For your Reading Pleasure

CAE is extremely fortunate to have Susan Wladaver-Morgan as both one of our singers and the author of our concert program notes. We invite you to read her notes for our upcoming February concerts (now in less than two weeks!), to give you even more of a taste for the great music we have in store for you. Remember that tickets can be purchased at our website ahead of time for a reduced rate.

We also invite you to tune in to All Classical 89.9 FM tonight from 6-7pm for Northwest Previews, where our concert will be one of the features, along with an interview by David De Lyser, the conductor of this concert.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

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Peace, Love, and Music

For our third concert in the Guest Conductor Season, we welcome Dr. David De Lyser to the podium. Anchored by The Peaceable Kingdom by Randall Thompson, the concert presents lyrical choral compositions by twentieth-century American composers that focus on two themes that have inspired great poetry as well as great music—love and peace.

We begin with a set of madrigals by Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927). Starting as a church organist at age thirteen, Diemer earned advanced degrees from Yale and the Eastman School of Music, where she studied composition. She has composed in many genres, including music for choir, chamber groups, piano, and organ, performing some of her own organ works at the National Cathedral. Based on songs from three different Shakespeare comedies, the madrigals embody different aspects of love: cajoling (“O Mistress Mine” from Twelfth Night), longing (“Take, O take those lips away” from Measure for Measure), and cheerful cynicism (“Sigh no more” from Much Ado About Nothing).

“The Divine Image,” set by Joshua Shank (b. 1980), comes from Songs of Innocence by William Blake (1757-1827), painter, engraver, poet, and mystic. The deceptively simple lyrics, with their hypnotic repetition of four words, ponder the mystery of how the divine manifests in human form as qualities that all of us, at our best, share and should treasure in each other. The youngest composer ever to win the Student Composition Prize of the American Choral Directors Association, Shank wrote this gently yearning setting in 2002, inspired in part by Brahms.

Laurie Betts Hughes (b. 1977), who received her doctorate in music from the University of Washington last year, has an abiding love of folk music. This explains her arrangement of the Irish ballad “The Wind That Shakes the Barley,” collected by Robert Dwyer Joyce (1836-1883). The song fits neatly into both themes of our concert, for it tells of a young man preparing to join the Irish Rebellion of 1798, bidding farewell to his sweetheart, losing her to a sniper’s bullet, and reflecting on the tragedy of “blood for blood without remorse.” Betts’s use of duplets in the women’s voices against triplets in the piano part creates the effect of shimmering grain while skillfully juxtaposing the violence and grief of the story with the beauty of the scene.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) too created gorgeous atmospheric effects in “To Be Sung on the Water,” based on a haunting poem by American Louise Bogan (1897-1970), capturing the rocking of a boat and the ever-shifting light. Barber and Bogan make a good match, sharing a formal approach and the ability to compress deep emotion into a compact space. Bogan came of age at the height of free verse and confessional poetry, but her own work used mysterious imagery in exquisitely rhymed forms; Barber created large works, including operas and symphonies, but his brief songs often have more power as well. Here the alternating surges of men’s and women’s voices, the repetition of key short phrases, and even the uncertainty about what is happening to the lovers all mirror the ebb and flow of love itself.

The Peaceable Kingdom (1936) by composer and educator Randall Thompson (1899-1984) may surprise many listeners. Inspired by a painting by Quaker Edward Hicks (1780-1849) that depicts the biblical passage in which the lion and lamb co-exist in peace, Thompson, after studying the entire book of Isaiah, chose to set several verses that depict God’s wrath—indeed, the apocalypse in which the wicked meet their doom before the coming of God’s kingdom. Although the work ends with a glorious chorus of thanksgiving, what precedes it is far from peaceful. Why did Thompson choose such painful passages? He may have feared the coming of another war; he did follow world events closely and stated that he wrote his popular “Alleluia” right after the fall of France in 1940, for it put him in mind of the book of Job. Alternatively, he may have done so on artistic grounds, using contrast to heighten the joyful conclusion and creating striking depictions of suffering, devastation, and grief along the way—certainly more dramatic than twenty minutes of cheerful images!

Eric Whitacre (b. 1970) offers a much clearer statement in “This Marriage,” based on verses by the Persian writer, jurist, and Sufi mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273). Since studying at Juilliard, Whitacre has produced dozens of serious choral works that are at once musically dense and accessible. He wrote this piece for his wife for their seventh wedding anniversary, and here the music is simple and direct; all the voices phrase together, move together as one, and when he says “I am out of words,” the words stop and only music remains.

Like Thompson, Daniel Pinkham (1923-2006) chose texts from the Old Testament for his Wedding Cantata, this time from the Song of Songs. Pinkham studied composition with Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, and Nadia Boulanger, but his clear straightforward style sounds like no one but himself. Although he worked in virtually every genre, he composed much of his work for sacred occasions and church services. The cantata’s four movements present a dance to celebrate a couple’s commitment to each other; a canon like a wedding ring braided of many strands; alternating choruses of women and men rejoicing in the sensuality of marriage; and a brief chorale of blessing.

The next three pieces sing of remembered love. Choral director Eric William Barnum (b. 1979) perfectly caught the surprise, excitement, and warm gratitude of “Jenny Kiss’d Me” by James Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), a central figure in the great British literary generation that included Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle, whose wife Jane was the Jenny of the title. Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), whose poem “Echo” Norman Dello Joio (1913-2008) adapted in “Come to Me, My Love,” had family connections with that literary circle as well. The dark chords in the accompaniment match the sadness that one could read as love disappointed or love cut short. By contrast, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, set by Robert H. Young (1923-2011), professor of music at Baylor University, begins in self-loathing but ends in strength and hope by recalling the love of a faithful friend.

Our newest work is “Peace,” published last year by Aaron Pike (b. 1984), who premiered his first major composition, Omaha Beach, at age seventeen. He chose the text for “Peace,” by British playwright Louis N. Parker (1852-1944), from a memorial in London’s theatre district to “actors, musicians, writers and workers for the stage” who died in the Great War (1914-1918), reminding theatre-goers in search of entertainment of what others have sacrificed for peace. The dignified setting induces a thoughtful meditation on the text.

“The Lighthearted Lovers” by Kirke Mechem (b. 1925) is quite different from his deeply personal Earth My Song that we presented last fall, but far more amusing. It comes from a song in Amphitryon by John Dryden (1631-1700), a Restoration comedy about sexual morality. The song too spoofs fidelity, with both the men and women using conventional romantic language to confess their own complete lack of faithfulness; the sopranos even throw in an over-the-top cadenza for added mockery. Ah well, the course of true love never did run smooth.

Susan Wladaver-Morgan

Thoughts from David De Lyser

As our February concerts quickly approach, I invite you to read some thoughts written for you by David De Lyser, who is the 3rd and final candidate in our director search, and will be conducting this concert. This has been an exciting season for CAE so far, and we invite you to join us for the continued excitement in the latter half of our Guest Conductor series! Tickets can be purchased by visiting our website, and remember that you can save 15% by purchasing them in advance rather than at the door. Stay tuned to this blog for more info, but for now — here’s David!

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“Have ye not known?  Have ye not heard?  Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?  Ye shall have a song.”  This is an excerpt from the end of Randall Thompson’s, The Peaceable Kingdom, the piece that gave our February concerts their title:  “The Peaceable Kingdom: Depictions of Love and Peace by 20th Century American Choral Composers.”

We do indeed have a song; we’ve always had a song.  And through songs and music, composers give us some understanding of ideals and concepts that on the surface seem so simple, and yet are not.  In these upcoming concerts, we look at two such lofty ideals – love and peace.  Like all artists, composers have wrestled with these topics, to varying degrees of success, throughout history.  But we wanted to take a more concentrated look at what American composers of our current and preceding centuries have done with these elusive concepts.

The composers represented drew inspiration from a wide variety of secular and sacred sources.  We have settings of Shakespeare and an inscription by fellow British playwright Louis Parker, excerpts from the Book of Isaiah and the Song of Songs, poetry by Jalal al-Din Rumi, James Hunt, Christina Rossetti, John Dryden, Louise Bogan and William Blake, and a setting of an Irish ballad originally written by Robert Dwyer Jones.  Thompson found his inspiration for The Peaceable Kingdom in a completely different art form – Edward Hick’s iconic painting of the same name.

The resulting depictions are as varied as the sources.  Eric Whitacre’s gorgeous and sublime setting of Rumi’s poetry is pretty straightforward – “May these vows and this marriage be blessed.”  They’re not all that easy.  Hearing the choir thunder away angrily about the woe of the wicked in the middle of The Peaceable Kingdom may make you wonder whether Thompson should have chosen a different title.  But then the final movement of the piece arrives, in which Thompson has set the “gladness of heart” in such a powerful and emotional way that members of the choir have been moved to tears in rehearsal.  Then we see that Thompson may have needed to take us through violence in the absence of peace in order for us to fully grasp what a precious gift that peace can be.

So maybe the songs shouldn’t be too easy.  The topics certainly are not.  They are layers deep and can be looked at in myriad ways.  Love can be happy and sad; death may be needed to achieve peace.  And our composers have explored all of these layers.  We find joy in the confirmation of love, humor in the pursuit and preservation of love, reassurance in the strength of love, thoughts of past love that bring joy to a lonely heart, and sadness in both the memory and loss of love.  We hear of the peace of the righteous and the previously mentioned woe of the wicked, as well as prayers to the human form of peace, pity, love and mercy.  We are told of both the cost and rewards of peace.  We even have one fun little surprise at the end of the concert that shows it just might be possible to love someone too much.

The associated emotions in these works are as multifarious as the themes themselves and are at once both universal and intensely personal.  So we invite you to come and share in that which can only be expressed through music.  Come to hear the laughter, the playfulness, the love, the sorrow, the memories, the peace and the gladness of heart.  Come to hear the stories, as only music can tell them.  We hope you will enjoy the journey on which these stories and songs will take us.

Morten Lauridsen in the Wall Street Journal

The CAE loves Lauridsen! In fact, the highlighted feature of our Christmas concert last year were his challenging and captivating Midwinter Songs (conducted by Tracey Edson), and we also performed his beautiful and widely popular O magnum Mysterium this year as part of Dr. Bruce Browne’s Christmas program. So I couldn’t resist posting this article written on the Portland-raised composer. Enjoy!

The Best Composer You’ve Never Heard Of

Concert Review

Happy New Year, everyone! I’m thrilled to tell you that even though the holidays are over, the excitement has not died down for us at CAE, particularly after performing to such large crowds (thanks to all of YOU) for our Christmas concerts! We have already begun preparation for our February concerts, and there will certainly be more details on that coming soon, but for now, let me just say that if you are a romantic at heart (which, let’s face it, we all are in some way!), you won’t want to miss these next performances on February 25th and 26th, so mark your calendars now!

For now, though, I’m pleased to inform you that Brett Campbell of Willamette Week attended our Christmas concert, and wrote a review on the Oregon Arts Watch blog.  I have copied and pasted the review below, so feel free to take a look. Have a wonderful week!

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Choral music and Christmas concerts both have a deserved reputation for conservatism — soothing, traditional sounds that wouldn’t startle anyone with a new idea. Oregonians, however, are lucky to have top-notch choral organizations that favor expansive programming, even during this most tradition-bound of seasons. Former Portland State University and Portland Symphonic Choir director Bruce Browne reviewed one of them, Oregon Repertory Singers, here last week; that program repeated last weekend. Browne himself led one of Portland’s other major vocal groups, Choral Arts Ensemble,in concerts last weekend at the city’s downtown First Unitarian Church.

Bells rang and singers streamed up to the stage from the pews and doorways as the concert kicked off with music by the composer Officially Decreed by the New York Times to be the most awesomest ever, then continued with a plush but not weighty  version of the most popular work by perhaps America’s most renowned living choral composer, Portland-born Morten Lauridsen, one of several versions of O Magnum Mysterium purveyed. Except for a couple of brief, early shaky moments in the altos, CAE sounded more sonically secure than I’ve heard them over the past few years, displaying rhythmic buoyancy in Ideo Gloria in Excelsis Deo by Richard Kraehnenbuhl and real expressive power in the program’s highlight and rousing first-set closer, Monteverdi’s magnificent Gloria, with accompanying organ by Jennifer Creek-Hughes and strings. An excellent small accompanying ensemble of harpsichord and fiddle occasionally added welcome textures throughout the concert.

CAE commendably included several other local guest contributors — buy local! Browne dedicated a plangent version of the O Magnum text, set to the familiar Nimrod variation (from Edward Elgar’s popular Enigma Variations), to its arranger, Portland’s Elinor Friedberg, who died shortly after completing the arrangement. Portland’s Ronn Pricer contributed a fresh arrangement that almost but not quite made me welcome the inevitable rum-pa-pum-pums of the dreaded “Little Drummer Boy.” And Gresham High School’s Overtones showed why they’ve won honors in statewide competitions in a couple of stellar guest takes, including a nifty arrangement of “Joy to the World,” with at least one unnamed soprano clearly destined for further musical accolades. Even the teenage basses were entirely convincing in Lux Arumque by the world’s hottest choral composer, Eric Whitacre. And even the audience sounded solid in a couple of singalong carols.

Other highlights included a glowing performance of Three Far Eastern Carols by British composer Malcolm Sargent, a rhythmically rollicking Magnificat by Mannheim Steamroller co-founder Jackson Berkey, a couple of Alfred Burt’s jazzy mid-20th century carols and the most out-there piece of the afternoon, contemporary Spanish composer Javier Busto’s partly aleatoric version of the O Magnum, with whispered, skittery textures, spicy modern harmonies and an exhilarating climax; both the composition and performance left me optimistic about the future of choral music in general and Choral Arts Ensemble in particular.

Honoring a local composer

One of the pieces that we’ll be featuring in our upcoming concerts was written by Portland composer Elinor Friedberg, who set the O Magnum Mysterium text to music by Elgar. She wrote it while battling her own physical illness, but she was able to finish the piece and have it performed a of couple months before passing away in July of 2011. Here is a powerful video of Ms. Friedberg performing her piece with the Bach Cantata Choir.

We are honored to perform this piece, and many others, in our upcoming concerts. Visit our website to purchase tickets.

Thoughts from Dr. Bruce Browne

Hello, readers! I’m thrilled to share with you some thoughts by Dr. Bruce Browne, who is conducting our upcoming Christmas concerts, titled The Mystery and the Glory, on December 17th and 18th. His writings include some encouragement that he has given us as a choir as we rehearse and fine tune all this great music, as well as little “hints” about some of the works and composers we will be featuring. And speaking of the concert, tickets are currently on sale at our website, and we encourage you to reserve yours today, as you will get a lower rate than if you wait to buy them at the door! This is a concert full of exciting collaborations, including guest student artists from Gresham and Sam Barlow High Schools, as well as some fantastic string players.

But for now, here’s Bruce!

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What magnificent differences in our “mysteries” and our “glorys”! It isn’t quite “Ah , sweet mystery of life…” but it is a “sweet” mystery. And the “Gloria in excelsis” is so variegated in its exposition by each composer: Bach, in his buttoned-down Baroque way; Monteverdi , with his flashes of colors, blazing like a kaleidoscope across the score. We watched a terrific movie  – Mitch Albom’s “Have a little faith” – and in it, Martin Landau, as an aged Rabbi, says, “…what is your glory? Elinor’s glory, among other things, was her legacy of the reinvention of the Elgar “Nimrod” with new textual clothing.  (She finished it just a few months before she passed away.)

 Berkey does something quite different with “ My soul doth magnify the Lord…” The words from Mary are elevated into a jazzy, rock-y art form with Berkey’s old wine in new liturgical bottles. How keenly he uses his background (Mannheim Steamroller) to suffuse this text with energy and excitement!

“Gloria” and “glory” are used all the time, in so many different ways.  Let’s take it out of the world of the quotidian and the ordinary, and bring our own personal magic to bear on each setting.  Monteverdi certainly did this with the most imaginative setting of his career.  Beyond that, though, each time you utter those words (not just “gloria” but “in excelsis” and the rest) make them new, as if you just composed them yourself! Let the text inflection be readily apparent to our listeners – the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables should be the same as if you were skiing moguls! Up, down, up, down. That much stress and release (the “release” is often the hard part; it’s easy to find stress!)

 “Ideo Gloria” is almost the same text, but what a difference; snappy, jazzy, bouncing, each verse its own color. Monteverdi and Bach are each children of their own time.  But both these children have rebellious, energetic spirits that must be allowed to reign, but be reined (in) by you, the singer. That is, show the excitement, without being excited to the point where it jolts your ability to control your own voice and tempo.  

 The Bach “Gloria” is a similar spirit, but at least three different ideas in this small Christmas package” opening, then “et in terra pax” [lower and smoother] and finally, “bona voluntas”, building to the climax. You can feel , and show, different levels of energy and communication with each new section!

 As to the Burt and the Far-Eastern carols: we’re children, coming down the stairs in our homes and seeing the Christmas tree, the ornaments, and reflecting that joy, that freshness of the Season. The only difference is that in the Sargent pieces, you are children of different races: a Phillipine mother, a Mongolian worshipper, and so on.

 So be those people; be the text and the mood. Let it all (almost) hang out!

 I doubt if I need to expound on the virtues (and vices?) of “Good Ale”… Perhaps some of you have been at a Christmas party , with an adult beverage, celebrating with friends.  It’s the polar opposite of the sweet music that John Rutter set in his other piece; here, we bring to bear the visceral, quaffing and laughing spirit of the hearth and home. OK, if you are a teetotaler, find your fun anyway in celebrating the feast of victuals that is brought before us.

“Christmas in the straw” has to dance, and you with it! It’s boot-scootin’ hoe-down music. Pfautsch is a Texas man, so he has shown us this indigenous way to celebrate the Holidays, southwest style.

 Enjoy!

Welcome to a New Season!

Happy Fall, everyone!

I’m thrilled to bring you a sneak peak of our kick-off to our 2011-2012 season! This season is both exciting and unique for CAE. We will be working with three different directors as part of the selection process to find a permanent new director, who will start next season.

There will be much more about this in future posts, but for now I’m thrilled to say that the candidate who will be directing our first concert of the season is our very own Tracey Edson. Tracey served as the assistant conductor to Roger Doyle, our conductor emeritus, and has been our interim conductor since the beginning of last season. For the fall concert, Tracey is directing an exciting collaboration with the PDX Dance Collective, giving our audience a chance to see the beautiful and exciting merging of choral music and dance!

I invite you to read our program notes below (written beautifully, as always, by Susan, one of our singers), to get a mere taste of what we’ll be offering this weekend. Tickets can be purchased on our website, or by calling us at 503-488-3834. This is definitely a concert not to be missed. We’ll see you soon!

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Song and Dance

The Choral Arts Ensemble kicks off our Guest Conductor Season with an exciting collaboration that celebrates how music and dance bring out the best in each other. Our partner, the PDX Dance Collective, offers innovative, theatrical dance experiences through unique choreography, with each member expressing a distinct perspective. By dancing other members’ choreography, they share not only their talents with fellow artists, but also their emotions, friendships, and passion for dance. Like all choral singers, the CAE’s members too share the same joy in collaboration as we explore new works and rediscover old ones with our fellow musicians and artists.

The concert opens with Norman Dello Joio’s uplifting choral fanfare, “A Jubilant Song,” a piece that exults in how singing—and dancing—together can transform experience and express the best that is in us. Dello le Joio (1913-2008) was born in New York City, where he lived and worked for most of his life. He studied with Paul Hindemith and composed in many genres, including instrumental works, an opera, and a ballet for Martha Graham. His eclectic style often delights in strong rhythms, as this work demonstrates. He adapted the words for “A Jubilant Song” from Walt Whitman, whose optimistic poetry served as inspiration for several of dello Joio’s other works.

The women of the ensemble respond with “The Singing Place,” with words by Lily Augusta Long (1860-1927) and music by Portland’s own Joan Szymko (born in Chicago in 1957), director of the Aurora Chorus and composer for Do Jump! Movement Theatre. This magical composition evokes an ecstatic out-of-body experience with no past or future, only the present moment. Now calm, now soaring, the music takes us to a place between waking and sleep where we feel ourselves become part of a universe of light and sound hidden from our waking selves, where the stars themselves seem to sing as they sparkle and our half-dreaming selves sing with them.

Next the men answer with “Drei Lieder” by New Yorker Edward MacDowell (1860-1908). These settings of poems by Heine, Goethe, and Schiller—the three greatest German Romantic poets—may reflect the time that MacDowell spent in Germany where he studied and lived for several years before returning to the United States. Like others in the first generation of American “serious” composers, MacDowell applied the compositional techniques he had learned in Europe to American subjects; his best-known work is probably “To a Wild Rose” from Woodland Sketches for piano, inspired by landscapes in the Adirondacks.

We close the first half with the most challenging and dramatic work on the program: Earth My Song (1997) by prolific and versatile contemporary composer Kirke Mechem (born in Kansas in 1925). Mechem came from an artistic family; his father was an author of novels, plays, and poetry, his mother a classical pianist. He himself studied composition with Walter Piston and Randall Thompson at Harvard. Although he has composed in many genres, including opera, his choral works stand out.

This evening’s deeply personal work sets three poems by Mechem’s father, and it takes the singers, dancers, and audience alike on a journey through the darkest, most terrifying despair before achieving a hard-won hope for rebirth. Mechem himself provided an explanation for the crucial second movement, “Isle of the Dead.” Several generations of writers and composers (Rachmaninoff, for one) have found their inspiration in the haunting image of Swiss artist Arnold Bockner’s painting of a desolate island surrounded by dark waters where dead souls arrive. Mechem believes that his father’s poem was not about death itself but about a depression so profound that it alienates people from their closest friends and family, erasing relationships and making us mere shells of humanity. It took the son a long time to come to terms with what his father may have meant. Yet, the final movement reiterates that “time exposes death” as just another phase of life and asserts that even the deepest alienation can be overcome.

We begin the second half on a cheerier note with six “Choral Dances” from the opera Gloriana by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), perhaps the greatest English composer of the twentieth century. Although he at one time planned to take American citizenship, Britten returned to England when his homeland was under attack in World War II and thereafter celebrated Britain’s musical and literary culture. He based Gloriana, which premiered during the coronation festivities for Queen Elizabeth II, on a play by Lytton Strachey titled Elizabeth and Essex. The play and opera focus on the latter part of Elizabeth I’s reign and portray her as rather foolishly in love with the much younger Earl of Essex; he led a rebellion against her and was executed for treason. This less than flattering musical portrait of her predecessor did not please the new queen, and it took many years for Gloriana to win favor. The choral dances from Act II, however, quickly became popular. They depict a masque celebrating the Queen’s visit to Norfolk, drawing on snatches of contemporary tunes and verse composed in her honor. Dances by members of the Collective restore the songs to their original context.

Song and dance can express things that cannot be conveyed by mere words, but sometimes they represent nothing more than light-hearted fun. Such is the case with the “canzonets” (little songs) by Jean Berger (1909-2002), a one-man embodiment of music’s ability to cross boundaries. From a German Jewish family, Berger was a conductor at the Mannheim Opera in 1932 when he was “physically removed from the theatre by four brownshirts.” He left Germany for Paris, then moved to Brazil, and eventually wound up in the United States, where he continued to compose songs in many languages as well as teach at colleges in Vermont, Illinois, Colorado, and Tennessee. After retiring, he become a “musical ambassador,” giving presentations on American music around the world. The canzonets sound like children’s songs, but they really set poems from the Beloit Poetry Journal.

Although English composer Frederick Delius (1862-1934) showed an early aptitude for music (and an aptitude for little else), his family spent years trying to fit him into various business ventures, including an orange plantation in Florida where he became enamored of African American music. Eventually he studied composition at the Leipzig Conservatory where he met Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg who became a strong supporter. Delius’s music often drew on nature and places he had visited for inspiration, and he used chromatic harmonies to striking effect, as in our two closing pieces–the dreamy watercolor sketch of “Mountain Silence” and the lilting “Midsummer Song” to send you dancing on your way.

Susan Wladaver-Morgan

A Sneak Peek at this Weekend

It has become my custom to post the program notes of our upcoming concerts to this blog. They are always wonderfully written by Susan, and reading them always makes me excited to perform the music, so I know they will make you excited to come hear it. Remember to purchase those tickets in advance, either from our website or from a friend in the choir, to receive that discount! Have a wonderful week, and we look forward to seeing you this weekend!

Choral Time Travel

A haunting fragment from a Monteverdi mass materializes within Eric Whitacre’s fantastical Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine, instantly conjuring up a different time and place. Inspired by this, the Choral Arts Ensemble ends its 2010-2011 season by exploring the ways that music and poetry from one time are re-imagined in another, creating new worlds of sound.

In the Renaissance, dozens of composers from all over Europe wrote masses based on a simple French secular song called “L’homme armé.” Scholars cannot agree on the origin of the tune or its fearsome lyrics. Explanations range from the idea that the armed man represents St. Michael the Archangel to the possibility that the tune originated in a tavern of the same name. Another theory argues that both the song’s popularity and its use in so many masses reflected European anxiety after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Then as now, the spread of Islamic culture provoked fear and sometimes militant rhetoric in the West, and the song’s message of vigilance against a foe perhaps manifested that fear. Although most masses based on the song date from the 15^th and 16^th centuries, several 20^th-century composers have continued to use it as their inspiration as well.

Burgundian composer Antoine Busnois (c. 1430-1492) probably wrote the earliest mass based on the tune, and there are versions by Palestrina (Italian), Morales (Spanish), and many others. The song’s widespread use is not surprising, since musicians often studied and worked far from their original homes in different European courts where they heard each other’s compositions. But we present two simple versions of the tune and then works by two other composers that use it as a cantus firmus (fixed song)–the foundation on which they built their harmonies. Born in present-day Belgium, Johann Ockeghem (1420-1497) was a composer of the French-Flemish school, as well as a renowned singer, choir-master, and teacher. Perhaps because he sang bass himself, he often wrote expressive bass lines; in fact, his attention to the lower voices opened up new possibilities for Renaissance composers. In the Kyrie from his mass on “L’homme armé,” listeners can clearly hear the tune in the tenor line.

Like Ockeghem, Josquin Des Prez (c. 1450-1521) represented the French-Flemish school and was an accomplished singer as well as a composer. He considered Ockeghem an influence and even set to music a poem honoring him. By the 16^th century, however, Josquin was generally esteemed the greatest composer of the age. Hardly anything is known about his early life, but he did serve noble and royal courts in France and Italy; one late portrait of him may be by Leonardo da Vinci. Some see Josquin’s work as a successful synthesis of the northern polyphonic style (like Ockeghem) and the more chordal style of Italy. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he wrote both sacred and secular music, including 18 masses and numerous songs on French and Italian texts. We perform the Agnus Dei from one of his two masses on “L’homme armé,” which includes an unusual trio where the soprano sings in 3/2 meter and the alto and tenor sing in 2/2.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) included over a hundred songs in his plays, and not just in the light-hearted comedies. Even in his lifetime, performers sang them to a variety of tunes, some based on folk songs, others composed. The tradition of setting Shakespeare songs in every conceivable style has continued up to the present, including operas and musicals.

We sample settings of three songs— “O Mistress Mine” (from Twelfth Night), “Lovers Love the Spring” (from As You Like It), and “Who is Sylvia” (from Two Gentlemen of Verona)—by three different composers. American Amy Beach (1867-1944) had performed as a piano soloist while in her teens but suspended concertizing after marrying in 1885, taking up composition instead. Entirely self-taught as a composer, she achieved many successes, including a piano concerto that she herself premiered, an opera, and dozens of song settings, many from Shakespeare, including a version of “Who is Sylvia.” David Dickau (b. 1953 in Bellingham, Washington) is a noted choir director who has spent his career in California and Minnesota. He describes his three Shakespeare pieces as, respectively, a dance, a blues, and a western hoe-down. Shortly after writing these pieces, he was commissioned to compose “View from the Air” to commemorate Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight—a nice complement to Whitacre’s Leonardo Dreams! We close the first half with a so-called Liebeslieder polka by P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742; a.k.a. Peter Schickele, b. 1935). A composer, scholar, bassoonist, inventor, and parodist, Schickele has committed musical crimes in nearly every genre. Fortunately, Shakespeare can survive anything.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) played a pivotal, even revolutionary, role in music history, marking the transition between Renaissance styles and those of the Baroque; he is also credited with writing the first operas, basically inventing the genre. Born in Cremona, he began as a chorister in the cathedral choir and published his first motets around 1582. He soon began composing complex madrigals, eventually publishing nine books of them. Some of his contemporaries attacked what they considered “crudities” in his style. Monteverdi responded by proposing two kinds of valid musical prattica (practice), the first continuing 16^th-century traditions of Renaissance counterpoint and equality of voices, the second allowing freer counterpoint and much greater emphasis on the emotions expressed in the texts. The passionate Lagrime d’Amante al Sepolcro dell’Amata illustrates the second practice beautifully, perhaps because it reflected a deep personal grief. Monteverdi wrote it in response to the death of one of his voice pupils, a beautiful and talented 18-year-old girl, but her death also tapped his grief for his wife who had died only months earlier. The words of the sestina on which this work is based may seem over the top, but the unbearable sorrow of loss in the music rings completely true.

American Eric Whitacre (b. 1970), whose Leonardo Dreams draws on these Renaissance traditions, is revolutionizing music in the present much as Monteverdi did 400 years ago. Since studying at Juilliard and with prize-winning composer John Corigliano, he has gone on to produce a large body of serious choral works that are at once musically dense yet accessible, emotionally rich and popular! Partly he has accomplished this by using technology to engage audiences, turning them from passive listeners into active participants in creating a work of beauty. His Virtual Choir allows people from all over the world to record his works on their computers and send him the digital files, which he then combines into a simultaneous performance piece that can be shared (see Megan Elliott’s blog post at the caeportland.com for her experience). He also chooses or collaborates to create amazing texts, especially with his long-time librettist Charles Anthony Silvestri. Particularly for a work like Leonardo Dreams, libretto is the right word, for this composition becomes an opera in miniature, complete with a story of longing, experimentation, creativity, and courage, culminating in the ecstasy of flight—the fulfillment of a Renaissance dream.

Susan Wladaver-Morgan

Singing in a “virtual choir”

Today, as I sit here and write, I have a whole new level of gratitude for this blog.

Reason being…remember Eric Whitacre’s virtual choir that I blogged about a few months ago? And remember how I said that I was going to do it? Well, to be perfectly honest with you, if I hadn’t publicly written that I was going to do it, I probably wouldn’t have done it. That may sound odd, since I was singing its praises like crazy in my last post, but it truly was a commitment.  Not only was it a lot more work than I anticipated, but my video was due at the beginning of January, AKA, right after the busy whirlwind of the holidays.

There were a ton of logistics involved. You needed to be in a well-lit, but not-too-bright room. You needed a camera and a mic that didn’t cause a bunch of buzzing and feedback. You needed to set everything up, put in your headphones, hit record on the camera, wait for a beep, plug the headphones IN, wait for Eric’s countdown, THEN sing. I probably flubbed that process at least 10 times. You also needed to be pretty familiar with the music so you didn’t submit a video of your nose buried in papers that are loudly shuffling.

And those are just logistics. The process of making your video is whole different animal. It’s difficult to explain, but let me just say that if you ever do get to watch a video of yourself singing a single choral part all by yourself with no other sounds, period…I don’t care who you are…it’s a humbling experience. I had to eventually come to terms with the fact that it was never going to sound like a Mozart aria. And it shouldn’t, since a properly sung operatic aria would not blend well in a choral setting. But it’s truly hard to see yourself doing things like breathing in odd places so you can carry your breath over in spots that the conductor asked you to. So, you’re basically stagger breathing (a common choral technique), with no one to help you. So…. it sounds odd. And I finally accepted the fact that, by itself, my video would look odd in many places.

However, I also feel that I learned many things about myself that will help me become a better choral singer in the long run. For example, I was able to see that I wasn’t forming some of my “e” and “oo” vowels as well as I could have been. And that I can afford to be much more purposeful with my dynamics. And that I do this weird fluttery thing with my eyes sometimes when I am coming to the end of a breath. Seriously…how come nobody told me I did that? But not to worry, I’m working on it:-)

Now, despite how it may seem, I didn’t just tell you all of that to deter you from trying this out next time. I actually told you all of that to let you know that all of the above and more is absolutely, without a doubt, 100% worth it. Because the finished product premiered today. And I got to be a part of THIS.

2052 people from 58 countries participated. That’s pretty incredible. I know that it will never replace live choral music, but it just goes to show how truly powerful music is, that it can have a strong influence even in modern technology. I’m honored to be a part of it!

In closing, I would love for you to join us at our final concert of the season! We are closing the concert with a stunning piece written by Eric Whitacre himself, and the rest of the concert is full of a variety of captivating music as well. Remember to order your tickets in advance, as that will allow you to save money. We look forward to celebrating spring and wrapping up our season with all of you!

And…here we go again!

Well, I honestly have no idea how our next concerts snuck up on us  so quickly and yet…here we are, getting the final preparations together to present to you one of the most complex, challenging, and powerful sets I have personally worked on while singing with this choir. I don’t use the word “challenging” lightly either. A lot of the music, which you will read about in a moment, has challenged us both as a group and as individual singers. To give a personal example, I will be singing a Billie Holiday solo, and being of English, French, and Irish descent…I’m about as white as they come. So I have to (temporarily) stuff away almost anything I’ve ever learned about singing a song well (think Mozart arias), reach down deep inside, and find my inner jazzy SOUL.

Um…help?

No, really though, it’s been a fun and meaningful challenge, and I think my fellow choir members would say the same thing of the many other songs we’ll be doing this weekend. And…we would love for you to join us! Remember that buying your tickets in advance gets you a lower price!

For now, I hope you’ll enjoy our “teaser” for the concert; below are Susan’s program notes, and she has once again done a fantastic job! Also, stay tuned for my next post, where I’ll be talking about what it’s like singing in Eric Whitacre’s virtual choir. Yes….I did it! I said that I would, so how lame would I have looked if I hadn’t, right?:-) More about that later…but for now, I will say that anyone who is or has ever been involved in choral singing should do it.

Here are the program notes, and we’ll see you in a few days!

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Brubeck and Beyond

Inspired by jazz pianist and living legend Dave Brubeck, especially by his choral settings of poems by Langston Hughes, we offer music of the night, dreams, and dreamers. Several pieces reflect the influence of African American musical traditions, some draw on other folk traditions, and all reveal wonderful surprises emerging from the cross-pollination of musical ideas and styles.

Dave Brubeck (b. 1920) grew up in rural California. His classically trained mother taught piano to all three of her sons. Unlike his brothers, Dave never learned to read music, though he played so well that he was close to graduating from college with a degree in music before anyone found out. After a stint in the army during World War II, playing in an integrated Red Cross band, he returned home, studied composition with Darius Milhaud, and began performing in clubs. In 1951 he founded the path-breaking Dave Brubeck Quartet, a pioneer of the West Coast “cool jazz” sound. He and alto sax player Paul Desmond composed their classic “Take Five” (so called partly because it’s in 5/4 time) in 1959; it became the centerpiece for their best-selling album Time Out. They disbanded the quartet in 1967, and Brubeck began composing larger works for chorus and orchestra. A deeply spiritual man, Brubeck has composed The Gates of Justice, a cantata that combines Biblical texts with words by Martin Luther King, and Truth Is Fallen, a cantata protesting the Vietnam War and the Kent State shootings.

Given his concern with social justice, Brubeck’s choice to set poems by Langston Hughes (1902-1967) comes as no surprise. Raised mostly by his maternal grandmother who instilled a commitment to social activism and pride in his African American heritage, Hughes traveled to West Africa and Europe before completing his education at Lincoln University where he and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall were classmates. In 1929 Hughes moved to New York City where he joined the creative ferment of the Harlem Renaissance, publishing poetry, novels, plays, and social commentary. By then, he had already been writing for a long time; he first wrote what he called “jazz poetry” while still in high school and published “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in 1921 in the NAACP newspaper The Crisis.  Much of his work focused on the lives of ordinary working people, using his art as a passionate voice for equality and respect.

In the 1990s Brubeck set nineteen poems by Hughes, nine of which make up Hold Fast to Dreams, all on the theme of dreams and aspirations; we present four of these. Like waves lapping the shore, “Dusk” ebbs and flows, alternating the pain of rejection and the hope of freedom. Brubeck set “I Dream a World” as both a chorale and a fugue; he intriguingly combines musical forms that could come straight out of Bach with modern jazz harmonies, at last affirming a better world within our grasp. The gentle “Dreamer” offers tentative glimpses of beauty to be shared with those willing to listen.

Born in Nigeria to Jamaican missionary parents, Noel Da Costa (1929-2002) moved to New York City for college and, in addition to performing as a violinist, taught composition at Rutgers University. Like Brubeck, he often combined elements of classical composition, jazz, and gospel, as in this wonderful setting of Martin Luther King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. King’s prepared speech had not originally included these famous words—he added them in response to the great Mahalia Jackson’s cry to “tell them about the dream.” The fervently repeated final measures challenge us to make his dream a reality.

Arthur Cunningham (1928-1997) grew up in and around New York City. Although also classically trained, he composed large-scale works for the stage that mixed jazz, gospel, and rock, including an early rock opera. His career took off when the Symphony of the New World commissioned Concentrics, which premiered at Lincoln Center in 1969. His Harlem Suite evolved slowly in the 1960s and 1970s, starting with a piano sketch of Lullabye for a Jazz Baby. He completed a full piano version in 1970 and kept modifying it, arranging different parts for piano, orchestra, chorus, solo trumpet, and harmonica; the Alvin Ailey Dance Company has performed parts of it as a ballet. Each day of the week recalls a specific mood or place in Harlem. On Sunday evening old folks sit in their rocking chairs, thanking the Lord for making it through another week; Monday brings the blues, the raunchier the better.

Billie Holiday (1915-1959) had no formal musical education and was singing with innovative bands and combos by age 17. Even that early, her stretching of phrases and bluesy improvisations around the melody transformed jazz and pop music. Our medley includes two of her originals (“Sweet and Mellow” and “God Bless the Child”) and a painful song always identified with her. New York schoolteacher Abel Meeropel (pen-named Lewis Allan) wrote the words for “Strange Fruit” as an explicit protest. In shocking detail, it depicts a lynching, such as were still happening in the South and Midwest in the 1920s and 1930s. After Holiday first introduced the song in 1939, she concluded every performance with it—an act of great courage.

Composer, jazz pianist, and big band leader, Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974) wrote over 1000 songs, many, including “In My Solitude,” staples of the Great American Songbook. He got his start playing piano in bands in Washington, D.C., but moved to Harlem in the 1920s. Like Brubeck, Ellington often blended musical genres, as in his Symphony in Black (1935), a film that presented Ellington on a par with Gershwin and his music as comparable to Rhapsody in Blue (the film also marked Billie Holiday’s movie debut). Also like Brubeck, Ellington composed sacred music, including In the Beginning God.

The prolific and versatile Cole Porter (1891-1964) borrowed many of his jazzy rhythms from the African American tradition in crafting the music for his successful Broadway shows and Hollywood musicals. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he produced both the haunting melodies and the fiendishly clever lyrics of his songs, but like Ellington, dozens of his songs remain evergreen standards of the jazz repertoire. Our three songs present different takes on the theme of night.

We also offer night music from another ethnic tradition with four lullabies from Estonia by Veljo Tormis (b. 1950). He composes primarily choral music, much of it based on Estonian folk styles, but he has recently begun to win international acclaim—and recordings. He has said: “It is not I who make use of folk music, it is folk music that makes use of me.” Tormis believes that settings of folk music not only allow the rest of the world to learn about Estonian culture but also helps his compatriots to sustain the language and culture of their homeland in the face of globalization.

We close with a lullaby familiar to many of us, but with some lovely harmonic twists that recall the jazz music we sang earlier. Long a favorite of Welsh men’s choirs, the folk song “All through the Night” was first collected in Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards in 1784, though the tune dates back at least 50 years earlier. Sir Harold Boulton wrote the beloved English version in 1884. Whether in English or Welsh, may this song keep you safe through the night and bring sweet dreams.

Susan Wladaver-Moran