Ask the Winter Moon

December 2, 2023
Michael Blaakman, Sonja Bontrager, Alan Bush, Sam Duplessis, Julie Frey, Walker Gosrich, Matt Hall, Amy Hochstetler, Samantha James, Elissa Kranzler, Hank Miller, Erina Pearlstein, Rebekah Reddi, Jordan Rock, Lizzy Schwartz, Melinda Steffy, John Whelchel, Ben Willis, Caroline Winschel, Michele Zuckman

Judith Weir, “Drop down, ye heavens, from above”
Zanaida Robles, “Ecstatic Expectancy”
Jean Mouton, “Nesciens Mater”
Eric Whitacre, “little tree”
Thomas Morley, “April is in my mistress’ face”
Caspar Othmayr, “Es ist ein Schnee gefallen”
Claude Debussy, “Yver, vous n’estes qu’un villain”
Frances Poulenc, “De grandes cuillers de neige” and “La bonne neige” from Un soir de neige
David Lang, “i lie”
Johannes Brahms, “Nachtwache II”
Florence Price, “Song for Snow”
Randall Thompson, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Brahms, “Sehnsucht”
Eric Whitacre, “Éyze shéleg!” from Five Hebrew Love Songs
Eriks Ešenvalds, “Northern Lights”
Timothy Takach, “Winter Walk”
Kate Rusby arr. Jim Clements, “Underneath the Stars”

Notes on the Program
It has always been essential to our survival to fight against the cold. For countless winters, we’ve lit fires, gathered to feast, and paid homage to what green remains in a season of gray. These timeless traditions have evolved into our contemporary winter holidays, and we expect a lot of them. When we can’t rely on the warmth of the sun to bring us joy, we seek to replace it with a sort of mystical reverence for the dark. Maybe this wonder felt perfect when we were children, but as we age and take on any number of life’s complications—grief, loneliness, a sidewalk that needs shoveling, or perhaps an unsettling lack of snow—our winter traditions may not live up to our expectations anymore. 

So how do we respond when the trappings that seem so perfect in our memory no longer suffice? In piecing together this program, we hoped to remind ourselves that we can find stillness in accepting that what we’ve grown to anticipate might not arrive as we expect it. If we can accept the new challenges we face, we might remember that seeking each other, even in the knowledge that we may lose each other, is ultimately what fills us with a more durable wonder, one that will last past the holidays and make the long, cold nights of winter that much more bearable.

Drop down, ye heavens, from above

A staple of the Advent choral literature and longtime Chestnuts standby, Judith Weir’s 1983 composition retains the chantlike structure of the ancient Rorate coeli plainsong, expanding on its tonality in a brief but stirring invocation of light in a time of darkness. Advent liturgy can often feel weighty with expectation, placing the hope of all humanity on the arrival of a single child. If the Christian connection to the season doesn’t resonate with you, we give you permission to interpret the opening line as an eager child’s plea for snow.

Ecstatic Expectancy

Zanaida Robles’ recent composition develops into a stark contrast to Weir’s meditative Advent setting, with driving rhythms as the constant background to each voice part’s overlapping utterances of incomplete liturgical texts. Composed in 2021, the piece’s fragmented lines of text may be employed to echo the isolation we experienced during the pandemic. Listen to how the disjointed voices emerge from chaos into an intimate unison at the central line, “Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

Nesciens Mater

While “Ecstatic Expectancy” evokes the disjointed experience of myriad isolated voices, this piece centers a yearning for connection between just two people, Mary and the newborn Jesus. While much of Christian writing offers lofty perspectives on Mary’s sacred virginity, this text, and Mouton’s tender Renaissance setting, is a reminder that Mary was also just a new parent, trying to figure out how to nurse and soothe her baby.

little tree

This piece is an early (and somewhat lesser known) work of both the composer and the poet, but their respective  ability to connect with a universal human experience was already evident in both cases. While it’s tempting to simply read Cummings’ poem as a child’s perspective on the odd tradition of bringing a tree from the forest into our home, it ultimately resonates more deeply as the poet striving to comfort the inner child, whose connection to his caregivers can seem so tenuous at times.

April is in my mistress’ face

But of course winter is not just Christmas! And just as Cummings ascribes feelings of pride or wariness to the little tree, so too do we regularly inflect winter weather with emotional weight. Morley’s tidy polyphony has rightly earned this madrigal a place among the classics of the genre, but we can always view classics with a modern sensibility—so let’s side with the unnamed, voiceless mistress who seems unfairly reduced to corporeal metaphor.

Es ist ein Schnee gefallen

This poem is a flirtatious introduction of a theme that we will continue to explore in this program, that if we come together to find warmth, we might fight back the cold of winter. Othmayr’s writing is reminiscent of how many familiar winter carols balance the familiarity of folk music with the refinement of classical harmony.

Yver, vous n’estes qu’un villain

Speaking of the emotional weight of winter, it seems Charles d’Orléans was really feeling it when he wrote this poem! We all have different ways of fighting back the cold of winter, and while it might not be possible to banish the entire season into exile, Debussy’s lively setting could just have enough fire to win that fight.

De grandes cuillers de neige and La bonne neige

While Debussy could muster enough fire to rebuke winter for a time, Poulenc’s Un Soir de Neige is written from a far more challenging point of view, when the hopelessness of Nazi occupation left Poulenc, and collaborator Paul Éluard, feeling devoid of warmth.  Poulenc’s characteristic see-saw between consonance and biting dissonance highlights the struggle for hope in the face of mortal threat.

i lie

In those bleakest moments of uncertainty and expectation, Lang gives us a different perspective thanks to his very rhythmic setting for treble voices. The text is full of feeling, but the music is intentionally very spare, letting us feel every agonizing moment of the wait. It also has one of our favorite performance notes: "rhythmically mechanical, like a clock—but intimate and very tender". The precision of the setting is intentionally disrupted by a soprano solo, with uneven, off-beat rhythms giving voice to the emotional vulnerability of waiting, wondering, and ultimately relief.

Nachtwache

We pick up for the second half where we left off: wondering what is on the other side of the long night. We perhaps begin to receive some answers, as angels in the distance urge us to find peace. Brahms’ setting has singers mimic the horns from the text, calling with confidence for the courage to make it through times of darkness and uncertainty.

Song for Snow

The arrival of comfort in the Brahms now welcomes the notion that, in fact, the cold and ice of winter can be quite pleasant if we let them be just what they are, and maybe sing to keep ourselves warm. In an especially effective play of imagery, Coatsworth notes that while winter comes with an inherent bareness, this allows the world to seem wider—a blank slate for a spring of renewal. While Price’s setting is not harmonically challenging, she employs clever text painting, with high staccato figures in the piano perhaps mimicking careful footsteps across the ice.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Randall Thompson wrote his seven-part choral song cycle, Frostiana, for the occasion of the bicentennial of Robert Frost’s longtime home of Amherst, Massachusetts. Thompson also uses explicit text painting to have the piano mimic falling snow, which allows the poem’s narrator a moment of quiet introspection. Thompson expands on this meditative scene with the way the final verse stretches the strophic musical figure to allow moments of stillness between each line. The piece concludes with Thompson allowing the narrator a moment or two to linger as the snow falls, with the piano’s icy final chords a reminder to move on.

Sehnsucht

At the risk of leaning too much into a narrative thread, we might imagine Frost’s wagon driver being the subject of this poem as well, longing for a past time, and perhaps a distant companion who might once have made the winter more pleasant. The Brahms of the Sechs Quartette is quite different from that of the earlier “Nachtwache II”—this piece’s intricately shifting harmonies are characteristic of his choral quartets originally written for ensembles of solo singers.

Éyze Shéleg!

While they were staying in Germany, Whitacre asked his then-girlfriend, soprano Hila Plitmann, to write him some “postcards” in her native Hebrew. These poems became Five Hebrew Love Songs, composed in 1996, the same year as “little tree.” The bells at the beginning of “Éyze Shéleg” are the same pitches that would ring from a nearby cathedral while Whitacre and Plitmann were in Germany. 

Northern Lights

Acceptance of winter’s challenges has made way for us to fully embrace its wonders, and for those living (or exploring) in the Arctic, winter offers no wonder more spectacular than the aurora borealis. Ešenvalds here offers two distinct settings of how humans make meaning of earth’s magic, juxtaposing folklore of his native Latvia with the more awestruck account of Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall. The addition of water glasses adds an otherworldly, shimmering texture as backdrop to the choir’s lush chords.

Winter Walk

Brian Newhouse’s poem portrays another moment of introspection in the presence of winter stillness, with lines in the third stanza echoing familiar Christmas imagery. Takach’s setting adds a gentle warmth to balance the poem’s stark winter scene, with the narrator ultimately at peace with their unknown future.

Underneath the Stars

When we weigh down the future with heavy expectations, we can often be met with the bitter cold of disenchantment. Holidays are rarely as magical as we remember them. Expected snow may never come, and when it does, it may sting our faces. We try to fight the cold by coming closer together, but we may lose those connections too. Rusby reminds us that when we embrace the whole story—the anticipation, the arrival, and the departure—we can be gentle on ourselves, and on each other.

Notes primarily by Jordan Rock; note on Lang, “i lie” by Caroline Winschel