Where the Truth Lies

March 24, 2018: Historic St. George’s United Methodist Church

March 25, 2018: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

Sonja Bontrager, Lucas DeJesus, Conrad Erb, Joshua Glassman, Amy Hochstetler, Michael Johnson, Elissa Kranzler, Nathan Lofton, Cortlandt Matthews, Hank Miller, Rebekah Reddi, Jordan Rock, Rebecca Roy, Eddie Rubeiz, Lizzy Schwartz, Zachary Sigafoes, Melinda Steffy, Emily Sung, Caroline Winschel, Michele Zuckman

Conquest

“Those who tell the stories rule the world.” –Hopi proverb

Windham, Daniel Read (1757–1836)

La Guerre, Clément Janequin (c. 1485–1558)

Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis, Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)

The Dying Soldier, American folksong (c. 1863), arr. Nigel Short and Mack Wilberg

La Guerra, Mateo Flecha the Elder (1481–1553)

Hanacpachap cussicuinin, Inca hymn (c. 1631)

Devotion

Hymn to St. Cecilia, Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)

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

Love, Bob Chilcott (b. 1955)

I love my love, Gustav Holst (1874–1934)

History’s Stories, Dale Trumbore (b. 1987)

For thousands of years, we have created stories to chronicle, to educate, to entertain, and to explore our identities. This program begins by exploring stories of conquest and loss through the music of colonialism and warfare. We weave together the programmatic songs of Clément Janequin and Mateo Flecha, bookended by American and Spanish colonial hymns, to show how music can be used as a vehicle of conquest itself. Meanwhile, through the heartbreaking music of Maurice Ravel, Nigel Short, and Mack Wilberg, we feel how war destroys us by cutting short our stories with the people we love.

Selections by Benjamin Britten, William Billings, Bob Chilcott, and Gustav Holst then take us on a transcendent exploration of devotion, showing us how stories of love, both human and divine, have intertwined and nurtured each other through the ages. As with music and conquest, here we experience music as a vehicle for love, and love as an integral ingredient in music: no more so than in Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia, a complicated love story about music itself. We begin and end our program with the same musing: how do stories take shape—in the telling or the retelling? Our journey closes fittingly with this phrase by American poet Diane Thiel, beautifully set in a final piece by Dale Trumbore:

       Our voices rise and leave, traveling, raveling, veiling

       currents across the sea, longing to reach each

       Atlantis, locate shapes that sounds recall––call

       back the world, as it was first encountered, heard

Windham

We open with “Windham,” a shape-note hymn set to a text by Isaac Watts with the more-interesting subtitle “The Almost Christian, The Hypocrite, or The Apostate.” More dogma than narrative itself, the angular sonorities and strident singing emphasize the piece’s Puritanical pessimism. Listeners, take heed: the forthcoming tales of love, triumph, and other frivolous things may wrench you from the narrow road of wisdom and salvation.

La Guerre

Clement Janéquin is one of our favorite composers, and “La Guerre,” his onomatopoetic depiction of the French victory over the Swiss at the Battle of Marignano in 1515, perfectly illustrates why. Listen carefully as the battle intensifies: what begins as a nationalistic song meant to stir up comrades evolves into the sounds of charging cavalry, sackbuts, and cannonfire. This was a decisive and unexpected victory for the French: after decades of Swiss supremacy, the French forces had taken an unprecedented stand, hauling hundreds of pieces of artillery––including dozens of huge cannons––through the Alps before the battle. The French army’s shock and delight will be apparent in their declarations of “Victoire!” at the end of the piece.

Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis

“Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis” is the second of Maurice Ravel’s Trois Chansons, which together consist of the only a cappella choral music he ever published. Ravel wrote the music and texts for all three pieces between December 1914 and February 1915, while waiting to be enlisted in the army. The other two songs in the set employ light, whimsical music and texts, but “Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis” is unmistakably the product of a man contemplating war. A woman greets three birds of Paradise, each representing a color from France’s tricolored flag and each bearing something from her lover, who has gone to the war. The woman’s anxious vigil at home is embodied by a soprano soloist, and the blue, white, and red birds of Paradise are sung by tenor (here a low alto), mezzo-soprano, and baritone soloists respectively. The three birds bring the woman snatches of her beloved’s voice and fragments of a story which she, far from the front, cannot access. Ravel’s heartbreaking music and evocative text invites us to contemplate the ways in which war and separation unravel our narratives with the people we love. 

The Dying Soldier

Exploring another perspective on the same theme, the titular narrator of “The Dying Soldier” is an American Civil War soldier who has been mortally wounded while fighting far from home. Lying on the cold ground, he shares final thoughts with his friend, Brother Green, relaying both his deep love for his family and his faith that they will reunite in heaven. The baritone solo carries most of the text, while the choir provides harmonic support and an ethereal quality.

La Guerra and Hanacpachap cussicuinin

Linked across time and hemispheres by imperial conquest, “La Guerra” and “Hanacpachap cussicuinin” will be performed together as a set. “La Guerra” is a sixteenth-century ensalada by Mateo Flecha the Elder that vividly recounts a heroic battle between the forces of Christ and the forces of the devil. An ensalada, which literally translates to “salad,” is named for its mix of textures: such pieces are comprised of quotations from popular melodies and texts set in varying meters, rhythms, and even languages, at the free discretion of the composer. The second piece, “Hanacpachap cussicuinin,” is an anonymous processional hymn to the Virgin Mary written in Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire. Printed in 1631 in Peru, “Hanacpachap cussicuinin” was the first piece of vocal polyphony to be published in the New World, and it remains a relic of a time and place in which Spanish Catholicism and native Inca belief systems had begun to fuse together in a new and unusual religious environment.

By the time Flecha was writing his ensaladas in the 1530s, a Golden Age of arts and literature was dawning in Spain; at the same time, the Spanish Empire was at its height overseas, and the Inquisition was still underway at home. As a story about Spain’s holy war, “La Guerra” is very much a product of this time period. The piece has five sections: a call to battle; an interlude of fifes and drums; a song within a song, in which Christ’s assistance is requested and granted; the battle scene; and the final victory. The piece is fast-paced, rousing, and somewhat comic in character. Yet the subject itself––the supremacy of Christ over infidel forces and the conquest of Christianity over the entire world––is meant seriously. Flecha’s intent comes through clearly in the slower, less-jocular sections of music; in his use of formal language rather than vulgar or vernacular text; and in the sudden switch to declamatory Latin for the piece’s final stanzas: “This is the victory that conquers the world: our faith.”

Fittingly, “Hanacpachap cussicuinin” speaks to the ways in which the same era’s Spanish conquistadors used music as a tool for conversion in the New World. It also points to the fluidity of both Christianity and native belief systems in seventeenth-century Peru. The text is nominally a prayer of supplication to the Virgin Mary, but it features imagery that relates instead to the Inca goddess Pachamama, the Earth Mother, who was commonly incorporated into Marian devotion. Although the composer’s identity is lost to history, it is likely that they were an indigenous American musician writing in the Spanish polyphonic style: first, because the hymn was written in Quechua, and second, because of its use of syncopations and a 3-3-4-3-3-4 phrase structure––both features that were common in native music but unusual for European compositions of the time. 

Taken together from a time that saw both great change and great resilience within art, society, and religion, “La Guerra” and “Hanacpachap cussicuinin” give us a lively but deeply unsettling portrait of music itself as a tool of war and conquest.

Hymn to St. Cecilia

St. Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians, and composers from Purcell and Charpentier to Mahler and Howells have written works in her honor. Hymn to St. Cecilia by the English composer Benjamin Britten, born on St. Cecilia’s feast day in 1913, opens the second half of our program. Britten completed the work in 1942, during an extraordinary period of creativity that coincided with the height of World War II. Britten was an avowed pacifist; notably, he produced some of his best-known works between 1939 and 1945, including not only today’s selection but also A Ceremony of Carols (1942), Rejoice in the Lamb (1943), and the opera Peter Grimes (1945).

In Hymn to St. Cecilia, the composer sets a poem by his friend and early mentor, W. H. Auden. The conductor Robert Shaw writes that the poem “is certainly more than occasionally obscure, but it is clear that it mixes erotic imagery (Blonde Aphrodite) with artistic and even religious symbolism.” At the time, Auden was encouraging Britten to embrace his own homosexuality, in hopes that this personal development would lead to even more artistic freedom. Shaw continues, “There is little doubt that in the beginning of Part II (‘I cannot grow, I have no shadow to run away from…’) Auden is urging Britten to begin to have ‘a past’––a ‘shadow’ from which he can grow.” 

Hymn to St. Cecilia is in three large sections, separated by settings of the refrain: “Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions / To all musicians, appear and inspire.” The first section sets the most literal portion of the text with lilting music. The harmonies expand and contract as the “innocent virgin” constructs an “organ to enlarge her prayer” and the saint’s music reaches its first climax and quickly calms as “around the wicked in Hell’s abysses the huge flame flickered and eased their pain.” The first refrain sounds, set almost entirely in unison. The second section, a scherzo of sorts, builds upon this unison with a sprightly canon between the sopranos and tenors layered over slow octaves in the altos and basses. The section ends still in unison but with a much more intimate statement: “Love me.” After the second refrain, now fully harmonized, the third section of the poem begins as a passacaglia, with a repeated bass line. This music leads to a series of solos, beginning with a soprano voicing St. Cecilia herself. Other soloists impersonate instruments––a violin, a drum, a flute, and a trumpet––to convey Auden’s coded messages to Britten, using the saint’s own powers to reckon with this musician born on her feast day. After this outpouring of emotion, the final refrain returns to the music that began the piece, bringing the work to a quiet close. 

I am the Rose of Sharon

Revolutionary-era American composer William Billings was also a successful singing teacher, church musician, and leatherworker. A self-taught yet prolific composer, Billings produced six volumes of Psalms, hymn settings, choral anthems, and fugues.“I am the Rose of Sharon,” his choral setting of texts from the Song of Solomon, was first published in 1778 and remains one of his best-known works.  Billings juxtaposes choral solos, duets, and full chorus textures, creating charming interplay between the voiceparts and allowing each new idea in the text to receive its own distinct melody. Through tempo and meter changes, he evokes playful and dance-like moods to illuminate passages that still bring joy today: “For lo, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone!”  

Should this setting inspire you to similar musical outbursts, Billings also included a bit of advice for aspiring singers in the same 1778 publication: “SING that part which gives you the least pain, otherwise you make it a toil, instead of pleasure; for if you attempt to sing a part which is (almost or quite) out of your reach, it is not only very laborious to the performer; but very disagreeable to the hearer, by reason of many wry faces and uncouth postures, which rather resemble a person in extreme pain, than one who is supposed to be pleasantly employed. And it has been observed, that those persons, who sing with the most ease, are in general the most musical.”

Love

In contrast to the rollicking good cheer of “I am the Rose of Sharon,” Bob Chilcott’s “Love” feels markedly unsettled. Chilcott relies heavily on an Impressionist technique called harmonic planing: throughout the piece, the top three voices move in the same direction, by the same interval, at the same time. With the voice parts remaining constant relative to one another, the chord moves through the scale but never changes. The result creates a feeling of seasickness, as the chords plane out of the major scale but remain relatively consonant. The bell-like soprano and tenor solos, sounding in unison against the choir’s undulating chords, remain as constant as the title, drawing us close against the “deep night” to assure that “all is well.”

I love my love

“I love my love” is one of Gustav Holst’s Six Choral Folksongs, published in 1916. A setting of a Cornish folksong, this piece tells the story of Nancy, a young woman whose lover was sent to sea by his parents, presumably in an effort to break up their relationship. As a result, she is so distraught with heartbreak that she has been sent to Bedlam, an old nickname for London’s St. Mary Bethlehem hospital, the oldest-known psychiatric institution in Europe and a place made infamous by its historic mistreatment of the mentally ill. Holst, who is still well-known today for his beautiful settings of English folksongs, alternates between the different voiceparts in the choir to illustrate the dialogue between Nancy and her lover and to switch between first- and third-person narration of Nancy’s story. We cannot help but wonder whose version of the story this is: is Nancy truly able to speak freely, or does the text come from the community that both condemned and redeemed her? But even as Nancy questions her immediate circumstances, she never wavers in her devotion to her beloved or her confidence in his reciprocation. At least the story seems to end happily, with both love and madness cured at once.

History’s Stories

Dale Trumbore is among the emerging generation of choral composers. A native of New Jersey, she is now based in Los Angeles, where she was a student of Morton Lauridsen at the University of Southern California. Trumbore’s works have been performed by The Esoterics, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, New York Virtuosos Singers, and VocalEssence, among many others. 

“History’s Stories” is actually three pieces in one: two separate pieces for women’s chorus and men’s chorus that can be performed simultaneously to create a third piece. This structure is derived from the poem by Diane Thiel, which can likewise be read three different ways: the body of each line makes one poem (set for men’s chorus), the final word of each line forms a second poem (set for women’s chorus), or the poem can be read in its entirety (the combined third piece). This structure is further highlighted in Trumbore’s setting, where the sopranos and altos echo the final word or syllable of each line sung by the tenors and basses. Trumbore’s evocative approach to Thiel’s plaintive text challenges us to consider the ripple effects of the stories we tell and hear: though the men and women sing simultaneously, they are functionally isolated, telling the same tale from very different perspectives. Listen for the distinct characters between the gendered choruses as the two stories unspool past each other, each hoping that art and music will bridge the chasm left by narrative.

The Northern Wild

Saturday, November 18 at 8 PM
Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
8855 Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia

Sunday, November 19 at 5:30 PM
First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia
2125 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia

Concert Program

In programming The Northern Wild, we searched for a musical kernel that would make a concert of a wide range of styles hold together in a compelling way. In that search, we realized that our favorite music by composers like Veljo Tormis, Jean Sibelius, and Eriks Ešenvalds simply sounds like it couldn’t come from anywhere else in the world. This is not to say that all the music we’ll sing sounds the same—far from it. Tormis’ folk roots could not be more different than the cerebral soundscapes of R. Murray Schafer, while Sibelius and Elgar teeter on the threshold between the late romantic and early modern. But despite all the differences, the wild North is the irreplaceable central character in all of the pieces. This music is grounded in visceral explorations of what it’s like to be in the North, to have the wild earth beneath one’s feet and to be in the unwavering watch of the same celestial bodies for months on end.

There is a loneliness in the way much of this music stretches out like the untouched lands and vast skies it evokes. But in regions still dominated by primal forces, there is great joy in making singular human connections—with a neighboring cowherd across acres of pasture, with a lover thought lost over the hillside, or simply with oneself in the stillness of the pines. These connections are why we sing together, and why we’ll be so glad to have you join us.

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.

40 Voices Singing: Masterworks for Massed Choirs

March 14 and 15, 2015
featuring the Chestnut Street Singers, The Laughing Bird, and PhilHarmonia
Josh Dearing and Mitos Andaya Hart, conductors

Vaclovas Augustinas, “Anoj pusėj Dunojėlio”
Jordan Nobles, “Lux Antiqua”
Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson, “Heyr, himna smiður”
Thomas Tallis, “Spem in alium”
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Kyrie from Mass in G minor
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Gloria from Missa sine nomine à 4
Igor Stravinsky, “Russian Credo”
William Albright, Sanctus and Benedictus from Chichester Mass
Samuel Barber, “Agnus Dei”

Notes on the Program
Today’s program was designed as a showcase for ensemble-level collaboration: to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Chestnut Street Singers, Philadelphia’s only collaborative chamber choir, we are collaborating with other choral groups on works that none of us would be able to perform alone. This performance would not be possible without our dedicated, extraordinary, inspiring partner ensembles, The Laughing Bird and PhilHarmonia. They are a joy to sing with, and we are honored to share this program with them.

Even though this concert is meant to champion choirs and choral singing, today’s program does just as much to spotlight individual voices within the larger texture. The nature of choral singing usually lends itself to thinking of the choir as a faceless wall of sound–not so today. As fifty of the city’s finest choral singers surround the audience, you will hear some voices more than others. You will hear natural differences in tone, timbre, and phrasing, and you will hear individual voices singing independent lines and improvising on common themes.

Choral singers don’t usually encourage anything other than uniform sonic blend, but we find ourselves delighted with the juxtaposition between large-scale masterworks and the richly textured sound of individual singers. The contrast reveals the human scale of this ambitious repertoire: these cathedrals of sound are built on foundations made of little more than the breath and focus of individual singers.

This kind of musical high-wire act testifies to the strength and vitality of the Philadelphia choral community. Partnering to sing this repertoire requires technique and trust in equal measures. We are thrilled to have such resources at our disposal, and we are honored to share them with you.

Anoj pusėj Dunojėlio
We open with a traditional Lithuanian folksong embellished with distinctly non-traditional choral techniques. Composer Vaclovas Augustinas, who learned this tune as a child, preserves the piece’s original melody but instructs the female singers to perform the opening section heterophonically, with each singer entering in her own time and at her own tempo. The result is a complex cloud of sound, grounded by the men’s overtone singing. The heterophonic effect returns as the piece grows towards a climax, with each singer improvising around the same melodic theme.

Lux Antiqua
Jordan Nobles’ “Lux Antiqua” goes even further in exploring an unstructured choral sound. Written for “spatialized choir” so that the singers represent pinpricks of light within the night sky, the piece shifts in and out of a structured tempo, making recognizable patterns out of its deliberately unearthly incantations. The text is simply a litany of star names; as these stars are some of the brightest and most familiar to us, these names are centuries old, having served as inspiration and touchstones for even longer than the religious traditions represented elsewhere in the program.

Heyr, himna smiður
We return to a more traditional sound with Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson’s modern setting of a twelfth-century poem by Kolbeinn Tumason (1173–1208). The poem is the oldest surviving religious poem in Scandinavia; local lore holds that Tumason, once one of Iceland’s most powerful chieftains, composed the poem on his deathbed after being injured in battle. The resulting hymn is widely known in Iceland, where it is often sung at funerals, but it came to our attention in a viral YouTube video of Áristíðir, an Icelandic indie-folk band, casually singing in a German train station. The hymn’s simple structure and plaintive harmonies allow our men to make the most of the expressive text.

Spem in alium
Thomas Tallis is generally regarded as one of the greatest English composers, and “Spem in alium,” written for forty singers each performing individual parts, is his masterpiece. The piece was composed around 1570, likely inspired by a similarly complex work by the Italian composer Alessandro Striggio. Some historians even suggest that the piece may have been written to celebrate Queen Elizabeth I’s fortieth birthday in 1573, but Tallis’ motivation for the work remains obscure.

The motet is designed for eight identical quintets of soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass. The piece opens with each quintet singing in turn as the music moves through the eight choirs; the pattern is then reversed, with the music passing from Choir 8 back to Choir 1. In today’s performance, you’ll hear Choir 1 begin the piece from the front left corner of the hall, with the successive choirs standing clockwise around the audience. As the music intensifies, the choirs begin singing in antiphonal pairs—listen for a call-and-response structure moving across the circular choir. Although individual voices imitate earlier patterns, each part is unique. The piece builds to final triumphant crescendo with all forty voices weaving together.

Kyrie
For the second half of today’s program, we present an eclectic mass in which each movement is drawn from a different a cappella setting of the traditional liturgy. We open with the Kyrie from Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G minor. The movement is grounded by a stirring chant line in the alto part, with the altos’ stately phrases bookending more modern harmonies in the choral and solo parts.

Gloria
We return to the late sixteenth century with the Gloria from Palestrina’s Missa sine nomine à 4. Palestrina was a tremendously prolific composer: he wrote more than 200 motets in the last decades of his life and more than 100 masses. Missa sine nomine à 4–literally the “mass without a name for four [voices]”––was written near the end of his life, probably around 1584.

Russian Credo
Stravinsky’s devotion to the Russian Orthodox Church is evident in his Russian Credo, so named to distinguish it from the Credo movement of his full mass. Although the mass, written in the 1940s for choir and orchestra, uses the Roman Catholic liturgy, Stravinsky’s standalone Russian Credo is to be sung in unemphasized, chant-like Russian. The simple, repetitive harmonic structure hearkens to the Russian Orthodox liturgy, with Stravinsky’s stern performance notes––“non forte, non espressivo”–– ensuring that the text retains its meditative feel.

Sanctus and Benedictus
In 1974, American composer William Albright was commissioned to write for the nine hundredth anniversary celebration of the Chichester Cathedral in Sussex, England. The resulting work, Chichester Mass, was premiered by the Cathedral Choir in June 1975.

In the Sanctus, one can hear elements of improvisation and phasing to create what Albright envisions as a holy “cloud-like” atmosphere from which the text emerges in a “veiled and mysterioso” manner. In contrast to the vagueness of this movement, the upper voices proceed to the Benedictus in a quick, psalmodic fashion giving rise to a polychordal exclamation of “Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord.” The traditional Hosanna––set only once at the end of the Benedictus rather than in both movements––blazes in modes of E with lively clips and buzzing fragments leading to the frenzied and ultimate climax.

Agnus Dei
We close with a choral masterpiece that wasn’t originally written for choir: Barber’s “Agnus Dei” began as the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11, also known as the Adagio for Strings. The original piece for string quartet was arranged for string orchestra in 1937; Barber re-set the music for choir in 1967, making only very slight changes to the orchestral arrangement. Like the “Russian Credo,” the “Agnus Dei” is a standalone piece rather than an excerpt from a full mass setting. As the close to our eclectic mass, it carries great yearning and power in its relatively simple musical