Pilgrim Hymn						Stephen Paulus (b.1949)
	
Prayer Before Sleep					Sid Robinovitch (b.1942)
In Pace 						John Sheppard  (c.1520-1563)
Peace At the Last					Robert Nicholl (b.1965)

La nuit froide et sombre				Orlando di Lasso (c.1532-1594)
Serenissima una noche					Geronimo Gonzalez (fl.1600-33)

Modlitwa, gdy dziatki spac ida				Waclaw z Szamotul (c.1526-1560)
Esti Dahl						Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967)
Dnes do skoku  from Songs of Nature			Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

Abendlied						Josef Rheinberger (1839-1901)
Hail Gladdening Light					Charles Wood (1866-1926)

intermission

Set of  Four Russian Pieces Chamber Singers
	Vecher (Evening)				Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915)
	Posmotri, kakaya mgla (Behold, Shadows Have Fallen)  Taneyev
	Vecherniy zvon (Evening Bells)		Russian popular song, arr. A. Sveshnikov
		Mark Hewitt, baritone
	Svetit mesiats (Shines the Moon)		Victor Volna (b.1964)

Water Night						Eric Whitacre (b. 1970)
Mata del anima sola					Antonio Estevez (1916-1971)
		Marc Persing, tenor

5th Annual High School Composition Contest presentations
This Bird of Dawning Singeth				Kevin Clark (b.
Friends Forever*					Yui Kitamura (b.

In My Room*						Beach Boys, arr. Friedman 
Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal	*			arr. Alice Parker  (b. 1925)
	Tracy Hart, baritone, Linda Lancaster, soprano
Away from the Roll of the Sea*			Allister MacGillivray
Witness*						arr. Jack Halloran (1916-1997)
	Lauran Corson, soprano, John Lamb, bass

*joined by Madison High School Chorus Student Partnership Chorus

Throughout the ages people have sung at sunset to welcome and bless the night, and chase away fears of the darkness.  Tonight’s program is an eclectic trip through all sorts of night music from sacred to secular, celebrating the diversity of composers young and old.

Stephen Paulus is one of America’s most prolific and accomplished composers, a recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships. As well as serving as Composer in Residence for orchestras of Atlanta, Minnesota and Tucson, he’s been composer in residence for the Dale Warland Singers, and has written a large body of choral music on texts from medieval to modern.  

Pilgrim Hymn is taken from his sixth opera, The Three Hermits.  This is his third opera  with librettist Michael Dennis Browne, professor of English at the University of Minnesota.  The Three Hermits is the story of a bishop traveling by ship across the White Sea in Russia with many pilgrims also on board.  The bishop stops at a remote island where three hermits pray a simple prayer to the Trinity “Three are Ye, three are we, have mercy upon us!”  The bishop spends all day trying to teach them the Lord’s Prayer, and they have considerable difficulty learning it.  That night, as the bishop sits moored of the island, he sees a disturbance in the water...it is the three hermits running over the water to them, because they have forgotten what comes after “who art in Heaven”! Chastened, the bishop assure them that whatever way they chose to pray is well loved by God.

Pilgrim Hymn is the final music in the opera. All the words the pilgrims sing in the opera  are paraphrases from the actual Russian Orthodox Liturgy, thus the hymn must both be true to the original, and sum up the themes of the opera.

Prayer Before Sleep is the sixth movement of the Talmud Suite, commissioned by Toronto’s  Elmer Eisler Singers from Canadian composer Sid Robinovitch ,who provides the following notes on the work:
“The Talmud is a vast corpus of law, commentaries, legend and philosophy...and simultaneously a work of art that goes beyond legislation and its practical application. It also occasionally contains short poems--prayers designed for synagogue use, private devotions, and so forth. The music is solely a response to an ancient and still very much living tradition through the heart and mind of a modern reader. This movement is grouped among the prayers to be recited at home before retiring at night.”

In Pace is a setting of the responsoruim for the evening office of Compline for the Sarum (English) rite.  Early English composer John Shepphard's setting alternates polyphony with the traditional chant.

Every summer, a dedicated core of faculty and children come to St. Stephen’s church in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., for  the Royal School of  Church Music King’s College Course.  As well as preparing four evensong services in six days, a group of church musicians and teenagers chant the Sarum service of  Compline every night in the beautiful domed apse of the church, ending with a short anthem such as Sheppard’s In Pace. Peace at the Last  was written by Senior Girl’s Housemaster, Robert Nicholl, for  the Compline Choir, and premiered last summer.  Mr. Nicholl  sang as a choir boy under Simon Preston at Westminster Abbey,  and later  with  the Choir at St. John’s College, under the direction of Christopher Robinson.  During the year he is music director at First Presbyterian Church, Evansville, Indiana. Tonight is the New Jersey premiere of this work.

Orlandus Lassus had such a beautiful singing voice as a boy that he was kidnapped three times by rival choirs.  He was a chorister in Mons, Rome and Antwerp, and finally a choirmaster in Munich. His over 1200 works are international in scope, ranging from German part-songs to ribald Italian madrigals to French love songs and Latin Masses and motets. Although in our last concert we sang a sacred Latin psalm setting, this work, La nuit froide et sombre, sets a French love poem by Joachim de Bellay.  It is filled with expressive madrigalian text-painting devices such as the striking  cadence on the word “cieux” (skies) which suddenly rises from the somber depths of the opening and drops out the bass.

Fray Geronimo Gonzalez  was a priest living in Mexico about 1600.  Although celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus, the dance-like villancico Serenissima una noche is quite secular in feel. It shows some surprising syncopations that the good father may have learned form Central American sources.

Our next set of works look forward to Harmonium’s upcoming  tour to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, July 2-14 2002.

Music in the chapel in Krakow of King Sigismund the Elder (1506-1548) and his son Sisigmund August (1548-1572) included an influential Collegium of fine singers and comprised the Golden Age of Polish Renaissance music. Waclaw of Szamoutuly  was described even by his contemporaries as Poland’s greatest composer.  For the court, Waclaw wrote large-scale religious works, few of which survive, but in 1555 he left Krakow (keeping the title of royal composer) and joined the Polish Calvinists. The Reformation influenced his compositions and he began writing simple polyphonic song settings to Polish texts such as Jus sie zmierzcha -- Modlitwa, gdy dziak spac ida (Dusk is coming- A prayer  when children go to sleep). Although short, the work is filled with atmosphere and delicate counterpoint. 

This century’s Zoltan Kodaly, is surely considered Hungary’s greatest composer,  as well as folk song collector, and music educator.  Kodaly was convinced of the value of choral singing as a way to musical literacy, and has left a legacy of numerous choral works, many for children. Esti Dahl is another atmospheric night piece, a calm and almost static depiction of the ending day.

Czechloslovakia’s most important composer, Antonin Dvorak, comes from the Romantic era. He became a truly universal composer--writing for all genres from symphonies to choral music and songs, and moving from humble peasant beginnings to an international reputation and the adoption of America as second home.  The Songs of Nature (1882) are among his most charming and popular choral works.

Josef Rheinberger, “Liechtenstein’s greatest composer,” was an organist and composer of organ, church, and chamber music in a late Romantic, highly expressive style  in the tradition of Brahms. The six-voice texture of Abendleid (from Drei geistliche Gesang, opus 69) gives it a rich sound and exploits the men’s and women’s voices in  double-choir  format.

Hail Gladdening Light, an English setting of the traditional Greek Phos Hilaron sung at Evensong was set by the Anglican composer Sir Charles Wood in grand antiphonal style. Wood carried the torch of English cathedral music forward from Stanford’s Victorian standards into a new century.

Vadim Prokhorov of Mussica Russica provides the following excellent notes on Sergei Taneyev:
“Tanyev  was a pupil of Tchaichovsky and his close friend although very different in personality and creative approach to composition.  Taneyev cared little for intuition but thought that an  observant mind and minutely detailed work should precede inspiration.  The pinnacle of his choral works is a monumental cycle of 12 choral poems, op. 27, composed in 1909 on texts by Yakov Polonsky (1819-1898).  Characteristically, the cycle is unified by Taneyv’s striving to express higher aspirations by rising above the feelings of individuals and reflecting principles that are universal. Ideally appropriate for realizing this goal are the scenes of nature portrayed in the choruses of the cycle.”

The architecture of Op. 27, No.2, Vecher, reflects the poem, with the opening theme returning as the final line refers to the “flame of the fast-fading sunset” being reflected again in the drops of dew.

The structure of  No. 4, Posmotri, kakaya mgla is also in sonata form, with the main theme treated as a thesis for development rather than a full-fledged musical image standing on its own.  The major device for this development is imitative polyphony, showing Taneyev’s affinity for the Renaissance, and Viennese classicism.

Vecherniy zvon is an extremely well-known and popular Russian Song here  in a  choral arrangement that exploits the bonging sounds of the bells.

Victor Volna was born in 1964 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia.  Since graduating from Leningrad Conservatory in 1990, where he studied choral and symphonic conducting and composition, Volna has held a number of positions at various education institutions in St. Petersburg.  In 1996 he established “Capris,” a vocal jazz ensemble that continues to serve as the primary vehicle for performing Volna’s unusual jazz arrangements of Russian folk and popular songs. Typically in a Volna arrangement, a familiar song is first presented in its “straight” form, after which the fun begins. Svetit mesiats is one of the most popular Russian urban folk songs, originating probably sometime in the nineteenth century.

Eric Whitacre received his M.M. in composition form the Juilliard School, studying with John Corigliano and David Diamond.  He has become one of America’s youngest widely commissioned, published and performed choral and symphonic composers, and an accomplished conductor and clinician. In addition, he writes for the motion pictures and has a Grammy nomination (contemporary classical crossover.) He has recently become composer in residence of  the Pacific Chorale in California. Water Night’s rich texture, deep harmonies and sensuous tone clusters set the poetry of Octavio Paz  (here in English translation by Muriel Rukeyser) fittingly.  Paz (1914-1998) is a Mexican poet and 1990’s Nobel Laureate in literature.  Whitacre writes “the poetry of Octavio Paz  is a composer’s dream.  The music seems to set itself ...and the process feels more like cleaning the oils from an ancient canvas to reveal the hidden music...”

Maria Guinand, editor of the Musica de Latinoamerica series for Earthsongs publishers provides this note on Mata del Anima Sola:
“ Mata del Anima Sola is a work inspired by a poem of Alberto Arvelo Torrealba. The piece has two distinct sections: one slow and meditative, and the other very quick and rhythmic based on a combined ¾ and 6/8/ meter which is characteristic of a dance called joropo.  The music depicts the solitude and mystery of the llanos, the high plains of Venezuela, while the tenor solo represents the llanero, or “man of the plains” whose songs are improvised.  In the joropo section, the choir imitates the instruments that are traditionally used to play the dance.  The altos and tenors have the rhythm of the cuatro (a small guitar with only four strings), the sopranos imitate the diatonic harp, and the basses sing the guitar bordones, all of which combine to provide the “instrumental” accompaniment to the tenor soloist.

The composer Antonio EstJvez was one of the second generation of important Venezuelan composers in this century.  A choral and orchestral conductor, his most important work is Cantata Criolla, a choral symphonic work based on words by Alberto Torrealba which depict a duel between the man of the plains and the devil..  The poetry of Alberto Arvelo Torrealba (1903-1971) is always related to life and traditions in the Venezuelan plains, his motherland.

We now turn to the music of the youngest composers present; the winners of the 5th Annual High School Student Composition Contest. Grand Prize winner  Kevin Clark is a senior at Princeton High School. Kevin sings in the Princeton High School Choir and the Westminster Conservatory Youth Chorale.  In addition to playing piano, flute and guitar, Kevin studies contemporary music and composition with Laurance Adams.  His major musical influences are mostly German, and he hopes to eventually compose and teach professionally.  This Bird of Dawning Singeth is a harmonically challenging piece that combines complex cadences and chords with the spoken word. 

Second prize winner Yui Kitamura’s piece, Friends Forever, is in a pop-jazz  idiom and reflects the feelings of graduating seniors.  Born in Osaka, Yui spent the first eleven years of her life in Japan where she began studying piano, music theory and composition.  After living in Boston for several years, she moved to New Jersey and is now a senior at River Dell Regional High School.  Yui currently studies piano with Mitsuko Ischimura and composition with Paola Prestini.  She has performed at Steinway Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and participated in the American Music Abroad European Tour and the Berkeley College of Music Summer Jazz Program.  Yui also accompanies her school chorus, plays percussion for school band and musical, and sings with both the general and select choruses.  In addition to Friends Forever, You has written pieces for full orchestra, harp, big band, and string quartet.

This version of the Beach Boys hit  In My Room was arranged for the Rye Country Day School by Steve Friedman, a lifelong resident of New York City who managed to escape for four years to get a BA in Music from Yale in 1982.  Since graduation, he has gamely resisted the temptation to make music his full-time focus, opting for a tenuous balance between telecommunications and ensemble singing.  Steve’s vocal arrangements have been performed by The Western Wind, the Dessoff Choirs, the Mannes Chamber Singers, Tokyo Voices, and many other fine groups worldwide.

Composer, conductor, teacher Alice Parker says she sang before she spoke. At Smith College and The Juilliard School she studied composition and conducting and began her long association with Robert Shaw.  Their many settings of American folksongs, hymns and spirituals form an enduring repertoire for choruses around the world. Hark I Hear the Harp’s Eternal is a rousing Southern Harmony tune which Madison High School enjoys taking to festivals and Harmonium enjoys taking on tour!

Allister MacGillivray is a renowned songwriter, guitarist, record producer, folklorist and author from  the Island of Cape Breton in the province of Nova Scotia, in eastern Canada. The beautiful ballad Away from the Roll of the Sea has become deservedly popular in choral arrangements in the last decade.

Finally, our arrangement of the traditional spiritual Witness, is by Jack Halloran, an Iowa boy who made it in Hollywood, as choral director  for  the Dean Martin Show and several Bing Crosby albums and then forming his own Jack Halloran Singers who performed his arrangements throughout  Southern California. We hope to sing it in witness to our love of choral music!

The Harmonium High School Partnership Program seeks to encourage High School singers to consider participation in choral singing as a lifelong joy, by giving them a chance to interact with a fine adult chorus.  Past participating chamber choruses have included Randolph High School, Madison High School, Parsippany Hills High School and Montville High School.  Before tonight’s performance, the prepared the music with their director and with Dr. Matlack, attended dress rehearsals, and were matched with a Harmonium “buddy” of their own voice part.  They fill out questionnaires rating their experience which we hope to share with you in the future. Many thanks to Kathryn Moser for her fine preparation and the students for their enthusiastic participation.
The Madison High School Chorus,  Kathryn Moser, director
(Names of about 40 singers may be provided here)

The Harmonium New Jersey High School Student Composition Contest aims to encourage young choral composers, and create new repertoire.  The contest was generously funded this year by a grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.  We are encouraged by the quality of all of the entries, and would like to especially congratulate: Special Mention for original text: Heidi Lam. Heidi is a sophomore at Princeton Day School where she is currently studying music composition with composer-in-residence, Laurie Altman.  She has played the cello for six years and has formerly played the piano for ten years.  A Time to Gather the Day is the first piece she has written for mixed voices and it was performed for her by the faculty at Harmonium’s composer/musicianship workshop April 20, 2002.  Fourth Prize winner Wynne Bennet’s piece was performed by the participants in the April workshop. Wynne is a senior at St. Mary’s High School in Rutherford and a pianist and composer who has been studying music since the age of seven.  She currently pursues her music training at the Harlem School of the Arts on a full scholarship, where she participates in the Jazz/Latin Ensemble and Composer’s Workshop.  She has studied with Charles Jones, and is currently a student of Dr. Daniel Bernard Roumain (composition and theory), Tsylala Khudad-zade (piano), Marcus Persiani (piano), and Kelvyn Bell (jazz).  Wynne has performed at various colleges, concert halls, and clubs in and around New York City, and recently became the assistant musical director for the new musical, “Lenox Ave.”  Third Prize, for My Guardian Angel goes to Brian Bacon, a senior at Cinnaminson High School, who won an honorable mention last year.   Brian plans to pursue music education in college.  In addition to serving as the school’s drum major for the past two years, he has performed in both All-State Band and Chorus, attended the New Jersey Governor’s School of the Arts for Theater, and apprenticed at the Surflight Theater.  Finally, the pieces you heard tonight: Friends Forever by Yui  Kitamura (Second Prize) and Grand Prize, This Bird of Dawning by Kevin Clark. 

Next year’s theme: “The Dazzle of Day” -- music about the day.  Please tell your friends, teachers and composition students! Registration will be due in December and manuscripts in February.

Many thanks to this year’s judges: Mark Miller, organist, church musician, and Harmonium’s Composer-in-Residence; Elliot Z. Levine, New York City composer and baritone for The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble; Matthew Harris, New York City Composer currently  writing a major work to be premiered by Harmonium next December, Elizabeth Alexander, wonderful composer from Ithaca who has joined us at the Dodge Poetry Festival, Michael Silvestri, director of the orchestra and guitar ensemble at Madison High School who also ran our April composer’s workshop, and Anne Matlack, Artistic Director of Harmonium. ALL students who submit manuscripts receive constructive, detailed written evaluations form all judges.