I Hear America Singing

June 12, 2011: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

Bimal Desai, Rachel Haimovich, Ranwa Hammamy, Jen Hayman, Allison Hedges, Michael Johnson, Ken Olin, Jordan Rock, Joy Wiltenburg, Caroline Winschel, and Rick Womer

Long Time Traveler                            Edmund Dumas (1810–1882) arr. Jordan Rock

Euroclydon                                           William Billings (1746–1800)

Four Motets                                           Aaron Copland (1900–1990)

I. Help us, O Lord
II. Thou, O Jehovah, abideth forever
III. Have mercy on us, O Lord
IV. Sing ye praises to our King

Sweet Prospect                                     William Walker (1809–1875) arr. George S. Clinton

Shenandoah                                         Traditional Folksong, c. 1800 arr. James Erb

Landis Settings                                              John B. Hedges (1974–)

I. Amherst Noon
II. March Simile
III. Autobiography

world premiere

selections from A Child of Our Time         Michael Tippett (1905–1998)

Nobody knows
Steal away

A Ballad of Tree-Toads  Lester Jenks [Harvey B. Gaul] (1881–1945)

With a Lily in Your Hand                              Eric Whitacre (1970–)

 Long Time Trav’ling                                        Abbie Betinis (1980–)

We begin with leaving. Then again, most American stories begin with departures of some kind: from Spain, bound for adventure and mercenary glory; from the western coast of Africa, in bondage; from rocky English shores, for salvation. The arrivals are what make the stories famous, but the departures—wrenching and exhilarating, nerve-wracking and hopeful—are what make them stories. 

Grounded in this common tradition of departure, today’s program traces a shared culture of rootlessness and amalgamation, of roadside exchange and perpetually forward motion. It is a concert of reinvention and self-reference, such that some of the singers joked about making a game out of the citations and reprises, Pin-the-Tail-On-What-You’ve-Heard-Before. Our title comes from the poem of the same name by Walt Whitman, which we read not for its sentimental image of discrete voices singing discrete songs but for its reminder that indeed, these voices and songs cannot help but build on one another, just as songbirds riff on inherited tunes to create new cacophony. The process of music-making is necessarily cumulative, but today’s cross-section reveals that the layers of tradition and time are not firmly fixed atop one another: this history is not linear, and these journeys frequently overlap. We set out today alone, but we will meet others along the way.

We open with an explicit demonstration of those meetings given voice: a dual arrangement of Edmund Dumas’ “Long Time Traveler,” which was originally published in the 1859 edition of The Sacred Harp under the title “White.” The title was an homage to Benjamin Franklin White (1800–1879), editor of the first three editions of The Sacred Harp songbook and progenitor of the American traditions of both Sacred Harp and shapenote singing. Although Sacred Harp and shapenote singing are not technically synonymous, they have became nearly so, in large part because of White’s songbook. Shapenote singing, invented in the late eighteenth century as a method to facilitate the teaching of singing and sight-reading, relied upon a system of four shapes—a triangle, a square, an oval, and a diamond—that each represented both a syllable and a musical pitch. Rather than use the seven-syllable do-re-mi solfege that is more familiar to today’s singers, shapenote used just four syllables—fa, sol, la, and mi—to cover all possible notes. The shapes and syllables are firmly linked—a triangle, for instance, is always pronounced “fa”—and their relativity to one another is fixed, such that mi, for instance, is always a half-step lower than fa. The Sacred Harp, first published in 1844, standardized the many competing variations on shapenote, cementing both its reliance on only four notes and its simple harmonic structure, distinct from the more complex music being written contemporaneously in Europe.

Jordan’s rearrangement of “Long Time Traveler” takes its cues from two settings of the hymn: an unadorned three-part arrangement by the Wailin’ Jennys and the traditional, four-part version from the third edition of The Sacred Harp. The arrangement by the Wailin’ Jennys, a Canadian folk trio, serves us especially well as an aural demonstration of the kind of tag-team creativity that this program exemplifies; as additional voices join in and the harmonies build, the very simple tune at the piece’s core grows to something more transcendent.

It is admittedly unorthodox to start a concert with this kind of slow build-up, but the metaphor––of travelers meeting to combine their “varied carols”––is irresistible. So, too, is the reverence inherent in this opening trio: this is by far our most sacred concert this year, and beginning with a single, contemplative voice singing about the promise of heaven locates us carefully alongside the travelers whose steps we shadow. For the nineteenth-century Americans who would have sung simple harmonies like this and learned hymns out of songbooks like The Sacred Harp, departure and uncertainty were familiar and bittersweet parts of life in the United States. Americans of this era certainly knew more itinerancy than their European counterparts, simply because Americans had—and maybe still have—a tendency to move around a lot, whether for gold or for war or for better prospects elsewhere. In leaving, they knew that despite the advantages of efficient railroads and a well-organized postal service, they might not return to the places of their cherished beginnings. The moment of departure thus becomes a moment of reflection, setting out for parts unknown—to sea, to a new town, to an afterlife—while holding close to what sustained them.

The Sacred Harp setting of the hymn honors that same reverence with considerably more gusto. Shapenote singing is traditionally loud, twangy, and brazen in tone, meant for whole communities rather than trained singers alone. Shapenote singings have no consistent conductor; instead, singers take turns leading pieces, with everyone encouraged to mark time with their free hand. A new piece would typically be sung through on syllables alone, as we do here, before the words are added in on the repeat.

The sheer volume of shapenote singing may be unique to that style, but the twangy, rustic harmonies are not. William Billings (1746–1800), largely regarded as the father of American music, employed similar sounds in his prodigious output of hymns and patriotic tunes. Tellingly, Billings’ ultimate downfall as a composer was not his deliberately facile tunes but rather his legions of imitators. Without the benefit of copyright protection for his work, Billings’ most popular pieces—those that would have been the most lucrative for the composer to own—were reprinted, copyright-free, in songbooks like The Sacred Harp. Thus deprived of both the rights to and steady income from his work, Billings died in penury. Billings is not the only artist on this program whose work suffered reappropriation owing to the lack of copyright protection, but happily, most Billings tunes are today recognized as such. “Euroclydon,” named for the Biblical windstorm that causes a shipwreck, couples Billings’ signature harmonies with an affecting narrative of near-disaster, salvation, and homecoming. Betraying his ear for older musical traditions, the composer makes special use of text painting to depict his sailors’ torment, even as the final phrases of the piece sound suspiciously hymn-like.

Although Aaron Copland (1900–1990) is best known for his deliberate reliance on similarly rustic or folksy sounds, his Four Motets evince an unexpected delicacy even as they strum those same open fifths. Composed in 1921 during his studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, Four Motets was Copland’s first choral composition; the precipitous key changes suggest that their composer may yet have lacked a full sense of how he wanted his music to sound. As Boulanger wrote to Copland, however, the pieces “sound in the voices in a stunning manner,” and the harmonies that sounded rustic and countrified in earlier works now begin to shimmer.

With William Walker’s “Sweet Prospect” and James Erb’s setting of “Shenandoah,” we see continued use of these traditional sounds. Walker, White’s brother-in-law and collaborator on the first edition of The Sacred Harp, composed “Sweet Prospect” in the early 1830s, and the tune was included in the original printing of The Sacred Harp. By contrast, the text is not original to Walker or The Sacred Harp: Samuel Stennett, an eighteenth-century British minister, penned the verses for a hymn setting of his own. In appropriating Stennett’s text for his own composition, Walker acts as another magpie in this cultural chronology, freely making new use of existing work. “Sweet Prospect,” scored here for women’s voices, returns to themes and sounds we recognize from “Long Time Traveler”: twanging open fifths, communal time-keeping, a relish for the text, and the promise of heaven.

Juxtaposed against the brazen Sacred Harp sounds of “Sweet Prospect,” James Erb’s “Shenandoah” comes as a lovely, soothing reprieve. In setting “Shenandoah,” Erb joins a long line of reinterpreters, not reappropriators: the origins of the song are murky, with most experts agreeing only that was first sung on the East Coast in the early nineteenth century. Because the melody is inherently singable, it was passed on orally through several different communities in the nineteenth century, many of whom added verses or interpretations that are still familiar today. One version frames Shenandoah as a Native American chief whose daughter plans to elope with the singer; another suggests that the song may have been sung by escaped slaves, who traveled through the river so as not to leave a scent trail on land. Erb’s arrangement treats the text quite simply, without wading into additional narrative verses, but the voices are structured so as to bring out the inner movement of the melody: the women sing one verse in canon, and when the men return on the chorus, all voices pulse the nasal consonants of “Shenandoah,” creating a rippling, rhythmic effect that suggests the very sounds of the river itself.

Amid this musical conversation of inheritance and inspiration, it is our joy and our privilege to sing the world premiere of John B Hedges’ Landis Settings, which was composed this winter for the Chestnut Street Singers. Philadelphia is a natural site for this premiere:  after completing his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and earning a Master of Music at Westminster Choir College, Hedges returned to postgraduate studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he worked with Joan Hutton Landis, now Professor Emerita of Humanities, whose poetry is featured in the work. Hedges’ connection to Philadelphia and the Chestnut Street Singers is not merely academic, as his older sister, Allison, is a dedicated member of our ensemble.

We gave Hedges very few suggestions for the directions his work might take, other than musing that it might be nice to include text by a contemporary female poet. Much to our delight, however, the three movements of Landis Settings fit neatly and evocatively alongside the rest of today’s program, complementing the more traditional pieces with a modern aesthetic all their own. Landis’ poems do similar work, paying homage to familiar traditions and icons—“Amherst Noon,” in particular, is a poignant portrait of Emily Dickinson––with a wry and cosmopolitan sensibility. Landis Settings thus couples tradition and innovation, hearkening to both 1940s jazz and the mid-century motivic atonality made popular by Schoenberg and achieving what Hedges referred to as “a bluesy, juicy jazz harmony vein.” It has been an honor and a pleasure to sing Landis’ texts and Hedges’ music, and we are delighted to premiere this work on today’s program.

Though the modernity of Landis Settings might initially catch us off guard, the underlying blues techniques have a sweet familiarity, like something that we almost recognize but that has been distorted by time. The two selections that follow, from A Child of Our Time, use the same strategy of tweaking well-loved traditions, but these draw from spirituals, the precursor to Hedges’ blues. Michael Tippett, the only non-American composer on today’s program, wrote A Child of Our Time after being inspired by the events leading up to Kristallnacht in 1938; the oratorio, structured to match Handel’s Messiah in shape and grandeur, proclaims both Tippett’s pacifism and his belief in the inherent goodness of all people. Interestingly, although the 1944 premiere was a critical and popular success, many objected to the inclusion of spirituals and jazz elements, denigrating them as improper for performance as classical music. Unsurprisingly, we feel quite the opposite about Tippett’s spirituals: in addition to being beautiful in their own right, we find it very telling that Tippett—a young Englishman wracked with terror and guilt over the emerging fascism in Germany and his own country’s militarism––relied upon African-American spirituals as the most poignant expression of his own despair. Rather than being a niche tradition, bound only to shameful periods of American history, spirituals thus become an eloquent, cosmopolitan genre, universally accessible for expressions of both hope and anguish.

As the musical traditions of spirituals led to blues and, eventually, rock and roll, so too did the same heritage inform the barbershop sounds made popular in the early twentieth century. Lester Jenks’ “A Ballad of Tree-Toads” gives our men a chance to spotlight their facility with both close barbershop harmonies and tongue-twisting lyrics. Lester Jenks was one of many pseudonyms used by Harvey B. Gaul, a prolific composer and arranger and talented organist who lived in Pittsburgh at the turn of the twentieth century. The absurd text of the “Tree-Toads” was originally printed in The Pittsburgh Post, suggesting that Gaul, like his fellows on today’s program, took just as much inspiration from the mundane as from the classical.

We close this evening by pairing two luminaries in contemporary American music, both of whom are celebrated for combining innovative rhythms and voicings with lush choral sounds. Eric Whitacre, who recently made headlines with his YouTube-based Virtual Choir, has cemented his status as the golden boy of American choral music, known especially for his use of dense, unearthly chords. “With a Lily in Your Hand” is thus a bit of a departure from Whitacre’s usual style; although there are plenty of wrenching, electric harmonies, they are interspersed with insistent, jarring rhythms, pitting the poet’s stated intention to return to his lover against the obstructions of space and time. Abbie Betinis, recently named one of NPR’s top hundred composers under forty, creates similar juxtapositions of promises and doubts in “Long Time Trav’ling,” which she specially recommended to us after hearing about this program last fall. Betinis herself has a storied pedigree as an American composer; she is the great-niece of Alfred Burt, whose annual Christmas card carols included such favorites as “O, Hearken Ye” and “Bright Bright the Holly Berries.”

In “Long Time Trav’ling,” Betinis’ reverence for American musical history is evident; the work combines two popular—and by now, familiar to us all—nineteenth-century shapenote hymns with additional text from a third such setting. The interwoven solo lines are sung with gusto, shapenote style, while the rest of the choristers interject as both distant chain gangs and sightreading shapenoters. For all that the text and the core melodies come from the shapenote tradition, however, the work’s complexity goes far beyond the deliberate simplicity of The Sacred Harp, with competing lines seeming to undercut the texts’ optimistic proclamation that “we’ll meet again.” As the piece swells to its final crescendo, it switches feverishly between major and minor modes, indicating that these travelers are well aware of the perils they face in leaving friends behind. In closing our inaugural season with such a work, however, we aim to make our intentions clear: we have cherished your part in this season’s journey, and we dearly hope we’ll meet again in the fall. Indeed, we have reason to be optimistic, for although “Long Time Trav’ling” ends without closure or resolution, it does not leave us without recourse. We can feel that the journey is unfinished, but we know how to find our way home from here.

The Food of Love

March 20, 2011: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

Bimal Desai, Rachel Haimovich, Ranwa Hammamy, Jen Hayman, Allison Hedges, Michael Johnson, Ken Olin, Jordan Rock, Joy Wiltenburg, Caroline Winschel, and Rick Womer

If music be the food of love Jean Belmont Ford (1939–)

I Am the Rose of Sharon William Billings (1746–1800)

Nigra Sum Pablo Casals (1876–1973)

Rise Up, My Love Healey Willan (1880–1968)

Wahre Liebe Paul Hindemith (1895–1963)

I Am Not Yours Z. Randall Stroope (1953–)

Of all the birds that I do know John Bartlet (1565–1620)

Dieu! Qu’il la fait bon regarder Claude Debussy (1862–1918)

Farewell False Love George Kirbye (1565–1634)

The Tyrant Love George Kirbye (1565–1634)

O Vos Omnes Pablo Casals (1876–1973)

O Vos Omnes Blake R. Henson (1983–)

Frauenklage Paul Hindemith (1895–1963)

Dream of Heaven Blake R. Henson (1983–)

Acrostic Song David Del Tredici (1937–)

The title of today’s program may be recognized as the opening lines of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in which the lovesick Duke Orsino urges his musicians, “If music be the food of love, play on.” Our title, however––and our opening piece, by the celebrated American composer Jean Belmont Ford (1939–)––comes from Henry Heveningham’s seventeenth-century riff on Shakespeare’s famous prompt, turning Orsino’s plaint into a proper love poem. While Orsino seeks to drown his sorrows in melancholy music, asking for “excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken, and so die,” Heveningham’s narrator uses music as flirtation, drawing upon the sensual language of appetite to proclaim the beauty of the listener. It is in the spirit of Heveningham’s poem, celebrating the charms of music alongside those of a beloved, that we have assembled today’s program of love songs.

Ford’s piece is only the first reimagining of a familiar romantic text; “I Am the Rose of Sharon,” “Nigra Sum,” and “Rise Up, My Love” represent three distinct treatments of similar—sometimes identical— verses from the Song of Solomon. Religious interpretations of the Song of Solomon posit that the famously explicit text can be read as an allegory of the Judeo-Christian god’s relationship with Israel or with the Christian church, but more recent scholarship has illuminated similarities between the Song of Solomon and other ancient erotic poetry. For William Billings (1746–1800), Pablo Casals (1876–1973), and Healy Willan (1880–1968), the stanzas seem to signify very clearly as love poems, continuing the flirtatious pursuit begun by Ford. Appropriately for a springtime concert, each composer spotlights the text’s proclamation of spring as a season of renewal and sensuality.

Although both Casals and Willan were twentieth-century composers, their lush styles hearken back to earlier trends in music. Billings, too, a self-taught musician who is often considered the father of American music, bypassed the prevailing sounds of his day in favor of rougher, almost medieval-sounding harmonies. The inherent sprightliness of Billings’ “I Am the Rose of Sharon” contrasts nicely with the more mature colors of “Nigra Sum” and “Rise Up, My Love.” In particular, Willan’s “Rise Up, My Love” has a languorous quality that forecasts the speaker’s amorous intentions.

In “Wahre Liebe,” the last in this set of romantic overtures, Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) continues that depth of sound. Here again, both the text and the music seem drawn from earlier traditions, with the delicate Renaissance-style harmonies complementing the references to the twelfth-century tale of Tristan and Isolde. Those lovers, however, for all that they symbolize pure devotion, were drawn together owing to a magical love potion; by contrast, Hindemith’s gallant declares that his feelings outweigh even Tristan’s in both purity and ardor.

If, as we hope, the lovers in these first pieces succeed in their seductions, Z. Randall Stroope’s (1953–) exhilarating setting of Sara Teasdale’s “I Am Not Yours” might seem an appropriate entrée to the next phase of their relationships. “I Am Not Yours” strikes a different tone from the flirtatious texts with which we began today’s concert; the narrator here need not convince her beloved of her feelings. Instead, the poem reads as though she is simply waiting for an appropriate opportunity to act on her infatuation. The poem’s historical context, however, suggests that it may be less an intent for assignation than a sign of resignation: Teasdale herself, a lyrical poet in the early twentieth century, did not enjoy a happy romantic life. Her unhappy marriage ended in divorce, and she was rumored to have harbored lifelong feelings for a friend and former lover who considered himself financially unable to marry her. “I Am Not Yours,” published only months after Teasdale’s wedding, may have betrayed her inner tumult on––and, perhaps, her resignation to––marrying another man.

Happily, John Bartlet’s (1565–1620) “Of all the birds that I do know” and Claude Debussy’s (1862–1918) “Dieu! qu’il la fait bon regarder” have no such tragic backstory. Indeed, they capture all the giddiness and abandon of new romance. “Of all the birds that I do know,” popularized by the King’s Singers in their Madrigal History Tour, wins the prize for being the most overtly suggestive piece on the program: although the poet celebrates a singing sparrow named Philip, the chorus indicates that Philip may actually be a woman—and she may actually be vocalizing something other than song. Like “Of all the birds,” “Dieu! qu’il la fait bon regarder” is a well-loved choral piece, and Charles d’Orléans’ earnest text is only the first of its many charms. Like the poem’s titular woman, the composition boasts many virtues: the tessitura in all four parts lends itself to very easy and lyrical singing and the voices move in parallel motion while the insistent three-versus-two rhythms—a hemiola, in which one part’s triplet rhythm is set against another part’s duples—keep the melodies moving smoothly forward.

Of course, Shakespeare himself would remind us that the course of true love never runs smoothly, and the delight embodied by Stroope, Bartlet, and Debussy may be finite. Things certainly took a tragic turn for George Kirbye (1565–1634), whose “Farewell False Love” and “The Tyrant Love” begin our descent into romantic despair. Unfortunately, Kirbye’s disappointment in love may not have been balanced by overwhelming professional success; today, his works are little sung and rarely published. As a madrigalist, Kirbye eschewed the light style made popular by his English contemporaries like Morley and Weelkes, preferring instead to work with serious texts, often in a minor mode. Like the Italians whom he imitated, Kirbye devoted careful attention to text setting, framing line and tempo to reflect the content of the verses. Given Kirbye’s relative obscurity, today’s performance may be the Philadelphia premiere of “Farewell False Love” and “The Tyrant Love.” (In fact, this may very well be their world premiere—our research has turned up no extant recordings and only incomplete performance records.) However, his sense of betrayal and resignation after having been crossed in love is likely just as familiar to modern audiences as Charles d’Orléans’ eager infatuation.

Much of today’s program features juxtapositions between musicians of similar eras but different styles, as in the contrast between Kirbye and Bartlet, who were born in the same year but approached their work with vastly different sensibilities. We continue our exploration of the lovelorn, however, with a pairing by composers of different generations but deliberately similar styles: two settings of “O Vos Omnes” by Pablo Casals (1876–1973) and Blake R. Henson (1983–), respectively. The text comes from Lamentations, which, unlike the Song of Solomon, is distinctly religious, bewailing the destruction of Jerusalem and the wrath of an angry god. In the excerpt that becomes “O Vos Omnes,” however, the text is entirely secular, signifying only the speaker’s bleak despair. For all that Lamentations itself is selectively excerpted, the Casals and Henson pairing demonstrates true fidelity to source “text.” The Casals original, composed in 1942, generates a rich, somber tone, suggestive of Casals’ own stylings as an accomplished cellist. Henson’s homage, published in 2006, cites the first two measures of Casals’ piece before plunging into a gentler—but equally moving—setting of the same text. After stewing in Kirbye’s rage and wallowing in Casals and Henson’s sorrow, our narrative of lost love culminates in Hindemith’s “Frauenklage,” the second of his Five Songs on Old Texts. Like “Wahre Liebe,” the first in that collection, “Frauenklage” evokes earlier musical trends, using twentieth-century tonal language to evoke Renaissance harmonic patterns. The individual parts are written in traditional motet style, but they are layered upon one another to create complex polytonality. The text also returns us to an explicitly female narrator for the first time since “Nigra Sum,” although the quiet grief of Hindemith’s lamenting lady would likely seem totally foreign to Casals’ flushed and eager beauty.

Such privileged sorrow, however—the mature understanding that love can be cherished and celebrated despite the gentle ravages of time—is the necessary final development in today’s sequential narrative. Henson’s “Dream of Heaven” is part love song, part lullaby; his use of Samuel Rogers’ (1763–1855) “The Sleeping Beauty” marks the first text on the program in which the lover encourages his beloved to continue without him. The narrator may be telling an alternate version of the traditional fairytale, or he may be its unsung hero: after having presumably wrestled his way through the thickets and thorns surrounding the sleeping princess’ tower, he pauses in his moment of anticipated triumph and allows the young woman to “sleep on secure above control.” The lovers with whom we opened the program were appealingly romantic in their pleas, but the narrator of Rogers’ poem is almost certainly more admirable: in refusing to disturb the sleeping princess, he cherishes and respects her beauty and her mind more than he would have in waking her to live as his queen.

Henson’s setting of the text is unabashedly comforting in moments when the narrator is speaking to the princess, and the music reaches a fever pitch only when the narrator fears that the young woman might be stirring into wakefulness. When the moment of anxiety passes, however, Henson returns to the soothing melodies with which the piece opened, reinforcing the lullaby of his own composition with the familiar strains of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” arcing through the soprano and alto lines. The portrait of a young woman being allowed to grow up gracefully recurs in David Del Tredici’s “Acrostic Song,” although to more sorrowful effect. Del Tredici (1937–), who trained as a serialist in the mid-twentieth century, shocked the musical world with the 1976 premiere of the lush and neo-romantic Final Alice, of which “Acrostic Song” is the fifth act. Final Alice was originally composed for soprano soloist and a modified orchestra, conceived as a series of elaborate arias drawing upon the poetry in and inspirations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The text for “Acrostic Song” is the concluding poem in Through the Looking-Glass, which was written five years after Alice’s Adventures and almost ten years after the fateful boat trip on which Charles Lutwidge Dodgson made up a story about Wonderland to entertain young Edith, Lorina, and Alice Liddell. Alice Liddell, who was ten years old at the time, became the inspiration for Alice herself, and she is memorialized in the poem, which spells out her entire name—Alice Pleasance Liddell—in the first letter of each line.

Much of Alice’s Adventures is wracked with anxiety about Alice growing up; owing to a combination of magic potions and Wonderland accidents, Alice is repeatedly too large to function properly in Wonderland, unable to fit through the door to the White Rabbit’s garden and eventually so Amazonian as to be able to use the Queen of Hearts and her court as playing cards. The poem at the end of Looking-Glass, however, written when Alice was already an accomplished young lady, does not begrudge her this inevitable and natural maturation.

Like Henson, Del Tredici treats the text with reverence, even shifting to minor tonalities for the most mournful passages of the poem. As a kind of elegy for a lost summer’s day, “Acrostic Song” is not nearly as calming as “Dream of Heaven,” but with its invocations of dreams, it becomes almost as lullaby-like. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” returns in the sopranos’ insistence that life is “but a dream,” and Del Tredici’s deliberate repetition of short phrases of text breaks the verses into nonsense syllables, as if language itself has yielded to the inexorable degradation of time. The piece, like the poem, ends without achieving resolution; for Alice––as for the Sleeping Beauty and as for each of us––there is more to the story, yet to be told.

Sex, Drugs, and Madrigals

October 24, 2010: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

Bimal Desai, Jen Hayman, Allison Hedges, Michael Johnson, Ken Olin, Cory O’Niell Walker, Joy Wiltenburg, Caroline Winschel, Ellen Womer, and Rick Womer.

My Spirit Sang All Day                               Gerald Finzi (1901–1956)                                     

C’est trop parlé de Bacchus                 Pierre Certon (c. 1515–1572)                         

Come, Sirrah Jack, Ho!                        Thomas Weelkes (1576–1623)

Come Let Us Drink (excerpts)                     Henry Purcell (1659–1695)

         I Gave Her Cakes

         Tom Making A Manteau

Art of the Ground Round (excerpts)          P.D.Q. Bach (1807–1742?);

         2. Please, Kind Sir               squarely edited by Peter Schickele

         3. Jane, My Jane

         6. Nellie Is a Nice Girl

Madrigal                                              Kenneth Leighton (1929–1988)

Sing We and Chant It                           Thomas Morley (1557–1602)

Can’t Buy Me Love                            John Lennon (1940–1980) and Paul McCartney (1942–); arr. Keith Abbs

Fair Phyllis I Saw                                        John Farmer (1570–1605)

Matona mia cara                                 Orlande de Lassus (1532–1594)

Madrigali                                                     Morten Lauridsen (1943–)

       I. Ov’è, lass’, il bel viso?

II. Quando son più lontan

    III. Amor, io sento l’alma

     IV. Io piango

      V. Luci serene e chiare

     VI. Se per havervi, oime

Madrigal                                                    Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)

Au joly jeu  Clément Janequin (c. 1485–1558)

By definition, madrigals are secular works. In practice, they are also a uniquely flexible musical genre, as evidenced by the eras spanned in today’s program: this concert features works from the early sixteenth century, when madrigals first came to popularity in Italy, France, and England, juxtaposed against nineteenth- and twentieth-century interpretations of those first exemplars.

As is true today, a secular piece in the sixteenth century dealt with non-sacred subjects, including, to our delight, sex and drugs. Many madrigals draw upon the amorous poetry made popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, chronicling both romantic success—as in John Farmer’s “Fair Phyllis I Saw,” in which Phyllis and her lover “fell a-kissing”—and despair, such as Morten Lauridsen’s “Io piango,” which laments, “So trapped by Love am I / That ever I lie in torment.” To further stress the significance of the text, madrigals draw heavily on “text painting,” a Renaissance technique in which the melodic lines reflect the meaning of the lyrics in pitch, rhythm, and expression.

Notably, these pieces are all written in the vernacular; we sing today in English, French, and Italian but, unusually for a chamber chorus, we have nothing in Latin. Indeed, many historians posit that the word “madrigal” came from the Latin “matricale,” which means “in the mother tongue.” In the Renaissance, Latin was the language of learned scholars, clerics, and bureaucrats; everyday vernacular was the language of lovers and revelers.

The choice of text was not the only way in which Renaissance composers made their secular intentions clear. Madrigals, like many other pieces from the Renaissance, are polyphonic works, in which multiple independently moving voices create an intricately textured melody. In the late sixteenth century, the church tried to ban polyphonic music, fearing that the moving parts would be a distraction from sacred text. Composers eager to embrace the new technique prevailed over their church sponsors in the latter half of the century, but by then the conflict had been well established. To write in polyphony in the early sixteenth century, as several of today’s composers did, was to flaunt the church’s established code of conduct. In other words, Elvis Presley was not the first musician whose “moving parts” scandalized traditional authorities.

In the interest of underlining the pervasiveness and adaptability of these themes, today’s program is deliberately arranged in non-chronological order, with complementary elements appearing and reappearing in works from different eras and aesthetics. We open with

Gerald Finzi’s vibrant “My Spirit Sang All Day,” the third of his Seven Partsongs set to poems by Robert Bridges (1844–1930). Finzi (1901–1956), a luminary in early twentieth-century British songwriting, had a thorough grounding in English literature and was noticeably conscious of text in all of his compositions, setting musical phrases to reflect the emotional progression of the poems. Here, Finzi echoes Bridges’ frequent interjections of “O, my joy!” with equally lively—and equally joyous—crescendos and vivacity.

Pierre Certon’s “C’est trop parlé de Bacchus” and Thomas Weelkes’ “Come, Sirrah Jack, Ho!” serve to firmly anchor our repertoire in texts of revelry, not just love. Interestingly for composers celebrating the joys of liquor and tobacco, both Certon (c. 1515–1572) and Weelkes (1575–1623) were primarily employed by the church; the former served as master of choristers at Sainte-Chappelle in Paris, and the latter held a series of organist positions at English churches and cathedrals. Both, however, made their fame as secular composers, and both encountered trouble with ecclesiastical authorities: as a young man, Certon was nearly jailed for playing ball at Notre Dame and refusing to attend Mass, while Weelkes was discharged from his post at Chichester Cathedral because of public drunkenness.

Weelkes could have benefited from Certon’s instruction: in “C’est trop parlé de Bacchus,” Certon brags about his ability to drink copiously without getting sick, advising his fellows to imitate his accomplishment. Weelkes’ piece, however, is notably more intricate; in the opening verses, Weelkes employs a hocket, a medieval technique in which the rhythm of one voice—here, the alto line––is deliberately opposed to those in the other parts, creating a sort of hiccup (“hoquet” in French) in the rhythm. “Come, Sirrah Jack, Ho!” extols the purported virtues of smoking tobacco, which became wildly popular in sixteenth-century Europe after Columbus’ crew brought it back from the Americas. Although Europeans generally smoked recreationally, they had learned of the indigenous American practice of using tobacco medicinally, which accounts for Weelkes rejoicing in tobacco as a panacea.

Men were not alone in their interest in such products; Henry Purcell (1659­–1695) chronicles a seduction by way of gift-giving in “I Gave Her Cakes,” in which a suitor presents a young woman with several types of alcohol, cakes, and jewelry while peppering her with kisses. Whether because of the gifts or because of the kisses, the young woman does seem to relent, and the pair is “wondrous merry.” 

Purcell’s “I Gave Her Cakes” is more a descendant of madrigals than it is a true madrigal. Instead, “I Gave Her Cakes” and “Tom Making A Manteau” are both catches, a polyphonic form popular in the seventeenth century, when traditional madrigals were on the wane outside England. Like madrigals, catches are unaccompanied, secular, and attentive to their texts. Unlike madrigals, catches are sung in the round, such that different parts enter at different times, and the lines can be carefully layered to reveal unexpected innuendo once all parts join in.

It is worth noting that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both madrigals and catches were overwhelmingly composed and sung by men. When women are factored in, they exist only as objects, usually of a man’s sexual conquest, and there are no extant madrigals composed by women crowing about the returned kisses of a male paramour. This is unsurprising: few women would have had the necessary linguistic or musical training available to their brothers. Any woman who did have such opportunities would have been too genteel to dream of putting her name to a bawdy or rollicking song.

Because Purcell’s catches were written to be sung by men’s voices alone, they don’t translate well to a mixed-voice setting; the juxtaposed lines are meant to be sung within the same vocal register. Rather than preserve their original arrangement, however, we found it more suggestive to grant Purcell’s catches to the women of the choir, putting a new spin on the old heteronormative texts.

As a counterpart, the men present three catches from P.D.Q. Bach’s Art of the Ground Round. Bach’s catches were obviously inspired by Purcell, as they use the same technique of overlapping voices revealing new texts. Bach (1807–1742?), however, interprets catches within the baroque tradition, adding a part for discontinuo, performed today on the euphonium. Baroque pieces commonly had continuo parts consisting of a simple line played by a bass instrument and an ornamental keyboard part. By contrast, Bach preferred the bass line alone, especially later in life, when his age and girth prevented him from comfortably reaching both ends of a keyboard simultaneously.

Kenneth Leighton’s “Madrigal,” using text by John Fletcher (1579–1625), introduces a modern interpretation of the madrigal form and completes the battle of the sexes laid out in the catches. Here, though, Leighton (1929–1988) repudiates the endless madrigalian reliance on love poetry; dissonant chords underlie the poet’s ominous warning that lovers commit themselves to betrayal when they commit themselves to one another.

We return to the traditional madrigal setting in “Sing We and Chant It,” by Thomas Morley (1557–1602). Morley’s piece is an old chestnut to

Renaissance choirs, with its bright melodies and its earnest promotion of the good life. The cheerful “fa la la” of Morley’s chorus is, interestingly enough, neatly echoed in Keith Abbs’ madrigalian setting of The Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love,” adding actual rock and roll to this program of musical revelry. “Fair Phyllis I Saw,” by John Farmer (1570–1605), and “Matona Mia Cara,” by Roland de Lassus (1532–1594) flesh out our selection of classic madrigals. “Fair Phyllis,” in particular, is a sterling example of text painting; as Amyntas searches “up and down” for wandering Phyllis, the four voice parts echo his movements. “Matona,” on the other hand, reveals just how much bawdiness can be hidden behind lovely melodies; the joke is that the narrator, a German soldier, speaks such poor Italian that he doesn’t realize the full meaning of his words.

Morten Lauridsen’s Madrigali draws inspiration—and text—from the earliest madrigals, but to a very different effect. A major figure in twentieth-century American composition, Lauridsen (1943–) is known for the lush density of his choral pieces. Madrigali, a six-part song cycle, is also known as the “Fire Songs,” because the piece draws extensively on a sonority called the “fire chord,” which opens the set and recurs throughout. The cycle blends stylistic qualities of early madrigals, like text painting, hockets, and counterpoint, with Lauridsen’s signature contemporary harmonic structure.

Like the Lauridsen Madrigali, Gabriel Fauré’s “Madrigal” bridges the divide between Renaissance madrigals and contemporary composition. Fauré (1845–1924) himself nimbly occupied the liminal space between the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century and the burgeoning modernism of the twentieth. “Madrigal” employs Fauré’s customary lyricism against the now-familiar refrain urging pleasure instead of solitude. Interestingly, for all that “Madrigal” is a nineteenth-century composition, it is frequently performed by ensembles that otherwise limit themselves to the music of the Renaissance.

We close today with a return to the true Renaissance madrigal in the form of Clement Janéquin’s “Au joly jeu,” the oldest piece on the program. Janéquin (c. 1485–1558), like Farmer and Purcell after him, depicts a light-hearted scene of flirtation and coy playfulness, in which the melodies bounce along as merrily as the couple described in the text. We find Janéquin’s work especially fitting as a closing piece because of its vintage: as Janéquin was one of the first composers whose music was printed using the modern techniques of movable type, he embodies the shift from medieval to modern practices of composing and performing. So, too, do madrigals and their descendants forge a connection between the music—and musicians—of the sixteenth century and those we enjoy today.