Program
Notes Archive
The
Woodland Quiet:
Songs of Nature & Beauty
This program was performed on May
1 & 2, 2010
So
this one all began with a Brahms song. I remembered some
opening lyrics (translated from the original German)
as something like “wondrous cool, thou woodland
quiet.” It seemed an intriguing statement, filled
with lots of programming possibilities. Certainly there
were hundreds if not thousands of choices, but through
searching, asking, listening, and serendipity it evolved
into the works we will sing for you.
The
inspiration of Brahms’s “Waldesnacht” (from
his Sieben Lieder, op. 62) begins the program. When I
think of Brahms, I think – this is real music.
His attention to craftsmanship, his beautifully constructed
lines, the detail of his phrasing and dynamics; all are
apparent in his larger works like A German Requiem, but
also here in this part song for unaccompanied chorus.
And then for something completely different from the
contemporary Canadian composer Stephen Chatman, you will
hear the quiet, restless beauty of “Sterling (Woodland)
Bells,” composed in 2006. Chatman is an important
choral composer, and over the past few years Cantemus
has greatly enjoyed performing several of his works.
These
two opening works attempt to set the tone for this concert.
Music from the 19th century, then from the 21st, German
texts and English texts, part song texts and evocative
poetry, choral singing a cappella and accompanied, all
celebrating Nature. The repertoire also evolved into
subsets, specifically birds and water. The Chatman is
followed by four evocatively beautiful part songs, two
by the British composer C. V. Stanford (from opus 119),
and two by Mendelssohn. These are all “for the
birds,” that is, “The Bluebird,” “The
Swallow,” “The Lark,” and “The
Nightingale.” Unaccompanied part song singing is
one of the choral singer’s great pleasures, and
we hope you enjoy these “standards” of the
choral repertoire.
We
remain with the German part song, but move to the water,
with Mendelssohn’s sprightly “Auf dem See” (On
the Lake). Throughout this concert you will hear several
Mendelssohn part songs, selected from opus numbers 41,
48, and 59; some of these carry the subtitle “songs
of the open air,” to be sung out of doors perhaps,
surrounded by Nature. We then continue with Chatman settings
of texts by Walt Whitman and Christina Rossetti, two
very important 19th-century poets. As always I strongly
encourage you to read the poetry before or as we sing;
in so doing, I think you will discover the strong and
sensitive musicality of Chatman’s works.
We
will close the first half with David Brunner’s
Earthsongs, works that, says the composer, “speak
of the wonders of nature and of the importance of protecting
the animals, caring for the plants and nurturing one
another.” These pieces use texts from three interesting
sources: the 19th-century geologist James Gates Percival;
a Buddhist writing from the Sutta Nipata; and a text
from the United Nations Environmental Sabbath Program.
These are accompanied by piano and oboe, with Margaret
Herlehy as our guest artist. You have heard Margaret
play the oboe with Cantemus on previous occasions, and
she is an accomplished performer and teacher in the region.
Margaret will also play an oboe solo during today’s
concert, an additional artistic pleasure for us all!
The
second half begins with one of my personal favorites,
Eric William Barnum’s “Afternoon on a Hill,” on
a text by Edna St. Vincent Millay. This work has some
subtle choral effects, with sliding voices and “wind
bowing down the grass.” Antonin Dvorak composed
V prirode (“Songs of Nature”) in 1882. We sing three
of these in English translation, and you will hear the
sounds of evening in the hushed forest (“Vesper
Bells Ring”), the joy of sunshine (“Golden
Sunlight”), and the April awakening of nature (“Slender
Young Birch”). We follow with a nod to the beautiful
extension of the warm weather in Daniel J. Hall’s “Indian
Summer” for women’s voices, piano and oboe.
This is a meticulously arranged setting of an Emily Dickinson
poem, wherein the composer creates flowing lines and
dynamic contrasts.
In
the spring of 1917, Frederick Delius composed two works
To Be Sung of a Summer Night On the Water, and we sing
the first one for you this day. The chorus is divided
into multiple parts as Delius creates sophisticated harmonies
of four, five, and six voices. The placid waters of Delius
are followed by Haydn’s “The Storm.” Apparently
Mr. Haydn visited London in 1792, and the sea journey
was rather treacherous. This is the first time that Haydn
wrote music for an English text, and his work captures
the calamity and calmness of the sea. It features the
capable artistry of our Cantemus accompanist Frances
Burmeister.
The
program closes with the quiet solitude of more Mendelssohn
part songs, translated into English as “In the
Forest” and “Peaceful Valley.” Again,
these works seem deceptively simple, belying the amount
of concentration and energy required from each chorister.
We will close the program with Stephen Chatman’s “Thou
Whose Harmony is the Music of the Spheres,” which
features “ the lyrical obbligato oboe part (that)
has an other-world feeling appropriate to the first line
of the poem, a theme that is also expressed by the poised
and harmonious movement of the vocal parts.”
We
seek to lift up the importance, relevance and joy of
music making – with you, our audience – as
a task worth doing. It is my sincere hope that this program
will reach your ears, minds and hearts as a true celebration
of choral singing, historical variety, composer craft,
great poetry, instrumental artistry, and the human spirit.
— Gary Wood, Music Director
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