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Filtering by: “2016-2017”
Mar
25
to Mar 26
2016-2017

Divinity Breathed Forth

Divinity Breathed Forth
The Eternal Hildegard

March 25, 2017: Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill 

March 26, 2017: Old St. Joseph’s Church

Sonja Bontrager, Conrad Erb, Amy Hochstetler, Nicandro Iannacci, Michael Johnson, Elissa Kranzler, Nathan Lofton, Cortlandt Matthews, Brian Middleton, Hank Miller, John Piccolini, Rebekah Reddi, Jordan Rock, Eddie Rubeiz, Lizzy Schwartz, Melinda Steffy, Emily Sung, Caroline Winschel, Michele Zuckman

Love bade me welcome                                         Judith Weir (b. 1954)

O frondens virga                              Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)

O frondens virga                                                    Frank Ferko (b. 1950)

Gitanjali Chants                                        Craig Hella Johnson (b. 1962)

Prayer of St. Teresa of Avila                          Ruth Byrchmore (b. 1966)

Three Themes of Life and Love                          Daniel Elder (b. 1986)

1.     In Your Light
2.     A Breathing Peace
3.     Drumsound Rises

Andy Thierauf, percussion

intermission 

Awed by the beauty                                       John Tavener (1944–2013)

Caritas abundat                                Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)

Caritas abundat                                               Frank Ferko (b. 1950)

O virtus Sapientiae                   Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)

O virtus Sapientiae                                                Frank Ferko (b. 1950)

O virtus Sapientiae                                       Karen P. Thomas (b. 1957)

O vis aeternitatis                               Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)

The Deer’s Cry                                                          Arvo Pärt (b. 1935)

Notes on the Program

At the beginning the story is unremarkable, so ordinary that the details are lost to time and inattention. A young girl is sickly, and her parents are already burdened with many sturdier children and other cares besides. Surely someone else could do more for the child—or surely someone else could lessen the parents’ load. The girl is deposited with the local church, where she can learn to be of use and where her contributions will reflect well on her parents. Her family does not return.

And for untold numbers of children, especially girls, the story ends there. We do not know the destinies of the other young nuns at that church, just as we have long ago lost the names—let alone the stories—of this girl’s older sisters. But her story gleams brightly from the depths of history, because the young girl in question—maybe eight years old, maybe already fourteen—is Hildegard of Bingen. We know what she became: respected abbess and traveling preacher, extraordinary correspondent, the founder of German natural history, the earliest known female composer, and a saint in the Catholic church. At the moment when our story begins, of course, this child does not yet carry such renown. But already, as an 8-or-14-year-old, Hildegard is electrified by visions, aware of a deep resonance between herself and the wider universe. That faith—and the curiosity, love, and longing that she spent a lifetime cultivating—has sustained Hildegard’s legacy since the early 1100s, when this story begins.

Almost a thousand years later, we sing today in celebration of Hildegard’s legacy: not only for the inspired theology and music that burnishes her sainthood but also for the memory of that young girl, sickly and alone, holding tight to a vision of love and abundance. Hildegard understood divinity as a visceral experience, inextricably linked to the five senses and deeply rooted in our physical bodies. This concert intersperses Hildegard’s writings and chants with works by other composers and poets, for though her circumstances will always be extraordinary, her devotion and her humanity have been reflected by seekers and believers of many times and many faiths. Whatever your beliefs, whatever your burden, we hope that Hildegard’s assertions of connection and love take root in your lives today.

 

“Love bade me welcome,” Judith Weir

We open with an invitation spurned: “Love bade me welcome,” writes George Herbert, a 17th-century Anglican priest and poet, “but my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin.” The contemporary Scottish composer Judith Weir’s luminous setting of Herbert’s clear-eyed text draws us alongside the hesitant invitee, with Love’s welcome unfolding reassuringly after each discordant protest.

 

“O frondens virga,” Frank Ferko

As an organist and a liturgical composer, Frank Ferko has long been drawn to two major influences: Hildegard of Bingen and the 20th-century composer Olivier Messiaen. This excerpt from his Six Marian Motets, composed in 1994, reflects both interests: unlike the other movements of the larger work, “O frondens virga,” which is the sixth and final movement, sets one of Hildegard’s sacred poems rather than a traditional liturgical text. The gently swaying tempo feels both medieval and modern at once, blooming from chant-like simplicity to a lilting rhythmic dance.

 

“Gitanjali Chants,” Craig Hella Johnson

After the invitation of “Love bade me welcome” and the invocation of “O frondens virga,” Craig Hella Johnson’s setting of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore brings us finally into direct, intentional communion with “the great music of the world.” Johnson combines two non-sequential poems from Tagore’s collection Gitanjali, or “Song Offerings,” with the simple chant structure offering beauty in both song and silence.

 

“Prayer of St. Teresa of Avila,” Ruth Byrchmore

Although Teresa of Avila lived more than four centuries after Hildegard, their lives have some parallels: Teresa also entered the church at a young age, studying with the nuns at Avila after her mother’s untimely death. Whether from grief or illness, Teresa also suffered from physical weakness—and from ecstatic and visceral visions. At a time when the Catholic church wielded great political and artistic power, Teresa’s visions inspired her to assume a life of deep poverty and pious solitude, and she helped found the religious order known as the Discalced Carmelites, whose asceticism included even going barefoot, or “discalced.” Ruth Byrchmore, a contemporary British composer, sets Teresa’s famous litany with an intentionally eerie sense of conviction, noting that the mood of the piece should be “steady, reflective, [and] intensely calm.”

 

Three Themes of Life and Love, Daniel Elder

We consider another mystical perspective—or perhaps several perspectives––with the American composer Daniel Elder’s Three Themes of Life and Love, which draw upon Coleman Barks’s contemporary interpretations of the 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic known as Rumi. For Sufis—both in the thirteenth century and today—the divine is also the beloved, as intimate and affirming as a lover. Elder’s settings draw upon this joyous duality of divine and inward love, layering crystalline Western percussion over sweeping melodic lines and repeated, exuberant rhythms.

 

“Awed by the beauty,” John Tavener

Many of us, regardless of our faith, likely do not experience the world with the kind of ecstasy and devotion for which Hildegard and this program’s other mystics are known. We generally find it easier to grasp such concepts in smaller building blocks, catching glimmers of deeper truths. Thus must we also experience this anthem by the renowned John Tavener: “Awed by the beauty” is a two-minute excerpt from an all-night, seven-hour piece that Tavener referred to as “the supreme achievement of my life and the most important work that I have ever composed.” The piece bears the hallmarks of Tavener’s “holy minimalism”—chant-like simplicity and microtones suggesting Eastern Orthodox liturgy––with a Byzantine text translated by Mother Thekla, Tavener’s spiritual advisor and longtime librettist.

 

“Caritas abundat” and “O virtus Sapientiae,” Frank Ferko

We return to Frank Ferko with selections from his larger Hildegard Triptych. These works, scored for double choir, again reflect Messiaen’s influence on the composer, with dissonant tone clusters giving way to shimmering harmonies. Growing from an initially disquieting opening in the men’s voices, “Caritas abundat” employs serene chant phrasing passed between the two choirs until the phrase “de imis excellentissima super sidera,” which Ferko translates as “from the depths to the heights of the stars.” Here the two choirs come fully together for the first time, building towards a rich, luminous cluster and opening to warm consonance to “[bestow] the kiss of peace.” A different technique drives “O virtus Sapientiae,” in which the two choirs layer dance-like contrapuntal motifs. Like the three wings of wisdom, the piece’s unfolding texture swoops “to the heights” and “from the earth” before finally “[flying] from all sides.”

 

“O virtus Sapientiae,” Karen P. Thomas

Our women offer another interpretation of this text thanks to the American composer Karen P. Thomas, from whose Lux Lucis this motet is drawn. In contrast to the formality of Ferko’s setting, Thomas moves seamlessly between warmly unfolding chant and soaring aleatoric, or ad-libbed, phrases. The result evokes both birdsong and prayer, reinforcing the elemental, deeply physical nature of Hildegard’s sacred text.

 

“The Deer’s Cry,” Arvo Pärt

We close with a different sort of prayer: St. Patrick’s Lorica, which dates to the fourth century. The Latin word “lōrīca” originally meant “armor” or “breastplate”; in the monastic tradition, a lorica is a prayer for protection. The contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt—who cheerfully refuses to be categorized as a mystic––constructs a towering invocation from the prayer’s simple mantra. But as we remember the essential humanity at the heart of our search from the divine—and as we are haunted by our vision of the young girl watching her family depart––we find the silences in Pärt’s prayer as affecting as the ancient text. The composer hints at a darkness that we all––saints and seekers alike––must confront in our lives. And there, if we listen for it with our whole selves, will love bloom.

 

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Nov
12
2016-2017

Search for Home

Search for Home
On Movement and Migration

November 12, 2016: Friends’ Central School 

November 13, 2016: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

Michael Blaakman, Sonja Bontrager, Conrad Erb, Amy Hochstetler, Nicandro Iannacci, Michael Johnson, Elissa Kranzler, Kurt Marsden, Cortlandt Matthews, Brian Middleton, Hank Miller, John Piccolini, Rebekah Reddi, Jordan Rock, Lizzy Schwartz, Melinda Steffy, Emily Sung, Caroline Winschel, Michele Zuckman

David Ludwig, “The New Colossus”
traditional Appalachian c. 1800, arr. Moira Smiley, “Wayfaring Stranger”
Tomas Luis de Victoria, “Super flumina Babylonis”
Heinrich Isaac, “Innsbruck, ic muss dich lassen”
Stacy Garrop, “Give Me Hunger”
Dale Trumbore, “Where Go the Boats?”
Christopher Marshall, “This Big Moroccan Sea”
traditional Bambuti chant, “Ama ibu o iye”
Abbie Betinis, “Suffer No Grief” from Beyond the Caravan: Songs of Hâfez
Johannes Brahms, “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein”
Ysaye M. Barnwell, “We Are”
Stephen Paulus, “The Road Home”
African American spiritual arr. Hall Johnson, “Great Camp Meeting”
Jocelyn Hagen, “Now Our Meeting’s Over”

Notes on the Program

We know that ours is a nation born of immigrants; most of us here today descended from ancestors born on other shores. And yet the story of immigrants is not history. It is a living story being experienced by people all over the world at this moment. Our current political discourse might have us believe that immigrants, refugees, and America’s potential response to them is a tale of extremes: either an open welcome or a wall. The truth is not so black and white. Immigrants’ stories are varied and nuanced, but the thread common throughout is one of upheaval: there is uncertainty, pain, and loss, yes, but in these narratives there is also discovery, yearning, and opportunity. The stories in this program represent a range of journeys, from desperate to intentional, from community-wide to introspective. Whether or not we have experienced the physical act of leaving our homeland behind, it is clear that longing for “home,” whether or not home is a physical place, is a universal feeling. Today we journey together, seekers and refugees all.

 

We begin with local composer David Ludwig’s setting of Emma Lazarus’ sonnet “The New Colossus.” Lazarus donated the poem to a fundraiser for the Statue of Liberty, and it was inscribed on a plaque at the statue’s base in her memory in 1903. Her words have become the voice of the Statue of Liberty as she welcomes ships full of “huddled masses” to New York. Ludwig’s simple yet evocative setting, moving from unison to lush harmony, lets the poem speak for itself.

Believed to have roots in Appalachian folk tradition, “Wayfaring Stranger” has been adopted by the American folk, country, and gospel music communities, and it also appears in some hymnals. Like many spirituals, its message of traveling through toil to reach a better––be it a spiritual journey to the afterlife or a physical journey to a new home––gives hope to those experiencing hardship. Contemporary composer Moira Smiley’s arrangement incorporates call and response and syncopation, elements common in spirituals, and, like many of her arrangements, a driving beat provided by body percussion.


Spanish Renaissance composer Tomas Luis de Victoria’s “Super flumina Babylonis” sets the Latin text of the beginning of Psalm 137. The enslaved Israelites mourn their exile from Jerusalem and the cruelty of their captors: ordered to sing and dance along the way, they abandon their instruments, lamenting, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” 

“Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen,” a slightly early composition by Heinrich Isaac, is, by contrast, a secular tale of a traveler who leaves willingly but is nonetheless forlorn. Isaac himself traveled a great deal in his lifetime, from his home in Flanders to Germany, Austria, and Italy.

Poet Carl Sandburg is known for his rough, edgy portrayals of American industrialization and urban life. In At a Window, whose text Stacy Garrop set for her piece “Give Me Hunger,” he shows a rare softer side. He begins furiously, imploring the gods to give him their worst––“hunger, pain and want”––and, in a reference to Emma Lazarus’ welcoming “golden door,” challenging the gods to shut him out from “your doors of gold and fame.” But when his fury is spent, he pleads, “Leave me a little love.” Garrop mirrors the two contrasting halves of the poem with the two sections of the piece: the first is angsty, with a driving but unsettling rhythm and harsh sonorities, while the second wraps us in warm, lush harmonies that reflect the love for which we all yearn.

With Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Where Go the Boats?”, Los Angeles–based composer Dale Trumbore explores the deeper currents of a seemingly simple text for children. She writes, “I was struck by the fact that the narrator copes with the lost boats in the same way an adult must cope with lost love. Though the lost objects are gone forever, they will nonetheless be loved again in the future. This setting reflects a bit of that bittersweetness, that heartache.”

Christopher Marshall shows us a much darker look at the power of water in “This Big Moroccan Sea.” In 2006, a small, battered yacht washed ashore in Barbados that would be come to be known as the “death boat.” On board, authorities found the mummified bodies of 11 young men later determined to have left the coast of Cape Verde bound for the Canary Islands. Originally a group of 50 African migrants in search of a better life in Europe, they were abandoned by their paid guide when the yacht’s engine failed and left without food, water, or fuel to drift for months across the Atlantic. One victim, later determined to be Diao Souncar Diémé of Senegal, was found with a note penned before his death. In Marshall’s setting, Diémé’s heart-wrenching farewell is sung by the tenor soloist, while the choir echoes and surrounds him. When the soloist fades away, only the choir remains, evoking the overwhelming and unforgiving sea and sky. 

We return for the second half of the program with “Ama ibu o iye,” a chant from the Bambuti people, an indigenous pygmy community in the rainforest in the Congo region of Central Africa. Imitating the sounds of the rainforest—a sacred place for the Bambuti—the chant calls the community together and is repeated until a sense of community has been achieved. As with many chant traditions, we learned this chant aurally: ensemble member Melinda Steffy taught it to us; she learned it years ago in a workshop with composer Ysaye Maria Barnwell, who had presumably learned it from someone else, and so on until the first transmission from the Bambuti community. This chant feels, perhaps, the most distant from our own context of any of the music on today’s program, and we acknowledge we know little about Bambuti culture or their singing traditions. Like the game of “telephone,” or the ongoing shifting of cultures across generations and geographies, we assume that information has been lost along the way—that meaning and style and context have changed as the chant has passed from one “generation” to the next, from one continent to another. It is our hope that by attempting to create our own community together as we sing, we honor the spirit of the chant and the Bambuti people.

Similarly, in setting the lyric poetry of 14th-century Persian poet Hâfez, Abbie Betinis admits, “The music is my own, and not authentically Persian. It is my interpretation of an assortment of influences, including my study of Persian speech, scales and modes.” Even if not authentically Persian, From Behind the Caravan honors the intonation of the language and the musical sensibilities inherent in the beautiful poetry. In the second movement, “Suffer no Grief,” which we excerpt today, Betinis highlights Hâfez’s longing for an end to suffering. Even amidst grief and displacement, we are assured that “there is no road that has no end.”

Paul Eber’s text “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein” is a prayer for help from God to lead us through our darkest hour. This heartfelt plea is not unlike the prayers heard in African-American spirituals. Johannes Brahms composed his setting of the text late in his life. The first chord is a simple G major, but from the next beat, the harmonies progress in complex, unexpected ways, giving a simple prayer an earnest urgency.

The similarities that bind us all, from Europe to Africa to the Appalachian mountains, are the focus of “We Are,” an iconic composition by educator, composer, and longtime member of Sweet Honey in the Rock, Ysaye Maria Barnwell. Especially in our current political climate, refugees and immigrants are so often painted as foreign, alien “others.” But the human longing for love and for home unite us in spite of any differences that appear to divide us, as so many pieces on today’s program demonstrate, and Barnwell’s piece culminates by reminding us: we are one. 

Prolific American composer Stephen Paulus is renowned for simple yet moving hymn-like pieces, and “The Road Home” is no exception. The tune is taken from a song called “The Lone Wild Bird” from The Southern Harmony Songbook, published in 1835. Paulus’ friend and frequent collaborator, poet Michael Dennis Browne, was between visits to his native England to see his ailing sister when he wrote the text for the piece. The universal theme of searching for home pairs perfectly with the pentatonic melody. Paulus wrote of the piece, “The most powerful and beautiful message is often a simple one.”

Hall Johnson was born in Athens, Georgia, and grew up hearing spirituals sung by his mother and grandmother, both of whom had been slaves. Johnson went on to have an incredibly accomplished musical career and became one of a group of composers and arrangers who helped to elevate the spiritual to a respected art form in itself. His Hall Johnson Choir, whose arrangement of “Great Camp Meeting” we sing, traveled the world and appeared on movie soundtracks throughout the 1930s and 40s.

We conclude with American composer Jocelyn Hagen’s arrangement of a traditional folk song, “Now Our Meeting’s Over.” Like so many of the pieces on our program today, the message of the text is simple, yet universal, and can be interpreted either secularly or spiritually. We will meet our lost loved ones “on that shore”: we may be yearning to reunite with them in a promised land that is a new home across the sea or in the afterlife. Listen as the melody moves and is highlighted by each voice part in turn, reiterating that the search for home and for love is one that unites us all.

Notes by Lizzy Schwartz

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