We Who Believe

November 9, 2018: Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill

November 11, 2018: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

Sonja Bontrager, Lucas DeJesus, Conrad Erb, Julie Frey, Joshua Glassman, Amy Hochstetler, Michael Johnson, Elissa Kranzler, Nathan Lofton, Cortlandt Matthews, Brian Middleton, Hank Miller, John Piccolini, Rebekah Reddi, Jordan Rock, Rebecca Roy, Lizzy Schwartz, Melinda Steffy, Emily Sung, Caroline Winschel, Michele Zuckman

Hope, Ysaÿe Maria Barnwell (b. 1946)

Spiritual, Ysaÿe Maria Barnwell

A ship with unfurled sails, Gabriel Jackson (b. 1962)

Advance Democracy, Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)

What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?, Melissa Dunphy (b. 1980)

Mu isamaa on minu arm, Gustav Ernesaks (1908–1993)

El pueblo unido, Sergio Ortega (1938–2003), arr. Gene Glickman

she took his hands, Nicholas Cline (b. 1985)

Te Quiero, Alberto Favero (b. 1944), arr. Liliana Cangiano

we cannot leave (from Privilege), Ted Hearne (b. 1982)

Ella’s Song, Bernice Johnson Reagon (b. 1942)

Hold On! traditional spiritual, arr. Moses Hogan (1957–2003)

If you were hoping that a choir concert might represent the last apolitical space in our public sphere, you might be disappointed today. But this program is only as topical as you need it to be: singing together about revolutions isn’t especially revolutionary, as evidenced by this music that spans continents and carries the voices of earlier generations. The history of societal progress echoes with song, drawing as much from our faith in deliverance as from our need to keep motivated during the struggle.

In this context, returning to this music of progress isn’t simply affirming: it’s crucial. Raising our voices together is both our birthright and our responsibility; it is among the most intimate of public acts and one of the strongest, simplest forms of community-building. And although we are presenting these works formally, we ask that you receive them viscerally, with your whole selves. Your voice––your belief, your power, your faith, your fear––is needed if we are to grow together in community. When the call comes, sing out.

Hope

Today’s program would not be feasible without the ongoing work of Black and African American artists and teachers whose wisdom and talents infuse our contemporary understanding of both music and progress. Chief among these is Dr. Ysaÿe Maria Barnwell, a founding member of the internationally renowned vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock and a celebrated composer, choral clinician, and master teacher in the African American musical tradition. She summed up much of her teaching and composing in 2016, addressing a workshop audience in Massachusetts: “I see songs as armor when you need it. And I see songs as a blessing. We’re back to the beginning. Songs have a function. That’s what I want people to understand. They come to you when you need them.”

Viewed then as a kind of mantra, Barnwell’s “Hope” builds out of complementary layers of influences, with her timeless text juxtaposed against polyrhythms that hearken to African drumming. The repeated structure makes it easy for any of us to call upon the song when it’s needed—or even to add new calls to action.

Spiritual

With its title defining both its genre and its cultural resonance, Barnwell’s anthem “Spiritual” explores the all-too-familiar uncertainty that comes to those living through unrest. Recorded by Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1993, Barnwell’s references here are to the headlines of the late twentieth century, like the global AIDS epidemic, South African schoolchildren protesting apartheid-fueled educational policies in Soweto, and the Los Angeles police force’s brutal beating of Rodney King. The repeated refrain takes us out of time, framing our shared vulnerability against this backdrop of systemic injustice.

A ship with unfurled sails

“A ship with unfurled sails” places us in similarly uncertain territory, but here the dividing line between possibility and hope seems more tenuous, with nightfall now presaging a new beginning. The text, by Estonian poet and translator Doris Kareva, is colored by the Soviet occupation of Estonia, which achieved modern independence only in 1991. That Kareva’s long-awaited ship comes sovereign, unclaimed by any nation, indicates how deeply the strife of occupation had cut—no flag at all would be better than the standard of a hated occupier.

Gabriel Jackson’s setting of this enigmatic text grounds the poet’s own experiences in striking text painting. The haunting wavelets in the alto line keep the melody off-center, unsure, and the recognition that something glorious may be to hand––Imperceptibly all is changed. All arrives so secretly.––comes in phases, allowing for a surprising expression of pure joy before the narrator can collect herself.

Advance Democracy

In contrast to Jackson and Kareva’s uncertainty, Benjamin Britten’s “Advance Democracy” offers us pure bombast and a more direct call to action. Written in 1938, less than a year before the outbreak of World War II, “Advance Democracy” pleads for an alternative to war, with stirring text by the British poet Randall Swingler. Britten’s own pacifism is well known from his War Requiem, composed in 1962, and though “Advance Democracy” clearly reflects the composer and poet’s own pre-war anxieties, there’s a grim familiarity to the mechanisms of violence and fear as political ploys. Framed with that resonance, Britten’s darker moments carry great weight: listen for the contrast between the disjointed, staccato chant and the soaring, eerie obligato in the other voiceparts.

What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?

Of course, Britten and Swingler’s pleas didn’t account for the genocidal horrors being wrought elsewhere in Europe, and the world did go to war for the second time that century. That war included Philip Spooner, a Maine native who served as a medic and a chaplain between 1942 and 1945. Decades later, in 2009, Mr. Spooner shared a glimpse of his wartime experiences before the Maine Judiciary Committee while testifying in support of marriage equality. In reference to the atrocities of the war, he said, “I have seen with my own eyes the consequence of a caste system and of making some people less than others or second class. Never again. We must have equal rights for everyone.”

After a video and transcript of his remarks went viral, Philadelphia composer Melissa Dunphy crafted this intricate choral setting of Mr. Spooner’s address. Although the rhetoric is lofty, Dunphy’s speech-like rhythms hold us tightly to Mr. Spooner’s hesitant, sometimes-shaky delivery, with the sweetness of the setting inviting us to consider that a man who has “seen much” may still be nervous about addressing his state legislators.

A few months after Mr. Spooner’s speech, Maine voted in favor of marriage equality. It might be tempting to ascribe this achievement in part to his testimony—as Dunphy herself laughingly admitted recently, the words of an octagenarian Nazi-fighting veteran are “pretty unimpeachable,” and the extraordinary digital reach of his remarks reveals the impact of a single person’s voice. Still, Mr. Spooner’s insistence on the equality of all people would suggest that his particular contribution to the discussion might as easily have come from someone else. And indeed, that may have been what he intended to share that day with the committee: after Dunphy’s composition received international attention, she was contacted by the canvasser quoted in Mr. Spooner’s remarks. As Dunphy explained recently, the canvasser suggested that all the viral transcripts had captured Mr. Spooner’s central question inaccurately: though his delivery was halting, he had actually asked, “What do you think our boys fought for at Omaha Beach?” Viewed in this light, we must wonder anew about just what Mr. Spooner has seen in his many years: not only about the losses he may have suffered during the war but also about the fears and grief he may have confronted afterwards as a partner and a father. He doesn’t betray any evolution in his own views—he was “raised to believe that all men are created equal”—and so we are left to wonder about how much this man has seen, and about how much he himself has sacrificed in the name of his ideals.

Mu isamaa on minu arm

In the same era as Mr. Spooner’s service, freedom and equality were at risk in Estonia, which was newly under restored Soviet control after only 26 years of independence in the early twentieth century. The Soviet Union was intent on destroying the cultural identity the Estonians had begun forming, and part of their imposed censorship included banning Estonia’s national anthem from being sung in public. 

During the 1947 Laulupidu (the once-annual national song festival), the first since the war’s end, composer Gustav Ernesaks debuted a new setting of the poem “Mu isamaa on minu arm,” an ode to the country written by the famous Estonian poet Lydia Koidula in the mid-nineteenth century. Taken up by the Estonian people as a new anthem of sorts, it too was soon banned, but it continued to be sung and was eventually allowed back on concert programs. In 1969, during the song festival celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Laulupidu, Ernesaks’s piece was performed by a choir, after which the audience—estimated at 100,000 people––and the choir on stage began singing it again in a burst of patriotic fervor. The choir stood firm when they were ordered to leave the stage, and a Soviet military band attempted to drown out the anthem, to no avail.

As referenced in Kareva’s poem, the power of Estonian singing was finally realized in the late 1980s, when it won its independence through the non-violent “Singing Revolution,” thanks to mass demonstrations at which people sang pro-independence songs by contemporary Estonian rock bands. Laulupidu still recurs every five years; in 2019, for the festival’s 150th anniversary, “Mu isamaa on minu arm” will return as the central theme.

El Pueblo Unido

From Chile comes another twentieth-century anthem, here by the storied Leftist composer Sergio Ortega. Ortega worked closely with President Salvador Allende, composing both his electoral theme song (“Venceramos,” or “We Shall Triumph”) and “¡El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!” in the same period of Allende’s brief tenure before being assassinated during a coup. Ortega was exiled from Chile in the early 1970s, but “El Pueblo Unido” remained part of the Latin America vernacular, known and sung by progressive forces throughout the region. This arrangement by the New York-based arranger Gene Glickman centers the piece’s title as if proclaimed by demonstrators.

she took his hands

“she took his hands” is a setting of an excerpt from a 2007 Washington Post article about the arrest of Elvira Arellano, an immigrant from Mexico who worked for seven years in the United States and took sanctuary in a Chicago church to remain near her U.S.-born son, before ultimately being arrested and deported by U.S. immigration officials for her illegal status. Chicago-based composer Nicholas Cline sets the text in sparse, haunting repetitions that carry the strength, fear, and faith of Elvira’s words to her son. 

Te Quiero

Another vision of activism and faith comes to us from “Te Quiero,” a bone-deep love song by the Argentinian composer Alberto Favero setting a much-beloved poem by Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti. Favero is known in Latin America primarily for his compositions of popular music; this choral version, by the Argentinian arranger Liliana Cangiano, captures Favero’s inherent expressiveness as he treats the lyrical text. Benedetti’s refrain—“Somos mucho más que dos”––can be a lover’s caress or a revolutionary’s cry; we like that it also speaks to the power of intertwined voices. 

we cannot leave

Ted Hearne’s music blends rock-inspired minimalism with social consciousness. Although educated on the East coast and based for much of his career in Brooklyn, Hearne now lives in Los Angeles and teaches composition at the University of Southern California. Hearne is best known to Philadelphia audiences through his association with the new music choir The Crossing, with whom he has collaborated on numerous occasions. Among these collaborations was Sounds from the Bench, premiered by The Crossing in 2014, which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Privilege, composed in 2009 for the San Francisco choir Volti, was one of the composer’s first major successes and has been performed by dozens of ensembles throughout the United States. Privilege is a collection of five short pieces for a cappella chorus: the first and third movements are settings of “little texts” by the composer that question a contemporary privileged life (his own). The second and fourth movements are settings of excerpts from an interview with TV producer and journalist David Simon, creator of the television series The Wire. Simon’s words are answers to questions about economic and educational inequality. The final movement, “we cannot leave,” which we share here today as a standalone piece, is a setting of As’ Kwaz’ uKuhamba, a Xhosa anti-apartheid song from South Africa.

The composer writes: “The first four movements are of course most closely related to contemporary America. Because the fifth takes a text from an outside culture (black South African) and is more removed historically (because the era of Apartheid is over we are able to process it as a chapter that has been closed), it can provide relief from texts that are more ‘close to home.’ But also […] there are common themes running between the movements, and in a way the distanced perspective makes the last movement the saddest or most tragic of all. One thing that should not be overlooked is the parallels between social and economic injustices in Apartheid South Africa and America.”

Ella’s Song

In addition to her role as the founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, Bernice Johnson Reagon is a celebrated composer, arranger, teacher, and theater artist. In 1981, she was commissioned to compose the title song for Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker: the result was “Ella’s Song.” Although the lyrics seem shockingly familiar today, they are drawn from Baker’s decades of writings and activism against exploitation, racism, and injustice. As Reagon writes, “The first verse is from a statement Baker made about the murder of three Civil Rights Movement workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman during the Mississippi Campaign in the summer of 1964. A search was mounted after their disappearance that involved dragging the rivers of Mississippi. As they searched the muddy waters, they turned up bodies of Black men who had never been looked for because they were Black.” Although the call-and-response pattern means that only a few singers give voice to Baker’s words, Reagon’s score cautions that “all harmony lines must carry the emotional responsibility of the song.”

Hold On!

“Hold On!,” sometimes known as “Gospel Plow,” is a traditional American spiritual recorded by such artists as Mahalia Jackson, Duke Ellington, and Bob Dylan. The text implores us to live life to the fullest, committing ourselves to work for meaning and justice in this world.  Hogan's arrangement features small groups of voices sharing each verse while the rest of the ensemble emphatically supports them.

For Cherishing

June 1, 2018: Proclamation Presbyterian Church, Bryn Mawr

June 3, 2018: First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia

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

Versa est in luctum, Tomás Luis de Victoria (c. 1548–1611)

Introitus from Missa pro Defunctis, Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410/1425–1497)

Nymphes des bois, Josquin des Prez (c. 1450/1455–1521)

Selig Sind die Toten, Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672)

Songs of Farewell, Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848–1918)

1. My soul, there is a country far beyond the stars
2. I know my soul hath power to know all things
3. Never weather-beaten sail
4. There is an old belief

Funeral Ikos, John Tavener (1944–2013)

Take Him, Earth, For Cherishing, Herbert Howells (1892–1983)

The Beautiful Land of Nod, Robert Convery (b. 1954)

Versa est in luctum

“Versa est in luctum” is a six-part motet by the great Spanish renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria. It is one of several pieces that comprise the last publication of Victoria’s life: the Officium Defunctorum, a collection of funereal works that Victoria composed upon the death of his longtime patron, the Dowager Empress Maria, sister to the Spanish king and Holy Roman Emperor Philip II. The text of this motet links two passages from Job: the first making evocative musical reference to the harp and flute, whose voices have been turned to grieving, and the second asking forgiveness before death––“Spare me, O Lord, for my days are as nothing.”

Introitus

Johannes Ockeghem is widely acknowledged as one of the great masters of the early Renaissance. Ockeghem’s fame during his lifetime (as evidenced by Josquin’s memorial to the older composer, “Nymphes des Bois,” next on the program) was a testament not only to his compositional skill but also to his comparatively wide travels. While Ockeghem was born at Saint-Ghislain, in modern-day Belgium, he travelled through the Netherlands, France, and Spain while holding positions in Antwerp, Moulin, and Paris. Ockeghem’s incomplete Missa pro Defunctis, or Requiem, from which this Introitus comes, is believed to have been composed either following the death of France’s King Charles VII in 1461 or that of his son and successor, Louis XI, in 1483. Ockeghem’s Requiem is the earliest surviving polyphonic setting of the Catholic Mass for the dead.

Ockeghem’s Introitus is based on a cantus firmus: a simple melody, often derived from Gregorian chant, around which other voices are added to create polyphony. In this case, the cantus firmus is the plainsong melody that would have been chanted during funeral masses prior to the emergence of polyphony. Ockeghem’s Introitus, set for only three low voices, is simple and austere. This simplicity and austerity allows space for meditation, by both listener and performer, on life, death, and the mysteries of existence.

Nymphes de bois

One of the most famous motets of the Renaissance, “Nymphes des bois” pays homage to Ockeghem, the master composer who was Josquin’s teacher. The text is an elegy by Jean Molinet, which combines figures from classical antiquity with contemporary mourners of Ockeghem’s death––among them Josquin and his peers, the composers Perchon, Brumel, and Compère. The piece is scored for SATB choir atop a tenor cantus firmus singing the Requiem plainchant.

Selig Sind die Toten

Heinrich Schütz is a transitional figure in music history, having lived and worked at a time when the elements that would come to define Baroque music were just beginning to emerge. Schütz was born in central Germany and spent virtually his entire career at the court of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden. While based in Dresden, Schütz was able to travel and spent time in Venice studying with Monteverdi, another key figure in the emergence of Baroque music. Schütz is among the most influential German composers of the early seventeenth century, and his influence can be heard in the music of Buxtehude, Bach, Telemann, and even as late as Brahms and Bruckner. Indeed, the most famous setting of the text “Selig Sind die Toten” is in Brahms’ 1868 Ein deutches Requiem, a setting which itself draws heavily on the influence of Schütz and other early German composers. Schütz’s setting of “Selig Sind die Toten” first appears in the composer’s Geistliche Chormusik, a collection of 29 sacred motets published in 1648. “Selig Sind die Toten,” like much of Schütz’s music, contains many elements of the emergent Baroque style: frequent changes of texture, dynamic, and intensity; alternation between contrapuntal writing, with all six voices moving independently, and homophonic music in which all of the voices sing together; and a clear connection between the meaning of the text and the drama of the music. Nowhere is this last element clearer than in the second section of the piece, where the declamatory music of “Ja, der Geist spricht” is followed by the meditative “Sie ruhen von ihrer Arbeit.”

Songs of Farewell

Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry’s song cycle Songs of Farewell, comprised of six a cappella motets, is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century English choral music. With its rich harmonies, intricate counterpoint, and evocative setting of English text, the cycle bears all the hallmarks of the English choral renaissance, of which Parry has long been credited as one of the progenitors. Parry composed the cycle between 1913 and 1915, at the height of World War I and just a few years before his death in 1918. The texts and music reflect both a time of unimaginable loss from the war and also perhaps the poignancy of Parry’s personal farewell: by this point the heart trouble which had persisted most of his life had developed into a serious condition, and he may have known that he did not have much time left to live.

The six motets in Songs of Farewell occur in order of increasing complexity, with the first two scored simply for SATB choir and the final and longest motet set for eight voice parts. This program features the first four motets in the cycle. The first motet, “My soul, there is a country far beyond the stars” is probably the best-known piece in the cycle, set for unaccompanied SATB choir to text by the seventeenth-century poet Henry Vaughan (1622–1695). The frequently changing keys and meters do not disturb but rather enhance the lyricism of the text, showcasing Parry’s love for the English language and his skill in bringing it to life through this medium. The second and shortest motet, “I know my soul hath power to know all things,” is a setting of two stanzas from “Nosce Teipsum,” a philosophical poem on human knowledge and the nature of the soul by Sir John Davies (1569–1626). Also scored for four voice parts, this motet is nearly completely homophonic, with each phrase punctuated by dramatic pauses. The third motet, “Never weather-beaten sail,” scored for five voices, begins in homophony but quickly expands into a lush, lyrical polyphonic setting of the eponymous poem by Thomas Campion (1567–1620).

The fourth motet, “There is an old belief,” is a six-voice setting of poetry by John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854). The first half of this motet unfolds through lyrical polyphonic writing very much like the preceding number. On the final sentence of the text, all six parts join in a unison proclamation of the plainsong Credo on the text “That creed I fain would keep” before returning to the lush harmonic writing that closes the piece.

Funeral Ikos

This setting of text from the Orthodox service for the Burial of Priests, here translated into English by Isabel Hapgood, is quintessentially Tavener. The setting, simple and elegant in equal measure, alternates between sparsely harmonized chants and a four-part Alleluia. While this Alleluia is musically unchanged through each iteration, it goes through several significant contextual transformations, being a song of mortal commemoration, heavenly praise, mourning, and comfort––possibly all at the same time.

Take Him, Earth, For Cherishing

Herbert Howells had a long and productive life with a great deal of professional success, including a sixty-year teaching career at the Royal Academy of Music. Howells’s life was also marked by several tragic incidents, however, and chief among them was the sudden death of his nine-year-old son Michael in 1935. Loss and grief are frequent themes in the composer’s music, and rarely are they more overt than in the motet “Take Him, Earth, For Cherishing.” Howells first set portions of Prudentius’s Hymnus circa Exsequias Defunctis as a study for his mammoth 1949 oratorio Hymnus Paradisi. Although the text was not incorporated into the finished oratorio, it remained in Howells’s mind, and the composer recalled it when he was asked to compose a memorial work for President John F. Kennedy in 1964. In “Take Him, Earth, For Cherishing,” Howells sets Prudentius’s poem in an English translation by Helen Waddell. The motet is episodic in its construction and consists of nine continuous sections. The first section begins with a subdued unison chant, reminiscent of plainsong and the Tudor church music Howells studied as a young man. This chant, which might symbolize a mourner’s inner sense of loss and grief, returns in fragments at points throughout the piece as a unifying motif. The second section (“Guard him well, the dead I give thee”) is a more extroverted expression of grief and begins with one of Howells’ signature harmonic devices: the choir sings a B Major chord, but then all of the voices but one move chromatically away from their notes and then back. The sound is akin to an uncontrollable wail. This section and the several that follow are harmonically searching and unstable. They could be heard as moving through stages of grief, from anger to acceptance, searching for some sort of consolation. Eventually we begin to hear the first hints at hope and redemption: “Open are the woods again, that the Serpent lost for men.” The piece finds its resolution, musically as well as dramatically, with an arrival on B Major and the words “Take, O take him, mighty Leader.” Although the harmonic wandering continues through the end of the piece, our “home” of B Major is never far away. The final section of the piece repeats the first lines of the poem, and the work ends quietly with a final repetition of the poem’s first line and title.

The Beautiful Land of Nod

Robert Convery was born in Kansas and raised in California before coming to the East Coast to study at Westminster Choir College, The Juilliard School, and Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. Although now based in New York, Convery has enjoyed long associations with many Philadelphia musical organizations, including The Crossing and its predecessor, The Bridge Ensemble. The composer writes about “The Beautiful Land of Nod”: “Poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, famous for lines like ‘Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone,’ wrote lyrical and affecting works. Unfortunately, for composers looking for poems rich in musical treasures to be excavated, Ms. Wilcox’s poems are too long to sustain themselves in single musical settings. Therefore, I took Ms. Wilcox’s ‘The Beautiful Land of Nod,’ pretended she approved, hung my head in blasphemous shame and whittled down her long poem into a practical length for a musical setting. I also focused the poem, eliminating tangential strayings. While doing this, I kept in mind the musical form I intended to use for the setting, the simple, sturdy Bar Form (A, A, B, A). I then elongated the form slightly (A, A, B, A, A extension, coda) to accommodate my shortened adaptation of the poem.

“The commission for ‘The Beautiful Land of Nod’ came in 2015 from The Crossing for a project called The Jeff Quartets. Fifteen composers were commissioned to each write a short choral work for this project. All fifteen works were then performed on a single program. Being a short work, I wrote it immediately upon receiving the commission, let the music sit a few months, rewrote it, let it sit for a few more months, rewrote it again, let it sit for a few months more, then copied it out neatly during a third rewrite, before sending it to The Crossing for rehearsal and first performance on July 9, 2016.”

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.