fray: as shadows fall

November 1, 2015
Sonja Bontrager, Josh Dearing, Nathan P. Gibney, Amy Hochstetler, Michael Johnson, Elissa Kranzler, Kurt Marsden, Brian Middleton, Bryan Park, John Piccolini, Rebekah Reddi, Jordan Rock, Lizzy Schwartz, Paul Spanagel, Dan Sprague, Melinda Steffy, Caroline Winschel, Michele Zuckman

Edward Bairstow, Let all mortal flesh keep silence
Francis Poulenc, Vinea mea electa
Johannes Brahms, Rosmarin, Letztes Glück, and Verlorene Jugend
Ralph Vaughan Williams, The Turtle Dove
Eric Whitacre, A Boy and a Girl
arr. Moses Hogan, The Battle of Jericho
arr. Jeffery L. Ames, I’ve Been in the Storm So Long
arr. Edwin London, Bach (Again): Come Sweet Death
Jacob Carlo Gesualdo, Tenebrae Factae Sunt
Lajos Bárdos, Libera Me
Thomas Tomkins, When David Heard
György Orbán, Daemon Irrepit Callidus
Samuel Barber, Let down the bars, O Death
arr. Richard Bjella, Idumea

Notes on the program
You may know today as Día de los Muertos, All Saints’ Day, Samhain, or simply the day after Halloween. But across cultures in the Northern hemisphere, this time of year is one which tends to conjure thoughts of death—whether you believe the spirit world is closer to our own, or you just ponder mortality while watching the leaves fall to the ground during the third act of the Earth’s annual dance.

At any time of year, popular culture seems to be a bit infatuated with the end of times these days. This program, though, is not only about the apocalypse, though you will find hints of it in our music. Today, we explore the upheaval, the unraveling—the end of the world as we know it—in many forms (and we feel fine): from the death of love, to the death of a loved one; from the destruction of a storm, to painful betrayal. We’re sitting with the less-beautiful, inaptly polished aspects of life that have inspired these composers, and we’re aspiring to communicate the beauty that they found, even in life’s darkest moments. We begin our season with the end, but just as our season will continue, light will always follow darkness, and life will continue, too.

Let all moral flesh keep silence
We open with Edward Bairstow’s 1906 setting of “Let all mortal flesh keep silence.” Its text derives from the Liturgy of St. James, considered the oldest surviving liturgy, and depicts Christ’s second coming in advance of the Last Judgment. The text is largely celebratory, and Bairstow joyfully portrays the cherubic choirs hailing the savior. However, the overall musical setting feels portentous, reminding us lowly “mortal flesh” to “stand with fear and trembling” lest we be condemned. The powerful setting of this warning stays with us as we continue unraveling our program.

Vinea mea electa
In his lifetime and after his death, Poulenc was known as a lighthearted, even humorous composer, and his more serious works were overlooked. Thankfully, in recent years, his religious compositions have garnered more attention. “Vinea mea electa” is the second of a set of four Lenten motets composed in 1939. The text, from the responsories for Good Friday, references Jesus’ parable of the wicked tenants: A landlord plants a vine and leases it. When the time comes for him to collect its fruit, his tenants beat and reject each of the servants he sends until he is forced to send his only son, whom they murder. Poulenc captures the anguish of the ultimate betrayal with extreme dynamic contrasts and unsettling shifts in meter and tonality.

Three Brahms Songs
The three Brahms songs we present are not the only examples of his exploration of the less-pleasant side of the human condition. He was certainly not alone in this thematic tilt—the Romantic era found artists more intrigued by tragedy than their predecessors. But perhaps Brahms felt misery wear on him more pointedly than did other composers. His love for Clara Schumann was forever at odds with his respect for decorum and for her late husband Robert (also his teacher), so his yearning was never turned to joy. He died less than a year after Clara.

In “Rosmarin,” Brahms allows the text, taken from a book of German folk poems, to carry the story. A young bride’s excitement turns to sorrow at the loss of her beloved; the text plays on the verbal similarity of the word for “roses,” intended for her wedding flowers, and “rosemary,” which symbolizes memory and mourning. “Letztes Glück” and “Verlorene Jugend” come from the same set of songs, and both deal with a longing for a different life in a different time—longing that will never be fulfilled.

The Turtle Dove
In Ralph Vaughan Williams’ mournful setting of this English folksong, we explore the fraying effects of distance between lovers. The choir builds under the melody as the urgency of the texts develops, with the forlorn lover vehemently promising that betrayal will not come unless the apocalypse does. Interestingly, Vaughan Williams married his second wife after they had a years-long extramarital affair.

A Boy and a Girl
Sometimes when things fall apart, they do so quietly. T.S. Eliot famously wrote, “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but with a whimper.” Octavio Paz’s poem “A Boy and a Girl” (Los Novios) describes such an unraveling. Whether one interprets the lovers’ fate as their deaths or the death of their love, the inevitable tragedy is apparent in its text. With its respect for the poem and for the pregnant silences between lines, Whitacre’s music lends the story an eerie beauty. Pitches come almost unbearably close but never quite together. The composer wrote of the piece, “The four measures that musically paint the text ‘never kissing’ may be the truest notes I’ve ever written.”

The Battle of Jericho
As with many traditional African-American spirituals, “The Battle of Jericho” references a Biblical story as a parable for freedom from slavery: Joshua leads the Israelites against Canaan; the Israelites raise their voices in a mighty shout as their priests blow ram’s horns; and the walls of the city crumble before them. (The heathen men, women, and children within are then duly slaughtered, though this part of the story didn’t make it into the spiritual.) Hogan’s arrangement sets the scene of a battle, with the men’s part marching along in heroic fashion contrasting the women’s three-part arrangement of the traditional melody. The musical battle ends as the voices come together in the triumphant collapse of the walls.

I’ve Been in the Storm So Long
The word “storm” is often used in spirituals to refer to life’s turmoils, whether that be slavery or contemporary trouble. Jeffery Ames composed this arrangement in response to a literal storm: catastrophic Hurricane Katrina. The rising and ebbing harmonic clusters that open the piece and support the solo line mimic the rising waters of the Gulf of Mexico. With the beauty of the music, Ames reminds us of the beauty of hope, whether one hopes to reach heaven in the afterlife or simply desires a reprieve from troubles.

Bach (Again): Come Sweet Death
Philadelphia-born Edwin London was a prolific composer, but “Bach (Again)” has become his most well-known work of late because of its frequent performance by the Eric Whitacre Singers. To those of us raised on the Western music canon, there is perhaps nothing more familiar and comforting than a Bach chorale. Very little, then, will feel as unsettling as the way in which this arrangement literally comes apart as the ensemble repeats the traditional chorale aleatorily—each in our own tempo. The singers perform movements along with the music to highlight the disintegration of the music. But we encourage you to let yourself settle into the strange new harmonies we’ll create, perhaps finding a new kind of beauty in the unraveling.

Tenebrae factae sunt
Jacob Carlo Gesualdo is one of the most fascinating figures in Western music history, perhaps best known for gruesomely murdering his wife and her lover in 1590. Because of his noble status, he was not prosecuted for the crime. Instead, the “mad prince” punished himself, hiring servants later in life whose sole job was to beat him. Whether his crime, his psychological state, and his music are direct results of each other is impossible for us to conclude today, but in performing Gesualdo’s music, we consider them in total. To say his music was uncharacteristic of the sixteenth century may be an understatement; some liken him to twentieth-century atonal composer Schoenberg, and even to our twenty-first-century ears, Gesualdo’s rapid shifts in tonality are jarring. Perhaps there is no more apt voice than his for this Good Friday text, which paints the agony of Jesus’ last moments.

Libera Me
The Libera Me text is a Catholic responsory for the dead. It is used in several services, including the Requiem mass, and is also traditionally said tomorrow, on All Souls’ Day. Instead of focusing on the personal, pleading aspect of the prayer, Hungarian composer Lajos Bardos at first highlights the terror of Judgment Day with jagged, battling phrases. Such calamity makes the conclusion of the piece almost shocking in its quiet beauty, when the souls who survive the flames will be granted peace.

When David Heard
Thomas Tomkins’ anthem depicts the lament of David, the Biblical king, upon learning of his son Absalom’s death. Absalom rebelled against his father, turning many of his subjects against him. When they finally battled, David’s forces triumphed, and despite the king’s explicit orders, David’s chief officer killed the rebellious Absalom. Tomkins’ mournful phrasing expresses David’s grief and agony until the end of the piece, when, with a shift to a more consonant sound, Tomkins suggests that perhaps David accepts his son’s death.

Daemon Irrepit Callidus
With frantic, ominous-sounding lines underlying a jagged melodic fragment, Transylvanian-born Hungarian György Orbán’s piece gives life to the text’s warnings. One’s soul could be truly tried by the temptations of the Devil encroaching on “the honorable heart,” so the piece urges us three times to resist, insisting that such temptation is worth far less than the heart of Jesus. However, we must confess that the “trickery amidst praise” inherent in this piece is really fun to sing. Believe what you will about the fate of the souls of the Chestnuts.

Let down the bars, O Death
Samuel Barber was known among his friends for his sense of humor. He once commented that he would prefer to have croutons sprinkled on his coffin instead of flowers, and some of his friends honored that wish. That sense of humor about death is entirely absent in this setting of Emily Dickinson’s poem; he honors her words to the utmost. He repeats only the first line of text, with the dynamics reversed. We end with quiet, major chord, reinforcing that death can be a welcome peace.

Idumea
We close with a much less welcoming view of death. The chilling text of “Idumea” is rife with fear and trepidation at what awaits us when this life ends. The original sacred harp tune was written by Ananias Davvison in Shenandoah County, Virginia, at the start of the nineteenth century. It brought a new wave of interest to the shapenote tradition when it was featured at the beginning of the 2003 movie Cold Mountain to highlight the horrors of the Civil War. Richard Bjella honors the traditional sound while adding to the arrangement to highlight, for instance, the “flaming skies” at the end. The effect is sometimes terrifying yet quite stirring.

As Birds Do Sing: A Fifth Anniversary Concert

May 17, 2015
Josh Dearing, Nathan P. Gibney, Lucy Harlow, Amy Hochstetler, Michael Johnson, Elissa Kranzler, Kurt Marsden, Rebekah Reddi, Jordan Rock, Eddie Rubeiz, Lizzy Schwartz, Paul Spanagel, Dan Sprague, Melinda Steffy, Caroline Winschel

arr. Matti Hyokki, “On suuri sun rantas’ autius”
Felix Mendelssohn, “Die Nachtigall”
Josquin des Prez, “El Grillo”
Edward Elgar, “My love dwelt in a Northern land”
Abbie Betinis, “Be Like the Bird”
Thomas Fredrickson, “Such a pretty bird”
Charles Villiers Stanford, “The Blue Bird”
Patrick Ressler, “Hope is the thing with feathers”
arr. Edward T. Chapman, “The Three Ravens”
Lester Jenks [Harvey B. Gaul], “A Ballad of Tree-Toads”
Robert Lucas Pearsall, “Lay a Garland”
Nils Lindberg, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”
Daniel Goldschmidt, “Haiku by Basho”
Manning Sherwin, arr. Gene Puerling, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”
John Chorbajian, “Loveliest of Trees”
Malcolm Dalglish, “Great Trees”
John Bartlet, “Of All the Birds That I Do Know”

Notes on the Program
The passage of time often feels as much a miracle as it does a constant. Despite the many springs we have each experienced before, every bright new blossom, beloved bird’s song, and lengthened day feels like a gift. As singers, we turn to music to celebrate this gift.

Today, we raise our voices in songs that pay homage to the springtime themes of birds and trees, to celebrate not only this spring but also our fifth year as the Chestnut Street Singers. To have not only survived—but thrived—as a small cooperative chorus is certainly cause for commemoration, and we thank you for celebrating with us today.

On suuri sun rantas’ autius
We open with a Finnish folk tune whose “lonely, lost” bird imagery evokes more than a touch of melancholy. But in this arrangement by accomplished choral conductor Matti Hyökki, the vocal lines encircle the melody with a warmth that feels like returning home.

Die Nachtigall
The nightingale has been a muse to many artists. Though she traditionally connotes lost love, longing, and sometimes melancholy, Mendelssohn’s setting of Goethe’s text is enchanting, with pleasing, soaring melodic lines. The simplicity of the song is highlighted by its homorhythmic structure. Here the nightingale, perhaps like us, is content to be at home and sing.

El Grillo
Josquin des Prez was a prolific Renaissance composer known for both sacred and secular works and, at times, a satirical sense of humor. In “El Grillo,” we celebrate the cricket. Josquin’s setting mimics the sounds of a cricket with its chirpy pairs of quarter notes, and it is thought to be a jab at the singing abilities of Josquin’s colleague Carlo Grillo; both were under the patronage of the powerful Sforza family.

My love dwelt in a Northern land
Although known primarily for his orchestral works, Edward Elgar composed a number of choral pieces throughout his career. He seemed to have enjoyed doing so as a form of relaxation between larger projects. One of his earliest choral compositions, “My love dwelt in a Northern land” was composed shortly after he married his wife, Alice. Perhaps this accounts for the pervading sense of joy in the music, despite the rather melancholy text by Scottish poet Andrew Lang. Alice, in fact, wrote an alternate text for the piece when it seemed Lang intended to refuse permission for use of the text––though thankfully, he finally relented, in Elgar’s words, “with a very bad grace.”

Be Like the Bird
In 1922, Abbie Betinis’ great-grandfather, Rev. Bates G. Burt, began a tradition of composing a carol each year and sending it to family and friends in his Christmas card. The tradition was continued by his son, Alfred Burt, whose carols remain well known to choral singers today. In 2001, Betinis––who is one of our favorite composers––revived the tradition, which had ended with Alfred’s death in the 1950s. “Be Like the Bird” was her 2009 carol. Its secular text is set to a deceptively simple tune, which, when sung in a round, develops layers of haunting beauty.

Such a Pretty Bird
The poetry set to music on today’s program is lovely, evocative, reverent of nature––and much of it is rooted firmly in the male-dominated canon of Western literature. Gertrude Stein deliberately sets herself and her poetry apart from that canon. Stein’s “Patriarchal Poetry,” excerpted in this piece, reads like a meditation, with repetition bordering on absurdity. But in its many lines, Stein has composed a criticism of the male-dominated canon, using excess to parody and question its foundations.
Just as Stein’s poetry challenges the canon of literature, composer Thomas Fredrickson deviates from the choral canon by making his setting of the text a spoken word piece. In rehearsing this piece, we first found the lack of notes to be as unsettling as the poetry itself, but we came to enjoy its percussive nature. As Virgil Thomson wrote in the preface to the volume in which “Patriarchal Poetry” appeared, “Gertrude Stein’s lines do sometimes give up their secrets over the years.”

The Silver Swan
We return to the Western canon now to cleanse our musical palates. As do many of our selections today, Orlando Gibbons’ “The Silver Swan” mixes beauty with sadness in its bird imagery. The tale depicted in this song is the quintessence of such juxtaposition: the swan song. Although the swan does not sing until her death, the song she sings in that moment is beautiful, even as it expresses a readiness for death and a disdain for the world she is leaving.

The Blue Bird
Though brief and fairly straightforward, Mary Coleridge’s poem “The Blue Bird” paints an incredibly vivid scene. Over his career, Charles Villiers Stanford set eight of Coleridge’s poems to music, though most of his oeuvre fell out of favor after his death. “The Blue Bird,” however, thrives as a choral favorite and inspiration to many, including Stanford’s student Ralph Vaughan Williams. With the soprano line soaring like a bird over the still waters of the chorus, Stanford perfectly captures the reflective nature of the poem.

Hope is the thing with feathers
We are thrilled to present the world premiere of this commission by Patrick Ressler, an extraordinarily multitalented local artist and recent alumnus of the Chestnut Street Singers. Ressler writes, “Emily Dickinson’s ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’ struck me as the perfect fit for a concert celebrating the natural world, including birds and trees—and the fifth anniversary of the Chestnut Street Singers. I was excited by the challenge of musicalizing ‘hope,’ a word that shouldn’t be understood as unequivocally positive or simple. In setting this text, I sought to reflect the uncertainty of hope, suspended and resolved, and ascending ever so slightly over time (note the chromatic bass line of the first four chords). Hope isn’t easily pinned down, and has a tendency to change us more than the object of our hoping.”

The Three Ravens
Birds are not always symbols of hope or harbingers of a beautiful spring. Here, we meet three ravens who are disappointed to have lost out on their intended breakfast: a slain knight. He is too well protected by his hawks and hounds and a “fallow doe,” likely symbolizing his pregnant lover. “The Three Ravens” is a traditional English folk tune that first appeared in a published collection in 1611 but is likely much older than that. This dynamic arrangement by Edward Chapman highlights both the sinister and the beautiful moments of this chilling tale.

A Ballad of Tree Toads
This light-hearted tune returns us to the bright, sunny side of our springtime program. Lester Jenks was one of many pseudonyms used by Harvey B. Gaul, a prolific composer and arranger based in Pittsburgh at the turn of the twentieth century. Silly though it may be, the song allows our talented men to show off their chops with tight-knit barbershop harmonies and tongue-twisting diction.

Lay a Garland
“Lay a Garland” is one of the most beloved English songs in the choral canon. Robert Pearsall revived the Renaissance tradition with this adaptation of text from The Maid’s Tragedy, an early seventeenth-century play by Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) and John Fletcher (1579–1625). In the play, the text is spoken by a heartbroken maiden whose betrothed is being forced to wed the king’s mistress. Out of layers of harmony and dissonance, with individual vocal lines vying for the spotlight, Pearsall creates beautiful warmth from the tragedy of betrayal––which, to a young maiden, may as well be death.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
Within other texts on today’s program, nature is exalted above the fickle, tragic lot of humanity. In his famous eighteenth sonnet, however, The Bard exalts his loved one over the harsh, fleeting seasons of the natural world. Swedish jazz composer Nils Lindgren published the suite O Mistress Mine in 1990, featuring a collection of poems written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I set to music. “Shall I compare thee” was, understandably, the best-selling choral score in Sweden the year its arrangement was released. It has also been a favorite of the Chestnut Street Singers since we performed it on our first concert in June 2010.

Haiku by Basho
Although we may recall haiku from our school lessons as poems with strict syllabic structures, they are in fact more defined by the juxtaposition of two opposing ideas and also usually contain a seasonal or natural reference. Basho, considered the father of the haiku, offers a wry, mournful depiction of the changing seasons. The unassuming beauty of the text is rooted firmly in the world around the poet, yet Goldschmidt’s setting beautifully captures its transcendence with unusual but stirring tonal progressions.

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square
We return now to our friend the nightingale. Though sometimes a symbol of melancholy, here she is planted firmly in her role as a muse for poets and lovers, appearing in each instance of a nostalgic reflection on a past love affair. “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” was published in 1940 in London, becoming and remaining a standard both in England and the U.S. It has been performed by such legends as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Harry Connick Jr., and even Rod Stewart. Today’s version is a Grammy-winning arrangement by Gene Puerling, as performed by a cappella jazz group, the Manhattan Transfer.

Loveliest of Trees
A recent favorite of the Chestnuts, John Chorbaijan’s “Loveliest of Trees” perfectly captures the poet’s dilemma. Faced with both the beauty of the world around him and his own harsh mortality, he determines to take inspiration from the changing seasons and more fully embrace his remaining years. Such a bittersweet tone, especially for a speaker of only 20, is typical of A. E. Housman’s work; despite a brilliant career, he was plagued by a lifelong unrequited love.

Great Trees
In this excerpt from his larger work Hymnody of Earth, Malcolm Dalglish expresses the utmost reverence for the world around us with his setting of Wendell Berry’s moving tribute to trees. The praise and awe the poem offers to the mighty sentinels of our earth is expressed through nuanced, lilting rhythms and the bright, folksy harmonies of the American tradition. Although much of The Hymnody of Earth features accompaniment from percussion and hammered dulcimer (Dalglish’s instrument of choice), “Great Trees” is far more hymn-like, paying special attention to Berry’s text. The choir’s sound crescendos in pace with the gentle growth of the trees themselves, and the deliberate pauses within each verse hearken to the green stillness of the woods.

Of All the Birds That I Do Know
We close our program with this light-hearted tribute to a noisy pet bird––or so it seems. Madrigals are known to be rife with innuendo, and this one is no exception, leaving the listener without doubt that “Phillip” is not a bird at all. In spite of the rather indelicate subtext, English composer John Bartlet’s setting is quite delicate, and whether it leaves you with birds or other subjects on your mind, we hope it sends you cheerfully into this spring evening.