From the Director

We’re pleased to present David De Lyser’s thoughts on the final concerts of his first season with CAE! It’s been a wonderful season and we’re looking forward to many more under his direction. Thank you, David! Remember to order your tickets in advance for that 10% discount; 3 days to go!   ____________________________________________________________________________

Hi, everyone.  Before I talk about the upcoming concerts, I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone – ensemble members, board members and all of you in the audiences for all of your support throughout this, my first year with the Choral Arts Ensemble.  It’s been a dream come true to make music with this group and it’s been a great year – from our wordless October concerts to our Holiday concerts full of carols to the silly fun that was our February Opera and Broadway concerts.  Who knew it was possible to work welding goggles into a choral concert!  We have something a little more serious planned for our final April concerts, entitled “Light out of Shadow.”  These concerts will be presented jointly with the University of Portland Orchestra and will center around northwest native Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna for chorus and orchestra.  One of the most famous contemporary works in the repertoire, this powerful piece uses sacred Latin texts to give us the sublime beauty and peace of eternal light, and will be used to close our concerts.  This concert is more than just light, though.  It is about the journey from darkness to light, a struggle that represents so much of the human condition.  Our hope in this concert is to take you on some of those journeys – from the darkness of Dante’s deepest circle of Hell, lamentations for an exiled people and cries of the oppressed for justice, to the light of returning to paradise, of salvation on earth and of music bringing light to illness and suffering.

For its part, the University of Portland Orchestra will take us on perhaps the quintessential instrumental journey from dark to light: Beethoven’s monumental 5^th symphony.  Beethoven himself was no stranger to this struggle, raging against his increasing hearing loss, yet going on to compose some of the most heroic, uplifting and glorious music ever written.  From its stormy opening chords to its triumphant conclusion, one can easily hear a heroic life struggle depicted over the course of the symphony.  In writing about Beethoven’s 5th symphony, E.T.A. Hoffman talks of “…a kindly figure, full of radiance, illuminating the depths of terrifying night.”

It’s all immensely powerful stuff – as much as music can be light-hearted and fun, which we proved all too well in February, it can also be moving and enlightening, and can leave us better human beings for having experienced it.  We hope you enjoy the concerts.

Light Out of Shadow

As usual, we love to give our readers a glimpse of what they will experience at our upcoming concerts, so please enjoy the program notes for our final concerts of the season, written by Susan Wladaver-Morgan, with contribution by director David De Lyser, who talks about Beethoven’s 5th. We are so excited to team up with the Unviersity of Portland orchestra to present all of this beautiful music to you; you won’t want to miss this powerful concert! Remember to purchase your tickets in advance, to get that 10% discount. We’ll see you soon!

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Toward the Light

So many kinds of darkness often surround us: evil and sinfulness; poverty and oppression; illness and pain; loss of faith; death. Thankfully, music, with its unique ability to reshape divergent voices and sounds into order, harmony, and beauty, offers a way to move out of darkness into light.

We begin our concert in the darkest place imaginable—the deepest circle of Hell at the center of the earth. American composer Z. Randall Stroope (b. 1953) chose phrases from the last canto of Dante’s Inferno as his text. Here Dante and his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, encounter Lucifer himself trapped in ice. In their descent, they have witnessed every sort of evil in the world, and they risk becoming trapped in Hell themselves. Using a double chorus, Stroope starts by depicting the two poets tentatively feeling their way through the semi-darkness, knowing they must return through all the terrible things they have seen. While the piece begins and ends in Dante’s own Italian, the harrowing central section (“Vexilla”) is in Latin as Virgil points out the banners of the king of Hell. With Virgil’s aid, the two evade Lucifer’s wings and pass safely to the other side of the earth, where they emerge before sunrise on Easter morning to behold the stars. As they rise to the surface, the music rises too and opens up from the dark enclosed spaces they have endured. At peace, they rest in the beauty of light.

A different darkness pervades “The Bells of Rhymney,” with music by American folksinger Pete Seeger (b. 1919) and words by Welsh poet Idris Davies (1905-1953)—the darkness of poverty and oppression. Davies left school at 14 to work in the coalmines of his hometown of Rhymney, as had the other men in his family. Dangerous as mining is today, the early 20^th century saw far worse conditions, when explosions, fires, cave-ins, and floods maimed or killed hundreds. Following World War I, British mine owners protected the profits they had grown used to by repeatedly cutting miners’ wages, leading miners to unionize. In the mid-1920s, the owners coordinated to crush the unions by locking out over 800,000 workers. In response, millions of union members from all over Britain went on strike in sympathy—the General Strike of 1926. The strike collapsed after 9 days, leaving the miners in worse shape than ever and turning Davies into a committed socialist. Instead of returning to the mines, however, he trained as a teacher and became a poet. “Bells of Rhymney” comes from his book Gwalia Deserta (The Wasteland of Wales). It takes the form of “Oranges and Lemons,” an English children’s song, but uses the names of hard-hit towns and valleys in South Wales to protest the suffering of miners and their families. Even the bells in those coal-dark towns cry to the open air for justice.

“Sing Me to Heaven” by Daniel E. Gawthrop (b. 1949) reveals one way that music creates a path out of the shadows. Over 20 years ago, a community choir in Northern Virginia commissioned Gawthrop to compose a piece that “speaks to the way that we, as singers, feel about music in our lives.” Gawthrop asked poet Jane Griner, his wife and frequent collaborator, to produce a text for it, and he found her poem captured the feeling so perfectly that the music almost wrote itself. Since then, this song has taken on additional meaning as a way to offer comfort to those seriously ill, in pain, approaching death, or grieving a loss. Music therapists and music ministries sing it for patients in hospitals and hospice; high school and college choirs have sung it to surround suffering fellow students with loving voices. Families often choose the song for memorial services, and it has even lent its name to a foundation for families who have lost a child. It affirms that those in pain are still so much more than their illness or suffering, that they remain whole human beings, and that music connects and sustains both singers and listeners in a space filled with light.

Beethoven’s fifth symphony is one of the most famous works in classical music, with its immediately recognizable and ominous four-note opening motive.  Beethoven started the work in 1804, and it premiered in 1808 as part of his famous “marathon” concert that also included the debuts of his sixth symphony, fourth piano concerto and Choral Fantasy.  Beethoven was years into his struggle with hearing loss by the time he began the fifth symphony, and in a letter wrote that he would “seize Fate by the throat; it shall not bend or crush me completely.”  It is easy to hear a heroic life struggle over the course of the symphony, from its famous opening in C minor to the triumphant conclusion in C major, of which the poet and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote, “…the human breast, squeezed by monstrous presentiments and destructive powers, seems to gasp for breath; soon a kindly figure approaches full of radiance, and illuminates the depths of terrifying night.”  The desperate struggle of the first movement gives way to the lyrical theme and variations of the second  The third movement presents a dark, arpeggio theme interrupted by the pounding rhythm of the famous opening motive from movement one, returning to continue the struggle.  The third and fourth movements are linked by an extended, tense passage with the incessantly repeated note C in the timpani.  The music at this point gives no indication of C major or C minor, of how the struggle will end – whether in darkness or in light.  The enormous crescendo that follows leads directly to the triumphant fourth movement, with its heroic and soaring themes that leave no doubt with the listener as to how Beethoven saw this struggle ending, with light out of shadow.

The second half of our program again begins in a very dark place. For “The Lamentations of Jeremiah,” Randall Stroope chose the impassioned, almost desperate words of the Old Testament prophet who foretold the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Jewish people’s long exile in Babylon. This dramatic piece begins and ends with wordless wailing and moaning in sinuous Middle Eastern-sounding lines. In between, the prophet alternately berates a people who have grown away from God and bewails the fate he foresees for them. The only light here comes from a faithful soul fighting against a powerful darkness.

But “Salvation Is Created” by Pavel Chesnokov (1877-1944) envisions a sacramental universe filled with God’s light. Chesnokov first gained recognition as a choral conductor and became one of Russia’s most prolific composers of sacred music (over 400 works). After the Revolution in 1917, when Soviet authorities banned the production of sacred art, he began writing only secular pieces, and he stopped composing altogether after the government demolished Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 1931 (it has since been rebuilt). This composition’s hushed reverence describes light and salvation as existing everywhere, pervading all time and space.

“The Last Words of David,” with music by American Randall Thompson (1899-1984) and a Biblical text from II Samuel, illustrates the theme of light emerging in two ways: in the text itself, with its lovely image of the earth’s fresh beauty after a storm, and in the fact that King David, after a long life with many mistakes, at last realizes what a good ruler must do. Thompson also added an alleluia to close the piece, introduced by accompaniment with a slightly Middle Eastern feel, linking the Old and New Testaments. As in his Peaceable Kingdom, which we performed last year, Thompson uses dynamic contrasts here to wonderful effect.

We close with Lux Aeterna, a major work by Northwest native Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943), who was born in Washington, grew up in Portland, and still has a cabin on an island in Puget Sound. He earned a doctorate in music at the University of Southern California and taught composition there for over 30 years. He wrote Lux Aeterna during his mother’s final illness, so the title and circumstances would both lead listeners to expect a traditional requiem. The first and last movements do indeed use the traditional words of a requiem mass, but there the similarity ends. Lux Aeterna contains no Dies Irae, with vivid depictions of Judgment Day, no Libera Me, asking to be spared from Hell. Instead, Lauridsen focuses on light, always and everywhere, in death as in life. So the three central movements take their texts from other sources. “In te speravi” comes from the Te Deum, a hymn of praise from the 4^th century attributed to St. Ambrose. The gently lilting “Veni sancte spiritus” comes from a Pentecost hymn of the 13^th century. And at the very heart of Lux Aeterna lies “O Nata Lux,” which ponders the ineffable mystery of light born from light. These words go back to an anonymous 10^th-century hymn sung on the Feast of the Transfiguration, and their murmured repetition brings a reverent peace.

Lauridsen has stated, “There are too many things out there that are away from goodness. We need to focus on those things that ennoble us, that enrich us.” That hopeful belief may explain why he chose to conclude Lux Aeterna with Alleluias like the joyful pealing of bells, for music has allowed us to sing our way out of shadows toward the light.

Susan Wladaver-Morgan

David De Lyser

From the Director

Our next concerts, “From Broadway to the Met” are now less than a week away! Don’t forget to take advantage of the 10% discount by ordering your tickets in advance! We hope to see you all there! In the meantime, here are some thoughts from David De Lyser on the third set of concerts in his first season as conductor. You can also hear him talk about the concerts by tuning into All Classical 89.9 FM this Thursday at 6pm, where he’ll be interviewed on “Northwest Previews”. Enjoy!

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Greetings from the podium!  Or part of the carpet that just happens to be in front of the choir anyway.

We’ve been quite busy putting the finishing touches on our Opera and Broadway concerts and are quite excited to perform them for you.  Putting this concert together was truly a group effort, as suggestions came from all different parts of the choir – we have full choruses, choruses with solos, solo and small ensemble pieces, a song for just the men and of course one for just the women as well.  The difficult part of programming this concert was figuring out what not to sing and the list of pieces we reluctantly let go is long and varied.  But what remains is some of the best choruses and pieces in the opera and musical theatre genres.  Susan Wladaver-Morgan has once again written some stellar program notes that are on the blog as well, so I won’t duplicate.  What I can tell you is that this won’t be your traditional choir concert.  It is one part cabaret, one part concert and one part show – it will be at times moving and dramatic, and at other times just plain silly – just like the genres from which our program is drawn.  Many members of the choir will step into solo roles and some even into character.  We will sing both Verdi and Wagner, of course, as 2013 marks the 200^th anniversary of their births.  Talk about a very good year!  It is this fact, actually, that began the whole idea for this concert.

This is also a return of sorts to musical theatre for me personally, having been away from it for a few years.  In 10^th grade I was asked to join the pit orchestra, as they were short a trumpet player.  I reluctantly said yes, and was hooked from the first rehearsal.  The show was Hello Dolly.  I had never been a part of anything like that in my life, and I went on to play in pit orchestras for community, regional and dinner theatres all over the Minneapolis and Chicago area, and then on to become both music director and pit conductor for productions at the University of Wisconsin, where I taught before coming to Portland a few years ago.  In my last year of undergrad, having spent many a show in the pit, I decided to see what it was like on stage for a change and actually went to the actors’ audition.  I expected nothing to come from it, but suddenly found myself playing Elijah J. Whitney (“you know, Wall Street’) in Anything Goes.  While it was a ton of fun (I spent most of the musical pretending to be drunk), my home was really in the pit.  Studying music in undergrad and grad school introduced me to the amazing genre of opera, which I have grown to love equally as well.  The magical melding of music and theatre is just something so far beyond the sum of its parts.  In that regard, preparing this concert has been an amazing amount of fun.  So…what can you expect?

We’ll have a few guest musicians to add to the majesty of our opening piece, the Triumphal March from Verdi’s Aida (though sadly, we could not figure out how to work in an elephant).   From processing soldiers, loyal subjects and priests, we’ll become pilgrims returning home with Wagner’s “Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhäuser.  Under assistant conductor Megan Elliott, we’ll become gossiping neighbors, eager for a good story as we sing Offenbach’s “The Neighbor’s Chorus.”  Under assistant conductor Holly Schauer, we will sing longingly of our homeland in perhaps Verdi’s most famous opera chorus, the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco.  This will be followed by Copland’s equally powerful “Promise of Living” from The Tender Land.  In the midst of a serious identity crisis, the choir at this point will just leave the stage.   Fortunately, Devin Moran will stay behind to sing a beautiful aria from Donizetti’s Don Pasquale.   Megan Elliott and Holly Schauer will also return as the Countess and Susanna in one of Mozart’s most famous duets, the “Letter Duet” from The Marriage of Figaro.  We’ll close the first half with two very familiar Verdi choruses, “The Anvil Chorus” from Il trovatore and the ‘Drinking Song” from La traviata, featuring Richard Springer and Kelsey Anderson.

Our second half is all Broadway, starting with the gamblers from Guys and Dolls and moving through classics by George M. Cohan and Irving Berlin that extol the virtues of both Broadway and show business.   And no Broadway program would be complete without some Leonard Bernstein, who in many ways blurred the lines between opera and musical theatre and could put the most touching aria right next to a jazz-influenced Mambo and make it work!  We’ll have a little fun with two of the lighter numbers from West Side Story, and then turn to the touching finale from Candide.  After Megan Elliott sings of the woes of being an alto, the choir will return with a piece that has become such a standard, it’s easy to forget that it started on Broadway,  Gershwin’s Someone to Watch Over Me.  We’ll close the concert with the powerful finale from act I of Les Misérables, One Day More, featuring seven of our choir members in solo roles.  I even get to have a little fun singing the role of bad guy Javert.

So come and join us for some of the best of Opera and Broadway, genres, born respectively in Europe and America, that combine the best of both the theatrical and musical worlds to transport us into some of the greatest stories ever told.

From Broadway to the Met–A Sneak Peek

 

Today, we have for you the completed program notes for our upcoming concerts on Feb. 23rd and 24th, written by singer Susan Wladaver-Morgan. We hope that reading them gets you just as excited about the music as we are! You won’t want to miss this one; it’s going to be great fun. Remember that you can save 10% on your ticket price by purchasing them ahead of time through our website. We’ll hopefully see you all next weekend!

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From Broadway to the Met

This year we celebrate the bicentennial of two giants of musical theater—Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner—with works that reveal how music enhances drama. Operas and Broadway musicals may seem worlds apart, but both can sweep audiences along more powerfully than speeches in plays. Both allow multiple characters to express wildly different emotions all at once, and both use music to move from the grand to the intimate in a heartbeat. Finally, both allow us to carry a performance with us in the music we hum on our way out the door.

We begin with opera at its grandest—the Triumphal March from Verdi’s Aida. The scene presents the festivities that greet Radamès as he returns to Egypt after his military victory over Ethiopia. The celebration features an enormous throng marching before the Egyptian royalty—soldiers, prisoners, priests, scantily clad male and female dancers, a contingent of on-stage trumpeters, and sometimes even an elephant. Aida premiered in Cairo in 1871, shortly after the Suez Canal opened, and the lavish production reflected Egypt’s new strategic importance. Interestingly, Aida also became a Broadway musical by Elton John and Tim Rice in 2000.

German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) actually rejected the word “opera” altogether, preferring the term “music drama.” In his 1849 essay “Art and Revolution,” Wagner focused on the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk—a completely integrated total artwork—and he wrote the librettos and music for nearly all his dramas, usually based on themes from German history and Norse mythology. Tannhäuser (1845) combines history and myth: Tannhäuser, a real-life 14th-century minnesinger (sort of a troubador), is lured away from the pure love of Eva by Venus. We perform a chorus of pilgrims, including Tannhäuser, returning from Rome, where he had unsuccessfully sought a papal pardon. Although our hero dies at the end, sacred love triumphs at last.

Sacred love rarely concerned Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), the French composer of nearly 100 operettas, including La Jolie Parfumeuse (The Pretty Perfume Seller). Offenbach had his first success in the 1850s and 1860s as he gently satirized the court of Napoleon III. France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War made such light-hearted fare less popular, so he relocated to England, returning in 1871. La Jolie Parfumeuse (1873), full of mistaken identities and risqué humor, returns to his frothy style. The Neighbors Chorus cleverly recreates the frantic chatter of busybodies hoping for the worst.

Although Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) eventually became Italy’s most prominent opera composer, his composing career almost ended before it began. He was working on his second opera, a comedy, when his wife and both their daughters died one by one—all within two years. Understandably, his efforts to write something funny fell flat, and he decided to stop composing. But a friend persuaded him to write one more opera, based on the Biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar. Nabucco (1842) includes a chorus sung by the Hebrews slaves in Babylon, longing for their lost homeland. Italians too longed for a unified homeland, for Italy was split into several small regions, many controlled by foreign powers. The Risorgimento, a movement for national reunification, was gaining strength in the 1840s, and this chorus, “Va pensiero,” became an instant hit and an anthem of the movement. People regularly joined in singing it during performances, as well as at rallies, marches, and political funerals. Verdi’s music continued to inspire the nationalist cause in his later operas.

American Aaron Copland (1900-1990) composed The Tender Land (1954) for the new medium of television. Although he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, he created works that sound quintessentially “American,” like Rodeo and Appalachian Spring. Inspired partly by the photographs of Walker Evans, Copland set this chamber opera in the Depression-era Midwest, focusing on a farm family. At the end, one daughter decides she must move away to make her own way in the world, but “The Promise of Living,” sung by all the main characters, exalts the enduring values of sharing and community.

Solos and small ensembles provide insight into the feelings of individual characters. Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) wrote both serious operas, like Lucia di Lammermoor, and comic ones, like Don Pasquale (1843). In the latter, Dr. Malatesta sings “Bella siccome un angelo” to cajole  his foolish old friend into a fake marriage and to teach him a lesson; the aria caressingly describes a woman who is clearly too good to be true. Mozart (1756-1791) based his Marriage of Figaro on Beaumarchais’s play, sweetening its revolutionary message with music. In the duet “Sull’aria,” Countess Almaviva and her maid Susanna compose a note to trick the unfaithful Count into a secret rendezvous with his own wife, though he won’t realize that until too late. The duet hints at sensual delights but leaves much unsaid, for the women know the Count’s imagination will fill in the rest.

We close the first half with two of Verdi’s most popular choruses. Although both Il Trovatore (The Troubador) and La Traviata (The Woman Who Strayed) date from the same year, 1853, they could hardly differ more in subject and style. Trovatore is a blood-and-thunder melodrama, complete with babies switched at birth, gypsy curses, and elaborate schemes for revenge. Act II’s opening chorus depicts a gypsy camp where the men are hammering weapons on their anvils and singing about the pleasures of gypsy life. Often parodied (in the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera and by Gilbert and Sullivan in several operettas), Trovatore is still as fast-moving and gripping as the latest thriller. Traviata, by contrast, is a drama of believable, flesh-and-blood people. Verdi based it on The Lady of the Camellias, the novel and play that depicted Alexandre Dumas’s own doomed affair with a woman of compromised virtue. Setting an opera in the demi-monde of contemporary Paris, not the distant romantic past, was a risky move, and it took time before Traviata caught on. Despite the opera’s tragic ending, “Libiamo,” featuring two characters on the brink of love, captures the mood at a festive party.

In the second half, we turn to the Broadway stage, and our first three numbers feature composers who also wrote their own lyrics. Frank Loesser (1910-1969) wrote “Fugue for Tinhorns” for Guys and Dolls (1950) based on two short stories by Damon Runyon—one about lovable gamblers and con men, the other about a Salvation Army lass. Vaudeville singer, dancer, and all-around showman George M. Cohan (1878-1942) composed “Give My Regards to Broadway” for Little Johnny Jones (1904) and also starred in the show. Russian immigrant Irving Berlin (1888-1989) produced all-American songs for over 50 years, starting with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911). “There’s No Business Like Show Business” comes from Annie Get Your Gun (1946) about Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) holds a preeminent place in 20th-century American culture as a conductor, composer, and the person who, more than any other, explained music of every sort to Americans through more than 50 televised Young People’s Concerts. As a composer, he wrote everything from symphonies, ballets, operas, and a mass to hit Broadway shows. Originally inspired by choreographer Jerome Robbins, West Side Story (1957) represented a breakthrough for both Bernstein and his young lyricist, Stephen Sondheim (b. 1930), with its complex jazzy score, clever lyrics, striking dance numbers, and vivid story of New York street gangs and ethnic conflict. Some numbers sound almost operatic, while others, like “America” and “Gee, Officer Krupke,” are as slangy as the nearest street corner.

Bernstein composed his operetta Candide, based on Voltaire’s satirical 18th-century novel, while working on West Side Story. The two shows illustrate some differences between operettas and musicals, even though the boundaries are fuzzy. Operettas tend to further the plot with sung recitatives rather than spoken dialogue; they may take place in more exotic locales or historical times, or they employ a less colloquial style of singing, as in “Glitter and Be Gay,” an aria for coloratura soprano from Candide. Reflecting the title character’s hard-won wisdom, Candide closes with the thoughtful chorus “Make Our Garden Grow.”

Like Bernstein, George Gershwin (1898-1937) wrote orchestral works, piano concertos, a grand opera (Porgy and Bess), and an amazing number of hit songs for Broadway shows that have become standards in the popular repertoire. “Someone to Watch Over Me” comes from Oh! Kay (1926) and became the show’s biggest hit. In the 1920s, when most shows resembled reviews more than the well-integrated scores from the 1940s on, composers often wrote songs with minimal connections with a specific plot so they could use the same songs in other shows equally well. That happened with this song in 1990 when it was added to an updated version of George and Ira Gershwin’s Girl Crazy.

We close with “One Day More” from Les Misérables. With music by Claude-Michel Schönberg (b. 1944) and original French lyrics by Alain Boublil (b. 1941), a team that also produced the rock opera La Révolution Française and the hit musical Miss Saigon. Based on Victor Hugo’s sprawling novel and originally released as a French concept album, Les Miz, as fans affectionately call it, was first staged in Paris, then London, and then New York (1987), where it ran for 6,680 performances, making it one of the longest-running Broadway shows ever. Les Miz brings us nearly full circle, for unlike many musicals, it is completely “sung-through,” with no spoken dialogue, just like traditional operas. In the climactic closing number of Act I, several sets of characters express their hopes and fears for the coming day—a day that will bring revolutionary turmoil, new love, or tragedy.

Whether as opera, music drama, operetta, or Broadway show, musical theater moves us in ways no other art form can. Happy singing to you all!

Susan Wladaver-Morgan

From Broadway to the Met

This is the title of our next concerts, and to give you a glimpse into the history behind this theme, I offer you this post from our very own Susan Wladaver-Morgan, who both sings in the choir and writes all of our program notes. We’re already very excited about the music we’re preparing, and we urge you to get your tickets ordered in advance to save 10%! Stay tuned for more!

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From Broadway to the Met

The distance between Broadway and the Met isn’t really all that far. In fact, the so-called “Old” Metropolitan Opera House occupied a city block bounded by 39^th and 40^th Streets, 7^th Avenue, and, yes, Broadway, right in the heart of New York’s theatre district, from 1883 till it closed in 1966. That year the “New” Met opened at Lincoln Center, and it too has an address on Broadway, although further uptown.

But opera and American musicals have other things in common too. Just as the great musicals from the 1920s through the 1990s provided part of the soundtrack of 20^th-century lives, so arias and choruses from operas became the popular music of 19^th-century Europe. In a period when no one had access to recordings, I-pods, radio, television, or widely distributed movies, attending the opera, especially in Italy, played a key role in popular culture. Ordinary people, not just the wealthy elite, could relish the melodramatic plots the way we might enjoy an action movie, and they sang tunes from operas in the street, the way we might hum something from the latest installment of American Idol or Glee. In fact, Giuseppe Verdi refused to let his tenor soloist rehearse or even see the music for “La donna è mobile” before the opening night of Rigoletto; he knew the tune was so catchy that everyone would start singing it as soon as they heard it and might think Verdi had stolen it. And he was right.

Music from operas even had an influence on politics. During the Risorgimento (the 19^th-century movement for Italian reunification), Verdi composed choruses that became rallying cries. For instance, Verdi’s opera Nabucco (1842) focuses on the Israelites during their exile in Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar (Nabucco in Italian). The third act includes a chorus (based on psalm 137) sung by the homesick Hebrew slaves titled “Va, pensiero”; its first lines translate roughly as “Fly, thought, on golden wings. Go rest yourself on the hills of home.” Legend has it that the opening night audience practically rioted when they first heard it, demanding encore after encore and joining in. Recent research suggests it probably didn’t happen quite that way, since dramatic performances rarely stopped for encores. Even so, later audiences routinely sang the chorus along with the performers on-stage. “Va pensiero” quickly became a patriotic anthem at demonstrations, marches, and political funerals, both because it matched the nationalists’ aspirations for a united homeland and because it was easy to sing.

From then on, the censors were on guard whenever Verdi presented an opera. To prevent protests and demonstrations, they tried to remove any reference that could possibly support the nationalist cause. They even demanded that he change the setting of an opera that dealt with the assassination of a monarch from Sweden to colonial Boston. Yet audiences were equally adept at finding patriotic parallels. For instance, Verdi revived his 1844 opera Ernani (based on a play by Victor Hugo, just as Les Mis is based on Hugo’s novel) in 1848, the year of uprisings all over Europe. The third act includes two choruses, one by conspirators plotting a coup, the other praising the merciful wisdom of Charlemagne. Much of the audience sang along with both, as usual, but they changed the lyrics. The first chorus began with the words “Si ridesta il leon in Castiglia” (May the lion arise in Castile), but the crowd changed Castiglia to Venezia–Venice. And instead of praising Charlemagne with the words “A Carlomagno sia gloria e onor” (Glory and honor to Charlemagne), they substituted the name Pio Nono—Pope Pius IX. In other words, the crowd wanted to achieve a reunited Italy so badly that they didn’t care if it was ruled by a republic or by the papacy, and they expressed their eagerness by making the music their own and singing it themselves. Based on how often Verdi’s work provided an excuse for demonstrations, nationalists even turned his very name into an acronym—when they shouted “Viva Verdi,” they were praising the composer, his work, and what his name could stand for: Vittorio Emmanuele, Re d’Italia—Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy.

Today, operas are performed in fancy venues at astronomical prices. We often think of opera as “high art,” something that we are supposed to “appreciate” because it is “good for us.” But at least in mid-19^th-century Italy, it was as viscerally exciting as any Broadway show. Broadway and the Met—not so far apart at all.

From the Director

As the weekend draws nearer, why not add even more pre-concert excitement?:-) Here are some thoughts from David De Lyser on his second concert that he’s conducting as CAE’s director. Enjoy!

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It’s the holiday season!  And thus begins the annual contemplation of what to program for the holiday concerts – the search for the perfect blend of familiar and new, serious and silly.  The sheer amount of choral music written for this season of holidays is beyond comprehension.  Yet there are a few pieces that rise above the others.  Tomás Luis de Victoria’s motet setting of the Catholic liturgical text, O Magnum Mysterium, certainly belongs in that category.  It is a sobering thought that this piece was written almost 450 years ago and in many ways has yet to be rivaled in its contemplative beauty and depiction of the mystery of the Incarnation at Christmas.  It was common practice for Renaissance composers to “parody” their own works by using the theme from one as the basis for another.  Victoria was no exception, and used the motet as the basis for a complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, Missa O Magnum Mysterium.  In contrast to some of his lesser-skilled colleagues, however, Victoria subtlety manipulates his previous material to craft a more energetic and celebratory mood for the mass.  Taken together, the motet and mass move from contemplation to celebration, an ethos which mirrors the motet itself, with its serene beginning and joyous “Alleluia” ending.  We will present both the motet and the mass in succession in the first half of our December concerts.

Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, which names our concerts and opens the second half, is also unmatched in many ways, setting Middle English texts in contemporary musical language.  Many of the movements have been excerpted into stand-alone pieces, but the emotional and stylistic range of the set taken as a whole has few rivals.  From the chant-like Procession to the celebratory Wolcum Yole! to the hypnotic trance of As Dew in Aprille to the battle cry of This Little Babe to the sparseness of In Freezing Winter night to the energetic Deo Gracias, this sublime work contains a wealth of imagery and metaphor related to the Christmas season.

Also on the program are Francis Poulenc’s Four Motets for the Season of Christmas.  While using traditional, seasonal liturgical texts, these works are unique in their prolific use of short, separated and repetitive phrases that give the works a joyfulness and playfulness.  They occupy a middle ground between the serenity of Victoria and the drama of Britten.

There are four additional carols that round out our program.  We will sing arrangements by Ola Gjeilo of The Holly and the Ivy, and The First Nowell.  Gjeilo is quickly establishing himself as one of the pre-eminent young composers of contemporary choral music with an intelligent and accessible style of writing that is highly expressive.  There carols are part of a set that mark his first arrangements of pre-existing material.  Look for much more of Gjeilo’s music in future concerts.

We will open our program with the majestic, fanfare-like Sir Christemus, to welcome not only the season, but you to our concerts as well.  And in the spirit of fellowship and celebration of the season, we will close with Vaughan Williams’ arrangement of the Wassail Song and the simple wish for a good Christmas pie, a good cask of ale and jolly wassailing all over the town.  Thanks again for your continued support of the Choral Arts Ensemble and choral music in the Portland Vancouver area.  We hope you will continue to do your part to keep us on the stage and out of your homes.  Happy holidays!

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*Tickets to this concert can be purchased at the door, or in advance on our website to save 10%! See our website for info!

A Peek into our Christmas Concert

With our Christmas concerts a mere week away, I wanted to entice you with an in-depth look at all of the wonderful music we will be singing! Thanks to Susan, who always provides such superb and informative program notes! We look forward to celebrating this wonderful season with all of you next weekend. Remember to save 10% by purchasing those tickets in advance through our website. Happy Holidays!

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A Ceremony of Carols

 

We all know about carols, right? We sing them and hear them in dozens of versions wherever we go during the entire month of December. But the first carols actually started as songs that accompanied circle dances at all seasons as early at the 12^th century. They later became parts of religious processions, then songs that congregations could sing during services, and eventually they even included secular songs that celebrate the winter season. Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols touches on all these aspects and gives us a lovely focus for music that ranges from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and right up to the present.

We begin with the rowdy welcome of “Sir Christèmas” by Welsh composer William Mathias (1934-1982). A prodigy who began writing music at five, Mathias composed an opera, several symphonies and piano works, and even a hymn for the royal wedding of Charles and Diana; he also taught at the University of Wales. “Sir Christèmas” comes from a larger work titled Ave Rex (Hail, King), based on three medieval carols. Sir Christèmas appears as a combination master of ceremonies and messenger who helps the singers tell the story of Christ’s birth; the use of French words may mean that the celebration takes place at an upper-class home. No one knows how old the words are, but Richard Smart, vicar at Exeter Cathedral, included a version in a collection of carols in the mid-1400s.

The motet “O Magnum Mysterium” by Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) offers a far more contemplative—even mystical—experience as it marvels at the great mystery of the Virgin Mary giving birth to a savior, with only the humble animals as witness. Born in Ávila, Spain (the city of St. Teresa, who may have heard him sing as a boy chorister), Victoria became the leading Spanish composer of the Counter-Reformation; some consider him the equal of his contemporary (and possibly teacher) Palestrina. Although he composed sacred music exclusively, his work reflected the influence of madrigals that had their greatest popularity in Italy when Victoria was living there (1565-1587). There he became a Jesuit priest in 1574, at last returning to Spain to serve as chaplain to King Philip II’s sister (although he continued to compose). Twenty years after he had composed the motet in 1572, he elaborated on the same musical themes in a mass, which we also present. A common practice in the 16^th century, the music alternates between full chorus and a smaller ensemble.

We close the first half of the program with a setting of the popular carol “The Holly and the Ivy” by contemporary composer Ola Gjello (b. 1978). Although the first published version of the carol dates to a broadside in 1710, the words and tune are undoubtedly older. They may even reflect pre-Christian traditions, since both plants once had sacred meaning in pagan cultures; the imagery of Mary’s purity and Christ’s suffering probably crept in later. The refrain (“The rising of the sun…”) apparently came last in the song’s development as a kind of pseudo-archaic decoration. Born in Oslo, Norway, Gjello moved to the United States in 2001 to study composition at Juilliard and film music at USC; he now lives in New York. Despite his many classical compositions, he has a passion for improvisation and jazz as both composer and performer. His settings of carols this year mark his first time arranging work written by others.

The greatest English composer of the 20^th century, Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) composed A Ceremony of Carols under unusual circumstances. He and his lifelong companion Peter Pears had emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s and even considered taking U.S. citizenship. When England and Germany went to war in 1939, however, they tried to return home, only to be told that they were more valuable in New York to help raise American sympathy for England. After Pearl Harbor, they finally received permission to return and booked passage on a Swedish cargo ship in March 1942. While in port in Nova Scotia, Britten found a book of Middle English lyrics that he read on the weeks-long voyage across the dangerous North Atlantic. He used the time on-board to compose the eleven individual pieces that make up the Ceremony, as well as his Hymn to St. Cecilia.

The Ceremony incorporates texts spanning several centuries. It opens and closes with medieval plainsong in Latin. The next several pieces have Middle English texts from the 13^th and 14^th centuries, but a few date from the 16^th century, a time of great religious upheaval in Britain. For instance, Jesuit Robert Southwell (1561-1595), who wrote “This Little Babe” (originally titled “New Heaven, New Warre”) and “In Freezing Winter Night,” was executed as a Catholic recusant (who refused Anglicanism) but was later canonized. William Cornish (1465-1523) served in Henry VIII’s court and wrote “Spring Carol,” which celebrates not Christmas but a season. The last piece before the recessional, “Deo Gracias,” returns to a combination of Middle English and Latin. Britten scored the whole work with harp accompaniment that draws listeners back to a dreamy version of the English past, yet even the harp can sound fierce in “This Little Babe”—perhaps reflecting Britten’s anxiety about the war.

After such an intense work, we turn to a light-hearted selection, as our wonderful accompanist Jennifer Creek Hughes performs “Sleigh Ride” by Leroy Anderson (1908-1975). Anderson studied composition with Walter Piston at Harvard, but he is best known for the light   orchestral works he wrote for the Boston Pops. He claimed that he wrote “Sleigh Ride” in the middle of a Boston heat wave in 1946.

French composer Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) first gained fame among a group of composers known as Les Six who rebelled against the style of Richard Wagner and the French Impressionist composers; in this period, he set poems by Surrealists Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cocteau. After the deaths of several friends, however, Poulenc had a religious re-awakening. He became an increasingly devout Catholic, composing works on sacred themes, including his searing opera Dialogues of the Carmelites (1955). The four Motets for the Season of Christmas date from around the same period. Using texts from Gregorian chant (as Britten did) but breaking them into seemingly choppy phrases, Poulenc still achieved an effect at once serene and sprightly, meditative and joyful.

The French word for Christmas (Noel) and the fact that the song first appeared in Cornwall, across the English Channel, imply that “The First Nowell” might have originated in France. In any event, the words and tune likely originated in the 15^th century. We present Ola Gjello’s recent setting of the story of the Magi, which makes this an Epiphany carol as well.

We close the concert with the rousing “Wassail Song,” set by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). Like many English composers early in the 20^th century, Vaughan Williams worried that his homeland’s folksongs were disappearing due to urbanization and commercial entertainment. To counteract this, he and others began a concerted effort to collect folksongs from all over Britain, arranging and performing them, and making them more widely available; in Vaughan Williams’ case, he included several when he edited the English Hymnal in 1906. This version of “Wassail” comes from Gloucestershire, and the word itself brings us back to the Middle English of A Ceremony of Carols: “Waes Hail,” like any proper toast, literally means “good health.” We join our sentiments to those of the song to wish you and yours a happy, healthy, and peaceful new year.

Susan Wladaver-Morgan