that is actually used in the Edict of Torda. In this lively song, sung in an ancient Hungarian dialect and crafted in the style of Eastern European folk music, “jó” serves as both a refrain and an exclamation of harmony and goodwill.

Historical Context: By the mid-16th century, some of the Counter-Reformation’s violence was on the wane in Europe; Germany’s Thirty Years War had ended and England’s newly-crowned Queen Elizabeth eschewed the religious violence of her predecessors. Nevertheless, the Inquisition was in full force in Spain; Catholic adherents and Protestant Huguenauts were waging an all-out war in France; and Unitarian philosopher Michael Servetus was burned at the stake in Switzerland.

Meanwhile in Transylvania, Queen Isabella issued a decree in 1557 granting unprecedented religious freedom to Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists and Unitarians. Eleven years later Unitarian minister Francis David persuaded her son King John Sigismund III to issue an even more forceful decree, The Act of Religious Tolerance and Freedom of Conscience, commonly referred to as The Edict of Torda. In addition to the freedoms already conferred by his mother, Sigismund’s decree extended further religious freedom to those four denominations, and added lesser but significant protection for Jews, Muslims and Eastern Orthodox Catholics.