|
Harmonium, A Classical Choral Society May 19 and 20, 2001
INTERMISSION
PROGRAM NOTES: Choral music is at its best
a happy marriage of great words and great music. As we’ve rehearsed
this spring, it has been a wonderful experience for us to immerse ourselves
only in the words of the Bard! Shakespeare has inspired in many a composer
a rather “popular” style -- from the glees of the 19th century, to the
smooth jazz of Shearing and Swingle.
Here’s what Elliot told us about the piece:
The second, on a text by Shakespeare translated into German by Schlegel,
continues to exploit the horn call motif, with a light partsong quality
in the women’s voices:
The third movement is strangely reminiscent of Mendelssohn’s setting
for two sopranos, of the same text by Joseph von Eichendorff:
The last movement, written just a little later, captures the somber
Nordic mood of Ossian’s poems (in an anonymous German translation) and
foreshadows Gesang der Parzen (Song of Destiny) with its relentless dactylic
rhythm which symbolized the impossibility of evading destiny. With
the low colors of horn and harp and the funereal quality of the women’s
voice, the effect is quite dramatic.
Scandinavian composer Nils Lindberg’s contemporary Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day combines aspects of the partsong with sumptuous jazz-influenced harmonies. (to top) The prolific Ralph Vaughan Williams is considered the personification of Englishry in music. The influences on his style, ranging from Debussy to folk music, a violinist’s feeling for melody to experiments with modern dissonances, were tempered always by sincerity and a desire that his works grow out of his life and experience. Serenade to Music was written in 1938 to celebrate Henry Wood’s jubilee as a conductor, and is dedicated to him. It is scored for sixteen solo voices and orchestra, and was written specifically for sixteen singers associated with Wood, whose initials are published right in the score to this day. Each singer was given a phrase which is particularly suited to his or her individual style of performance. The pastoral writing represents a return to modal/diatonic harmonies after the angular, discordant harmonies of the Fourth Symphony. Impressionist influences of Debussy and Ravel are as strong in this piece as in any other Vaughan Williams’ works. The work can be performed with chorus or soloists and orchestra or piano. Tonight we chose a middle ground with chorus and soloists on the individual lines, semi-orchestrated with our harp and horns and the all-important violin soloist. The text is from Merchant of Venice, Act V, scene i. (to top) Chris Giarmo is the grand prize winner of Harmonium’s fourth annual New Jersey High School Student Choral Composition Contest with Rumour, the text of which is from the introduction to King Henry IV. Chris, a senior at Paramus High School, serves as president of the concert choir. He has exhibited extraordinary musical talent since he was very young. In addition to studying piano for twelve years and singing in school choruses since fourth grade, he has arranged several pieces for his school choir, been vocal captain for the past two PHS musicals, and sung in the Bergen County and North Jersey Regional choruses. Chris is also an avid actor, and will be attending New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for Experimental Theatre in the fall of 2001. (to top) Ward Swingle was the product of an unusually liberal musical education. In his hometown, Mobile, Alabama, he grew up with the sound of jazz and played in one of the great big Bands before finishing high school. He graduated from Cincinnati Conservatory and studied piano with Walter Gieseking in postwar France. In Paris in the sixties he was a founding member of the fabled Double Six of Paris, then took the scat singing idea and applied it to the works of Bach, hence the Swingle Singers, whose early recordings won five Grammies. When the Paris group disbanded in 1973, Swingle moved to London and formed an English group--still touring with classical and avant-garde works as well as vocal jazz arrangements. It Was a Lover and His Lass is an original work which captures the laid-back feel of a spring roll in the hay... (to top) The first two works which the Chamber Singers present are by Robert Johnson and the only truly Shakespearean works in the concert, in that the music (originally in two parts with a middle voice added later) was probably composed for and performed in productions of The Tempest. (to top) The next two romantic partsongs, or glees, are so obvious as to be charming. Richard J.S. Stevens was trained as a choirboy at St. Paul’s cathedral and became an organist and Gresham Professor of Music. Charles Wood is even better known as an Anglican church musician of a slightly later period--and slightly more harmonic daring can be heard, especially at the transformation “into something rich and strange.” The text painting (including the “ding-dong”) is an attempt to write in a consciously madrigalian way. (to top) 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 Tuscon, he has been Composer-in-Residence for the Dale Warland Singers, and has written a large body of choral music on texts from medieval to modern. Musicquotes is a six movement work for chorus, to be performed both a cappella and with piano. Written in 1997 for Jim Kimmel, it was commissioned by the Illinois Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association. Movement IV, Sweet Sounds, which we have permission to excerpt, is the only text of Shakespeare in the set. (to top) Our set of texts from Macbeth also shows off local talent. New Jersey composer Dick Thompson tells us: I began as a jazz pianist in the big bands. No one of note! Studied composition with Wallingford Riegger. He straightened me out! Was choral arranger for too many companies: Chappell, Warner Bros., E.C. Schirmer, etc. This consumed most of my time and creative energy. Recently, I settled down to serious composition. An earlier version of Tomorrow was actually written in 1969 for a high school choral ensemble of mine. In 1995, I expanded it into it's present form. The opening melodic phrase begins with an incomplete "Riegger" tone row and then continues "through composed" based on the Shakespeare text. The Gregg Smith Singers premiered the present version in New York City. (to top) Harmonium has performed several works by Ted Corson, a member of the bass section, most recently the suite Invitation to The Fire (1998). Ted is a Princeton-educated computer guy, former music teacher, bassoonist and arranger. A Harmonium member for 12 years, Ted wrote Witches Stew for the Harmonium Madrigal Singers (now Chamber Singers) biennial Halloween Concert where it was first performed in 1992. (to top) The Tragedy of Macbeth takes a playful look at Shakespeare's famous tale. Musically, the piece seems to parallel Macbeth's situation in which, after an initial period of cool logic, he gradually finds himself in deep water indeed, as events spin out of control. In addition to his activities as a composer, Ron Drotos is in demand as a pianist and arranger, collaborating with many top cabaret and jazz vocalists. He has worked on many Broadway shows including "Swinging on a Star," "Smokey Joe's Cafe" and "The Life." Mr. Drotos resides in New York City with his wife, mezzo-soprano Megan Friar. (to top) Born blind to a poor London family, George Shearing trained as a classical pianist but turned to jazz. He played dance-band gigs before settling in the USA in 1946. His quintet, first formed in 1949, lasted for many years and won a huge following for its many albums. He later worked extensively with Mel Torme. He now enjoys an international reputation as a pianist, arranger and composer. Shearing is recognized for his inventive, orchestrated jazz. He has written over 300 compositions, including the classic, “Lullaby of Birdland,” which has become a jazz standard. Shearing wrote Music to Hear as a result of a commission form the Dale Warland Singers in 1985. He explains: It occurred to me that, obviously, I would need a first-rate lyricist...one who wouldn’t be too busy to help. Fortunately, almost immediately William Shakespeare appeared and offered his literary services. In the opening selection, Music to Hear, my admiration for the works of Frederick Delius somehow seems to shine through. Then, bowing to the style of music composed during Shakespeare’s time, I wrote Is it for Fear to Wet a Widow’s Eye? and Shall I Compare Thee? Finally, segueing into the music I know and love best, I composed Sigh No More, Ladies and Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind. (to top) Matthew Harris was born in 1956 in New York State, and studied at The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory and Harvard University. His teachers include many well-known names, among them Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, Roger Sessions and Donald Martino. He has received two grants in composition from the National Endowment for the Arts and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Tanglewood, Composers Conference at Wellesley, Ives Center, Conductors Institute, and the MacDowell and Yaddo artist colonies. He has won prizes for his works in the Chautauqua Chamber Singers Choral Composition Contest and the National Association of Composers USA Young Composers’ Competition. He has also won the Georges Enesco International Composition Award, the Society for New Music’s Brian M. Israel Prize, and awards from ASCAP, BMI, Musicians’Accord, and the Taubman Institute. Matthew’s works have been performed by numerous distinguished groups including the Minnesota Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Lark Quartet, New York New Music Ensemble, the Dale Warland Singers and the New Amsterdam Singers, who performed his music at the televised Three Tenors concert at the Meadowlands. Some of his other commissions have come from the Fromm Foundation/Aspen Music Festival (where Mr. Harris was a Composer-in-Residence), I Cantori di New York, Modesto Symphony Orchestra, Haydn-Mozart Orchestra, and American Composers Forum. Matthew has taught at Fordham University and Kingsborough College, CUNY. He has been a board member of League-ISCM and American Composers Alliance and currently serves on the board of the MacDowell Artists Executive Committee. He currently lives in New York City, where he works as a musicologist. Matthew provides the following notes on the pieces Harmonium is singing
in this concert:
Instead of the lively romp found in other settings of this lyric, my It was a Lover and His Lass is a slow, gentle idyll of young love in the spring. You Spotted Snakes has slippery chromaticism (in mock 1940s close harmony style) to describe all the creepy things to be kept away in contrast to the very diatonic lullaby chorus. The women in Sigh No More Ladies sigh (“ah, ha”) and sing (“la, la”), though the men tell them not to. But they both come together for rollicking choruses of “Hey nonny, nonny.” The last song, O Mistress Mine, is a slow, heavenly coda that expands on the lessons of youth and love in the first song. Book IV was completed in 1995 and premiered by the Central Bucks-West
Choir, Joseph Ohrt, director, at the ACDA Regional Convention in Philadelphia,
February, 1996. Rapid passages swirl through Blow, Blow thou Winter
Wind, climaxing in an extended coda of 12 vocal parts. (The idea
of using triple rhythms for wind came from Monteverdi’s famous “Zefiro
Torno.”) In contrast, And Will A’ Not Come Again is a slow, simple
ballad. When Daffodils Begin to Peer finishes the set in good old
country style. (to top)
The Grand Prize Winner, whose piece is performed in this concert, is:
Past Grand Prize Winners are:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||