Radiant Dawn

by Benjamin Perry

The Boston Cecilia’s next concert, Radiant Dawn, will feature the theme of light. As we near the solstice, we will perform music about light in winter, the season of darkness. In December, the sun sets early, our stores of Vitamin D run low, and the cold weather pushes us indoors. We overcome the darkness by focusing on the qualities of light in the human sense: the warm-heartedness, the kindness, and the generosity. The darkest and coldest time of the year is a time to bring warmth with celebration - Christmas, Hanukkah, Mawlid el-Nabi, and Rohatsu (Bodhi Day). It is in this spirit of joy, hope, and reflection that we present the music of Radiant Dawn.

One of the pieces on the program will be Morton Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna. Few composers have captured the essence of radiance so fully as Lauridsen. He is the most frequently performed American composer of choral music, and light is one of his central themes, particularly in Lux Aeterna. But what is it about his music that makes us experience this aural vision of light so readily? To quote his website: “His music has an overall lyricism and is tightly constructed around melodic and harmonic motives.” Lauridsen’s choral music has an overall lushness and cinematic exquisiteness to it. It contains dense and bright harmonies and clever voicings that bring the “light” out of the sound. All of these elements combine to create music that simply wants to be sung with enthusiasm and heart.

Cecilia will also perform Serenity, Ola Gjeilo’s setting of the beloved Christmas text “O Magnum Mysterium.” Gjeilo’s piece with its overlapping layers of sonorous chords and its beautifully simple melodies paints an image of light; it creates a sound-world that resembles light passing through the prism of colorful stained-glass windows. This aural image is paired with the text, with its emphasis on mystery and blessedness, and is emphatically communicated through Gjeilo’s compositional techniques.

The holiday concert will also feature Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols, as well as a cappella pieces of Eric Whitacre, James Macmillan, and Gabriel Guillaume. Organist Kevin Neel, cellist Shay Rudolph, and baritone John Bitsas will join the Cecilia chorus to celebrate light in this holiday season with Radiant Dawn.

Benjamin Perry is the Assistant Conductor of The Boston Cecilia

“The nth Art” of Peter Torpey and "Luminosity"

by Deborah Greenman

On October 22nd, The Boston Cecilia will present the Boston premiere of James Whitbourn’s Luminosity as the centerpiece of a concert celebrating illumination in the time of darkness. Composed for the Westminster Choir College and the Archdream Dance Ensemble, Luminosity is scored for chorus, dancers, viola, tanpura and tam-tam. Conductor Colin Lynch had seen Peter Torpey’s elegant lighting design for the Boston Camerata’s performance of The Play of Daniel, and asked if Torpey would collaborate with Cecilia on Luminosity. I talked with Peter Torpey about his work and his plans for the concert.

Peter Torpey describes himself as a “Media Experience Artist.” His consulting company, “The nth Art”, provides services that span the possibilities of integrating technologies into live performance and artistic experience.” Torpey studied theater and film as an undergraduate, and went on to earn a doctorate from the MIT Media Lab where he was part of the Opera of the Future group. Interested in working across disciplines, Torpey uses his deep immersion in the visual arts and technology to interpret musical works in a visual way. For example, with Opera of the Future group, he worked on the City Symphony Project. Citizens of different cities - to date Toronto, Detroit, Edinburgh, Perth and Lucerne – collaborate with a composer and visual artists to create multimedia symphonic events. In the case of the Toronto Symphony, sounds of the city of Toronto as well as musical ideas contributed by Torontonians were incorporated by the composer, Tod Machover of the Media Lab, into a composition that integrated the music with a light show. The visual effects culminated in projections of colored light onto Toronto’s landmark CN tower.

When I talked with Torpey about his plans for Cecilia’s performance of Luminosity, he told me that for him what is key is that the lighting not be an add-on; but rather, like the instruments and the singers, an integral part of the piece. To write the visual element of the performance, he will sit down with the score and create a new part, a visual accompaniment to what he sees in the score. He will work to “translate” the structure and melody of the musical composition into visual terms. He is particularly excited about the opportunity to work on Luminosity because it is the rare choral piece actually written to include a visual component . Torpey plans to use the chorus itself as a “sculptural object” filling the space of All Saint’s Parish with light and shadow. It will illuminate not only church and performers but the experience of the concert for performers and audience alike.

AND IT WAS GOOD: Reflections on 20th Century American Choral Music in a 21st Century World

By Nicholas White

PROGRAM

Randall Thompson (1899-1984) - Alleluia
Aaron Copland (1900-1990) - In the Beginning
Samuel Barber (1910-1981) - Reincarnations
Mary Hynes
Anthony O’Daly
The Coolin
Stephen Paulus (1949-2014) - Two Pieces
Little Elegy The Road Home
Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943) - Nocturnes
Sa Nuit d’Ete
Soneto de la Noche
Sure On This Shining Night
Randall Thompson - Farewell

There is little doubt that the advance of technology, international communications, and access to educational opportunity has changed the complexion of musical composition during the 21st Century. There is much beautiful music being written these days. Maybe too much. And boundaries, styles and trends have been blurred more than ever before. None of this is surprising, given our 21st Century world, and it will be interesting to see what the world's 22nd Century population surmises as they reflect on the current musical landscape. As an Englishman, born in the late 1960s, my first exposure to American Choral Music was, predictably enough, hearing Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms performed at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1973. For the decade or so after that, I was basically unaware of American Choral Music, as I became steeped in the Anglican Choral Tradition.

The next piece of American Choral Music to which I was exposed was Randall Thompson’s Alleluia. I learned of this piece while undertaking a choir tour to the USA in 1988. My first tour of the States had happened the previous year, and the program was made up entirely of British – or, at least, European – choral music. Indeed, I think it is fair to say that there was a market for British choirs traveling to America in the 1980s and 1990s that was different to the situation we find today. Yes, elements of Anglican Choral Style have become more and more influential upon the way in which choirs function in our churches and concert halls over here. Equally though, there was a wall of ignorance and naïveté surrounding American Choral Music – even acknowledging its existence – that has now been broken down. Knowledge of, and appreciation for, international musical styles has increased exponentially over the last twenty years. The very best American choirs rival the very best European choirs, and compositions for these ensembles are able to traverse boundaries that are significantly changed since the last century.

In designing this program, I was intentional about featuring music that comes from the 20th Century, versus the 21st Century. While some of this music was penned after 2000, the foundation of the style is from an earlier time. Randall Thompson’s Alleluia was commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky in 1940 for the opening of the new Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. Surprisingly subdued as a “fanfare”, Thompson once wrote that…

…the Alleluia is a very sad piece. The word "Alleluia" has so many possible interpretations. The music in my particular Alleluia cannot be made to sound joyous. It is a slow, sad piece, and...here it is comparable to the Book of Job, where it is written, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

I first heard Aaron Copland’s In The Beginning when I moved to Abilene, Texas in 1992. The excellent choir at Hardin-Simmons University, under the direction of Dr. Loyd Hawthorne, was preparing the piece for a contest. This substantial, polytonal piece, with its dramatic role for mezzo-soprano was composed for Harvard University's Symposium on Music Criticism in May 1947. The premiere was performed by the Collegiate Chorale at the Harvard Memorial Church, Cambridge on 2nd May, almost exactly seventy years ago, conducted by Robert Shaw.

As a teenager, Samuel Barber had developed an appreciation for his Irish heritage, had discovered the poetry of James Stephens, and had set one of Stephens’ poems as an art song. Barber set three poems, based on verse by the Gaelic poet Antoine O Reachtabhra (1784-1835), in what became his Reincarnations, one of his best-known choral works. He worked on the pieces separately in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The first performance of all three pieces as a single work was given at the Juilliard School in the summer of 1949.

It is worth pointing out that all three of these composers’ most popular choral works were created at the midpoint of each of their lives, all receiving their first performances during the 1940s, with the Barber taking place during the birth year of our next featured composer. Stephen Paulus, who died in 2014 following a devastating stroke, created some of the most beautiful choral music of the second half of the 20th Century. His Little Elegy was actually written in 2010, setting a poem of Eleanor Wylie (1885-1928), and exhibits the tenderness and sensitive word-setting that is a feature of Paulus’s very best choral writing. Not shying away from wide vocal ranges and dynamic contrasts, the piece maintains an intimacy that gives the impression that the listener is in a tender conversation from start to finish. The Road Home, written for the Dale Warland Singers, is based on a simple melody from The Southern Harmony Songbook (1835) and sets a text of frequent collaborator, Michael Dennis Browne.

Morten Lauridsen rose to international fame with his 1994 setting of O Magnum Mysterium, a piece which has become a staple of Christmas choral performances across the globe. Lauridsen’s thoughtful, carefully written, and evocative music earned him the label of “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment For The Arts in 2006. His musical style, as well as his teaching at the University of Southern California, has influenced a generation of American choral composers, as well as choral directors who have fallen under his spell. Nocturnes consists of three mixed chorus pieces, two with piano accompaniment, set to poems of Rilke, Neruda, and Agee. These three related works bask in the glory not only of Lauridsen's choral writing but also in the use of three languages within the set.

I only became aware of Randall Thompson’s piece Fare Well in the last couple of years and, as I played it through to myself, I was struck by the understated beauty and simplicity that Thompson creates. It was written in 1973 for the combined choruses of Calhoun, Kennedy and Mepham High Schools, in Merrick, New York. There is a poignancy to the piece that is reminiscent of Alleluia. However, there is also a realness to it – less of heaven, more of earth – that differentiates it from the piece that begins this program. It allows more space for the listener to reflect on the beauty of both text and music and is, in my opinion, an example of the best American Choral Music. There is something about it that tastes of America. It feels as though it gave birth to much of the American Choral Music that has followed it. Again, in my opinion, it is a better piece of music than Alleluia and, for whatever reason, it has never achieved the same level of recognition. This, after all,  is the conundrum that has been around for centuries. A certain piece of music by a certain composer becomes popular and that composer is forever identified with it, while other – maybe better – works lie dormant. In this time of technological advancement, increased communications, media-driven bias, and all of the 21st Century norms, it will be fascinating to see the way in which creative landscapes will change and develop over the next one hundred years.

"This Little Babe"

by Susanne Potts

My parents, immigrants fleeing the onset of World War II, came to the United States with their young family as refugees in 1940 -the year I was born. They were grateful and proud to be welcomed in America. As assimilated German Jews, their religion was German art and culture, mainly music. Christmas was celebrated in the German style, with candles (lit !) on the tree, and much music. Beginning with the First Sunday of Advent and daily in the week before Christmas, we gathered around the piano with my father atthe keyboard to sing traditional carols from the book by Henri Van Loon and Grace Castagnetti.

Someone had given us a vinyl set of recordings of Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, and my father - and all of us- became enormous and lifelong fans of Britten. I am so grateful that Donald Teeters shared that enthusiasm. Cecilia repeated that song cycle frequently, as well as many other of Britten's masterpieces.

Of all the carols, in their origins and variety, I am most deeply moved by Britten’s setting of Southwell’s text, 'This LittleBabe'. The image of the 'silly tender babe' shivering on a haystack, the infant Messiah clothed in rags “in freezing winter night”, is uniquely poignant.

For me, the story of the “freezing winter night” brings to mind not only the small babe in the manger, not long before his parents will have to flee Herod, but also my own parents flight from Germany and Hitler, and the current refugees fleeing Assad and the conflict and terror in Syria. Britten wrote A Ceremony of Carols as he returned to England in the midst of World War II. He had fled England at the start of the war, but felt he needed to return. It was a dangerous journey through a U-boat and submarine infested Atlantic. He had decided he needed to be back home. It is a gift for me to share this work and these memories with Barbara Bruns and Nicholas White and our audience.

SINGING "A CEREMONY OF CAROLS"

By Elizabeth Gawthrop Riely

Because my school and college were both all-female, I have sung A Ceremony of Carols many times. Benjamin Britten originally imagined it as sung by women, but upon publication it was scored for boy trebles, with two soloists and harp. It works both ways. Learning these carols as a young teenager in high school was a challenge. I’d never encountered the shifting rhythms, clusters of dissonance, and other techniques Britten uses for expressive effect, let alone 5/4 meter! These have all become idiomatic in the language of 20th century music, but to me back then they were astonishing.

In college too, along with the musical values, we worked hard on the piece’s spiritual core as the poetry delved inwardly. In “There is no Rose of such Vertu,” the many thirds with their consonance give a sense of serenity and innocence before the soaring line of “Transeamus” (Let us go forth), and then draw back to a gently chanting low C at the end. As for the “Balulalow” lullaby, I remember myself then, newly in love, being transported by its caressing triple rhythms and flow between major and minor, as the Virgin rocks her child in the cradle. Now, a grandmother, I am happy to leave this exquisite lullaby to a younger soprano.

As Donald Teeters wrote for Cecilia’s own CD made in 2002 (thanks to Barbara Bruns for bringing this to my attention), Britten composed this masterpiece in 1942, when he was 28 years old. He was aboard ship returning to England from the United States, where he spent the early World War II years as a conscientious objector. The voyage lasted five long weeks in treacherous wartime waters. His state of mind was no less fraught for the critical reception he feared back in England. Some of the insistent rhythm and angry energy in “This Little Babe” reflect this. The conflict between good and evil, the Babe and Satan, divides in the music into canon, Don wrote, creating “a vivid picture of apocalyptic conflict—a picture replete with contemporary references for Britten.” We may think of that with our own conflicts today.

In adulthood I have sung the carols independently in many different church services and, with Don, the whole piece twice. I know others sang it with Don before I joined. Barbara Bruns, who will conduct the piece for our holiday concert, asked us all to find something new this Christmas. The task was an easy one.

The poetry, mostly medieval – Britten was a genius at choosing texts for his vocal compositions – offers something fresh and beautiful, subtle or brilliant, every time I look. Amplified like a prism by the harp, light shimmers and shines, water glistens in dewdrops and icicles. Look at the poetry and listen. The last carol pounds and bursts into joy. Had not Adam and Eve taken the apple, the anonymous poet writes, never would our Lady have been heavenly queen. Harp and three-part-chorus ring out like bells pealing at the end of “Deo Gracias!” And then the ceremony subsides, enclosed, or rather embraced, by the plainsong antiphon with which it opened, the Hodie proper to the Vespers for Christmas Eve.

I hope to sing A Ceremony of Carols yet again.

HANDEL, MOZART AND THE PSALMS OF DAVID

BY NICHOLAS WHITE

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This is the first in a three part series outlining the upcoming season for The Boston Cecilia. The next two articles will focus on the December and April concerts, but we begin our 141st season with a spectacular program of Handel and Mozart in Jordan Hall at The New England Conservatory in Boston. The two works to be performed are Handel’s youthful and exuberant setting of Psalm 110, Dixit Dominus, and Mozart’s oratorio that draws on the Psalms of David…and substantial quantities of music from his Great Mass in C Minor…entitled Davide Penitente. Falling during the year that would have marked the 80th birthday of my predecessor, Donald Teeters, who died exactly two years ago, this concert reflects many of Don’s musical tastes. By many accounts, Dixit Dominus was one of his favorite pieces of music.

Beyond the musical selections, however, there is another very important aspect of Donald’s work that we are honoring. After Don’s death in 2014, the Board of Directors established The Donald Teeters Fund.  Several key mission-related uses for the funds have been established, and one of the purposes is to continue the engagement of new, young singers, in order to give them some exposure to Boston audiences. This was something that Don did consistently, supportively and intentionally. I am pleased to say that our excellent soloists for October 14th fall under that category, and I am excited to work with them all this Fall.

Soprano, Sarah Yanovitch is a recent graduate of the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music, where she was a student of James Taylor. Recent appearances as concert soloist include such works as the Fauré Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus, and Dixit Dominus.

Soprano Emily Nöel, praised for her “sparkling performances” and “sheer vocal beauty” by The Washington Post, concertizes throughout North America and Europe in a wide variety of repertory expanding from the Medieval to the contemporary.

Countertenor, Dr. Daniel Roihl has appeared as a soloist with numerous professional choirs throughout New England and Southern California, performed at early music festivals in Bloomington and Corona del Mar, and been featured on the soundtrack of the 2007 film I Am Legend.

Tenor Alexander Nishibun’s vibrant, youthful instrument and sensitive stage presence have been characterized as “a delight…” and “capable of stealing the show with a gesture” (Portland Press Herald).

Bass, Charlie Evett is a giant in the field of a cappella bass singing. His thumping lines and Richter- scale solos powered Rockapella to national prominence, and now he is the sturdy foundation beneath The GrooveBarbers, which he co-founded.

This is my first time conducting both of these works, although my love for each of them goes back three decades. I first performed Dixit Dominus as a singer with the Cambridge University Chamber Choir in 1988. Concerts in Cambridge, London and Rome of this masterpiece, in the context of the Carmelite Vespers of 1707, sealed it as one of my all-time favorite pieces of baroque music. Shortly after this, I presented Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor (along with his oboe concerto) to an overflowing audience in Clare College Chapel. Mozart pulls in an audience, there’s no doubt about it, and this was a memorable occasion. As mentioned above, Mozart draws most of the musical material for Davide Penitente from the Kyrie and Gloria of this mass setting and adds two spectacular original solo arias.

Both of these works rely heavily on two outstanding soprano soloists, and these arias are not for the faint of heart. A memory that stays with me, from the 1988 performance of the C Minor Mass, is that I had casually asked a friend if she would sing the soprano solos for the Mozart Mass in C Minor, to which she agreed enthusiastically. One week before the performance, she contacted me all of a flutter, saying that there was no way she could do the concert. She hadn’t realized that this was not just any old Mozart mass! We found a replacement…at very short notice!

With an orchestra of Boston’s finest historically-informed players, on period instruments, at an unusual pitch of A=430 in order to perform Handel and Mozart on the same program, the five soloists named above, the dedicated and powerful chorus of The Boston Cecilia, and the elegant surroundings of Jordan Hall, this opening concert of our season is sure to have you wanting to return for Britten, Copland, Barber and others later on in the season.

The next entry in this blog will focus on Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, A Boy Was Born, Nicholas White’s Alleluia! Puer Natus Est Nobis, the Women’s Ensemble of St. Paul’s School, Concord, NH, and the two remarkable concert venues: The Church of the Advent and All Saints, Brookline.

HE SAYS GLORY! THE CHRISTMAS POEMS OF DAVID EVETT

BY CHARLIE EVETT

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The late David Evett

When I first looked at the program for the 2014 Cecilia GalaI noticed Nicholas White’s auction offering:  a composition with the text of your choosing. I mused over what text I might choose. What bit of scripture or ancient poem... Hey wait a minute! I know a guy...

Dad wrote poems for most of his life. Many were for special occasions -- for a marriage, or special birthday, or notably his own 50th wedding anniversary. He did have a book of poems for the general audience published by Cleveland State University Press in 1985, though this never attracted much notice. But standing above all were the poems he wrote every year at Christmas, beginning in 1972 and continuing through 2010, before his death in 2011. They took many forms and covered all kinds of topics, though usually they blended national news, big family developments, and imagery from Advent and the Nativity.

Being on something of a deadline, they were always written in anguish and desperation. Dad might take a break from grading that term’s papers, or perhaps put aside the duty and the blank page and head out with the dog into the cold. But eventually it was always done, and it was always brilliant, and beautiful.

So, with our commission in hand, Mom and I began to go through everything, trying to settle on a poem that would work as a piece of music for a general audience. We whittled the set down to two, and, unable to decide between them,  threw ourselves on the mercy of the composer to make the final decision. He couldn't decide either, and much to our delight commenced to produce a set of the two together.

The poems are from 1976 and 1978, on either side of the great fulcrum of our family history -- the sabbatical trip to England in 1977. ‘76 was was spent planning, sending countless letters in advance to secure places to stay with friends and colleagues, and arranging access to the Elizabethan houses and artifacts that were the object of Dad’s research. The year was also spent saving every dime to finance the trip.

The Angel (1976 -- but the second in the set) seems to spring from the excitement  and optimism of those days. Big ideas come to you. They send you out into the world to seek discovery. “The Angel appears -- he says Glory!”

By 1978 we had long been back, but profoundly changed by the experience of living in England for five months. First there had been the theater, as we went to just about everything the Royal Shakespeare Company put on in Stratford and London. Helen Mirren in As You Like It! Judy Dench and Ian McKellen in Macbeth! Henry VI parts I, II, and III! Then there was the music. Evensong at Kings College and visits to almost all the great Cathedrals. We discovered that bargain tickets for the London Symphony could be had for those fifteen years old and under, and when I heard the Hungarian Dances and 1st Symphony of Brahms, I was hooked for life.

The 1978 poem, His Unresisting Love, has the ambition and expansiveness one acquires when traveling abroad and returning home; the broadening of perspective that comes from living with people of different habits and concerns. It uses the device of alternating Latin and English lines (macaronic), after the manner of In Dulce Jubilo, or even more aptly, Benjamin Britten's Hymn to the Virgin. A Hymn to the Christ Child if you will.

One of Dad's best qualities was his ability to make our little corner of the world seem so special. Whether it be an old house in Cleveland, or a parish church in Brookline, if Dave Evett is present you know you can expect the best; art and ideas worthy of anyone's attention. This place! This company! THIS NIGHT!

CONNECTING WITH MYSTERY THROUGH MUSIC

BY NICHOLAS WHITE

ust over thirty years ago, in September of 1985, I was awarded the organ scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge, which would result in my spending three years as an undergraduate at Cambridge University from 1986 to1989. The transformative experiences I gained in that position are too many to recount. However, one of the moments that stays with me from my audition and interview was when Tim Brown, the director of music at Clare, presented me with the choir’s latest recording. It was an LP of music by William Byrd, T. L. da Victoria, and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies entitled In Nativitate Domini. I remember being intrigued by the repertoire on the disc and noticed how well the two different compositional periods complemented each other.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, I followed this model when I formed Tiffany Consort in New York City. We would program concerts with music by composers of the same nationality who lived several centuries apart: Thomas Tallis and Michael Tippett, William Byrd and Benjamin Britten, Guillaume Machaut and Francis Poulenc, John Taverner and John Tavener, and so on. For this season’s Boston Cecilia December concert, I will pair the composers William Byrd and Francis Poulenc. I am returning to the William Byrd motets from his Gradualia II, which I heard on the Clare Choir recording thirty years ago. This time, the Byrd motets will alternate with Poulenc’s well-loved Quatre Motets pour le temps de Noël. Personally, I enjoy the ebb and flow this creates with regard to elements of texture, tonality and mood, as well as the more predictably contrasting—even jarring—harmonic and stylistic language of the two composers.

Also on the program is Edward Naylor’s Vox Dicentis. Naylor was organist of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and he wrote this sumptuous piece of choral music in 1911 for the choir of King’s College, Cambridge. My first memory of this piece was a performance by Clare Choir in Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge! With carols arranged and composed by two great musicians associated with Cambridge, Sir David Willcocks (King’s College), who died last month, and John Rutter (Clare College) who celebrated his 70th birthday last month, this concert could quite appropriately be titled The Cambridge Connection! However, there is more to the program than these offerings, including The Brookline Connection.

Last year, Charlie Evett, longtime member of Cecilia, commissioned me to compose music for two of his father’s poems. David Evett was deeply involved in the life of All Saints Church in Brookline, where he also sang in the choir. Charlie will write more in the next blog in this series regarding his father’s life and poetry, but I am pleased to announce that the December concerts will include first performances of both God’s Dream and His Unresisting Love, the latter being the text from which this concert takes its title. Both pieces are written for unaccompanied chorus.

This program brings together many styles and musical moods, and I hope that it does so in a way that will take the listener on a journey. Each of the texts exhibits elements of mystery, questioning, insecurity, wonder, doubt, and joy. Some of the music will be instantly appealing. Some will require further listening. My hope is that the program as a whole will capture the feelings that can only be achieved through the great mystery of musical expression.
 

HIS UNRESISTING LOVE: MUSIC FOR CHRISTMAS
Puer natus est nobis – William Byrd
O magnum mysterium – Francis Poulenc
Dies sanctificatus – William Byrd
Quem vidistis pastores dicite – Francis Poulenc
Tui sunt coeli – William Byrd
Videntes stellam – Francis Poulenc
O magnum mysterium: Beata Virgo – William Byrd
Hodie Christus natus est – Francis Poulenc
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing – Piae Cantiones, arr. D. Willcocks
His Unresisting Love – Nicholas White (world premiere) 
God’s Dream – Nicholas White (world premiere) 
Vox Dicentis: Clama– Edward Woodall Naylor
Good King Wenceslas – Piae Cantiones, arr. D. Willcocks
Sans Day Carol - Traditional arr., J. Rutter
What Sweeter Music - John Rutter
The Cherry Tree Carol – Nicholas White (world premiere)
 

You can listen to the 1985 Clare College Choir recording of the William Byrd motets here.
 

"SO TO LIVE IS HEAVEN: TO MAKE UNDYING MUSIC IN THE WORLD..."

BY NICHOLAS WHITE

Developing choral programs for performances in late October and early November has always been a richly rewarding task for me. As a lifelong “church” musician, with Anglican Choral music coursing through my veins, I have found no shortage of intensely beautiful repertoire to present for concerts that reflect the passage of life. With the feast days of All Saints and All Souls in close proximity, the wealth of powerful text settings by composers who are drawn to great poetry as vehicles for their poignant melodies, and hauntingly evocative harmonies, provides an almost overwhelming palette from which to choose.

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The upcoming October 18th concert of The Boston Cecilia features three composers who were writing in the early part of the last century. All three are remembered more for their choral music than for their symphonic or chamber compositions. None of them were cathedral organists toiling away in vast, stony acoustics, but all of them wrote for cathedral choirs and are, to this day, among the most highly regarded composers of cathedral repertoire. Their music, performed both in churches and concert halls all over the world, continues to influence the finest composers writing today.

The six Songs of Farewell by Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918) give us a glimpse of a private man, who sensed that his own life was drawing to a close. These “motets”, as Parry referred to them, were written two years before his death in the midst of World War I, and they represent his choral masterpiece. The texts are personal; the only truly sacred one being “Lord, let me know mine end” from Psalm 39. The writing throughout, particularly in the last two pieces, is rich with varied sonorities, contrapuntal techniques and virtuoso vocal lines that test the mettle of any choral ensemble.

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) wrote Lo, The Full Final Sacrifice in 1946 in response to a commission by the Rev. Walter Hussey for St. Matthew’s Church, Northampton. Three years prior, Benjamin Britten had received the same commission, and the result was Britten’s Rejoice In The Lamb. Finzi’s compositional style springs from that of Hubert Parry, and while his music is conservative in its tonal idiom, his sensitivity to the text of 17th century poet Richard Crashaw is achingly beautiful. The 15 minutes of syllabic text setting culminates in one of the most serene and elegantly crafted, melismatic Amen sections in choral music.

The Requiem of Herbert Howells (1892-1983) was written in 1932. Although originally intended for the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, it was not released for publication until 1980. Written three years before the death of the composer’s young son, it provided the basis for Howells’ masterpiece for choir and orchestra, Hymnus Paradisi, his response to the deepest and most profound loss of his life.

All of these pieces are intensely personal. I find them to be profoundly moving and never tire of hearing, singing or conducting them. My own compositional output has been strongly influenced by the music of these great musicians; these men who experienced profound depression, personal tragedy, or great struggle in life, and out of it created enduringly serene and beautiful music.

"So to live is heaven, To make undying music in the world,” wrote George Eliot in her poem, The Choir Invisible. I set the poem to music two years ago, in response to a commission from St. John’s Cathedral, Albuquerque. Whether consciously or subconsciously, my composition of this piece was influenced by works such as Finzi’s Lo, The Full Final Sacrifice, and his other anthems, along with the music of other Anglican masters like Stanford, Howells and even Britten. I feel a deep allegiance to composers from this Anglican music tradition. As a composer, I have been moved not so much to reinvent or create bold new statements, but rather to revel in the challenge of finding something fresh to say within that tonal palette. As I was composing The Choir Invisible, my friend and colleague, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, passed away. We had been occasional collaborators and dinner companions on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, back in the day! RRB’s sense of melody and his harmonic language has always reached me on an emotional level, so his legacy too became part of the compositional process of this piece.

The final offering in this October program will be the first performance of my setting of Thomas Hardy’s poem, Regret Not Me. John and Susanne Potts asked me to compose music for this evocative text. Rich with bucolic, pastoral imagery, the poem casts a melancholy spell as the narrator looks back over his life. In the third stanza, he breaks off from telling the reader of his heavenward journey, and ruminates quite suddenly on his surprise:

I did not know
That heydays fade and go,
But deemed that what was would be always so. 

How we wish that those heydays, those good times that we remember could always be so. However, the inevitability of change is there at every turn. For me, the comfort lies in the knowledge that this powerful music from a century ago endures. It challenges the choral artist, soothes the receptive audience member, and enriches those who--as George Eliot wrote in The Choir Invisible--“inherit that sweet purity for which we struggled, failed and agonized.”

This is powerful music. Please join us.

THE BRAHMS REQUIEM AS CHAMBER MUSIC

BY NICHOLAS WHITE

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The German Requiem (Ein Deutsches Requiem) by Johannes Brahms is one of the most important works this composer produced. The opening three movements were first performed in Vienna during December 1867, and movements 1-3, 6 and 7 were performed in Bremen on Good Friday 1868. The first performance of the entire work took place at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on February 18th, 1869. Since then, the German Requiem has been one of the most frequently performed of all works in the oratorio repertoire. The compilation of Biblical texts on which it is based, all chosen by the composer, reflects a “sense of religiosity common to all mankind,” characteristic of the spiritual thinking of the mid 19th century. Despite certain reminiscences of earlier settings of the Requiem, Brahms’s work was viewed from the outset – quite correctly – as being entirely novel in both conception and execution.

Although the Requiem is usually performed with full orchestra, Brahms also arranged the piece for four-hand piano accompaniment. The piano version of the piece was first performed at the home of Sir Henry Livingston in 1871. On April 11th, The Boston Cecilia will present this more intimate arrangement of the Requiem.

In 1868, before the first performance of the complete work, the full score, orchestral and choral parts, and the vocal score (with the complete voice parts and piano solo reduction of the accompaniment by the composer himself) were issued by the publisher Rieter-Biedermann. This publishing house, founded in 1849, had a close association with Brahms during the 1860s and early 1870s. The musical material of the German Requiem printed by Rieter-Biedermann was augmented by the composer’s piano duet arrangement. The piano version of the German Requiem represents more than a mere arrangement of the orchestral parts for piano duet. It is a reworking of the entire score, including the vocal parts, to form an autonomous keyboard composition; this sets the accompaniment for our concert apart from a normal piano reduction intended for rehearsal purposes. In his quest for a piano duet texture which sounds well and is wholly pianistic in character, the composer proceeded in a manner which approaches creative reworking and fresh shaping of existing musical material. This applies, for example, to the many doublings by which particular melodies are brought out. In our performance, in order to preserve the luminous, transparent nature of certain solo and choral lines which would not be doubled in the orchestral version, we have made judicious cuts to the piano duet accompaniment, thereby leaving the chorus or the soloists undoubled by the piano.

By making this arrangement of the German Requiem for piano duet, Brahms was following a practice which was widely current during the 19th and early 20th centuries, of publishing symphonic works in transcriptions of this kind. Before the existence of recordings, arrangements such as this offered the public the best opportunity to become familiar with the composition in its entirety. Undoubtedly piano duet arrangements of this kind also represent a particular and once-popular class of publication for domestic music-making.

A presentation of Brahms’s well-loved masterwork in a form that is less familiar to the ear, like this one with an alternative form of accompaniment, gives us a unique opportunity as performers. In effect, as a chorus, we are able to approach the voice parts with a new perspective. Performing the piece then takes on a feeling of chamber music: a more direct, and in some cases more subtle, form of musical communication. There is a re-imagined clarity to the choral writing which, in combination with a truly pianistic accompaniment, presents the piece to the listener in a whole new way. Brahms’s masterpiece remains intact. The communication of it becomes fresh and newly invigorated.

Adapted, with additions, from Wolfgang Hochstein’s 1989 foreword to the Carus Edition.

Note: Paul Max Tipton, the baritone soloist for Cecilia’s April 11th performance, recently recorded this piano version of the Requiem for Seraphic Fire. (Listen - Clip 1) (Listen - Clip 2)

SWEET WAS THE SONG: MUSIC FOR CHRISTMAS

BY NICHOLAS WHITE

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In 1982, when I was 15 years old, I first heard The Lamb by John Tavener. This second-ever performance of the carol was included in the Christmas Eve radio broadcast of Nine Lessons and Carols, live from King’s College, Cambridge. A much smaller audience had heard the very first performance of this newly-composed work at Winchester Cathedral two days earlier. I remember feeling that I had just experienced something radically different from any other carol I had heard before. The truth was that several million listeners across the world had just had the same experience, and the reputation of the composer, in the space of three minutes, had been propelled to a whole new level of renown. The music was stark, yet gentle; dissonant, yet comforting; simple, yet haunting. I think I made my decision shortly after that to pursue an organ scholarship at Cambridge University, which had me living, literally, in the shadow of King’s College Chapel for the three years of my undergraduate career. As it happens, I had followed in the footsteps of one of Tavener’s school friends and fellow composers, John Rutter, who had studied music at Clare College twenty years before me.

When John Tavener died, just a little over a year ago, I began thinking of how we might pay tribute to him with The Boston Cecilia. I had been aware of a series of commissions that Tavener had written around 2005, which resulted in a sequence of carols entitled Ex Maria Virgine.  This sequence had been recorded by Tim Brown and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge in 2008. As I listened to the recording, made in the grand surroundings of the Chapel of St. John’s College, Cambridge, I decided that it would provide the ideal challenge for The Boston Cecilia and a great way of celebrating the life of John Tavener at our December concerts. The luxurious acoustics of The Church of the Advent and All Saints, Brookline, along with their fine organs, would create an ideal vehicle for this eccentric music.

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Also on my mind at this time was Richard Rodney Bennett, whose music had captured my interest at a very early age when I learned several of his compositions for piano. Later on in life, we ended up as neighbors on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and I was fortunate in getting to know Richard, talking about his film scores, and discussing choral music, occasionally over dinner at a local restaurant. In the year 2000 I had conducted the New York premiere of his large-scale work for choir and organ, The Glory and the Dream, and the organist for the performance was none other than Barbara Bruns, for whom Richard had the highest praise. Richard died on Christmas Eve of 2012. As I had long been familiar with his Christmas carols, I instantly thought that these would provide a perfect complement to Tavener’s works, so I went about assembling the program that will be performed by The Boston Cecilia on December 5th and 7th, 2014.

According to Tavener, The Lamb was written in an afternoon and is built on a simple melodic idea and its inversion. Tavener’s tempo direction for the piece is explicit and simple: “With extreme tenderness – flexible – always guided by the words.” For those of us who are devoted to the art of choral singing, there is surely no better way of conducting ourselves.

CECILIA: WE'LL E READY FOR BACH'S B MINOR MASS

BY NICHOLAS WHITE

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Cecilia's intrepid and experienced bass section show off their chops at rehearsal.

“If we’re not ready now, we never will be…!”

— Considering an upcoming performance of Bach’s monumental Mass in B Minor

The quotation above was overheard at a church music conference several years ago, soon before a late-afternoon performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass sandwiched between workshops and plenary sessions and a boozy evening boat cruise. Ideal circumstances for a cutting edge, historically-informed performance of this two-hour masterwork, with the finest-period instrument players and a 26-voice professional choir? Maybe not! However, as the conductor responded to the concerned delegate who wondered why the performers were not busily rehearsing in the hours before the concert, “If we’re not ready now, we never will be!”

He was right, of course. Not only had the musicians been meticulously prepared, again, for this latest performance of the great work. In the director’s seemingly flippant comment was the truth that any performer must grasp when about to embark on the life-changing experience of this piece. The nitty-gritty detailed rehearsal needs to be accomplished far ahead and the big picture embraced well before concert week. Stamina, fortitude, the ability to respond in the moment, and a spark of spontaneity are among many elements that constitute a successful performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, a performance that will engage the audience and harness the emotions of all those present.

That’s why I’m glad that the dress rehearsal for the March 21st performance by The Boston Cecilia is on Wednesday, March 19th, two days prior, giving a full day for reflection before the concert itself. In every way, the final rehearsal takes on the mantle of a performance. It must do so if we are to stand any chance of being ready. That one remaining part of the equation – the audience – will then play its own role in the success of the actual concert.

That’s why I’m glad that the performance—along with Bach’s 329th birthday—comes on a Friday evening, at the end of a long work week, when spirits are sagging, the commute to Jordan Hall has been challenging, the weather is unpredictable, and energy needs to be summoned from somewhere. This is  when performers and audience members can come together, inspired by each other, to create moments of magic that transcend the real world. Yet this masterpiece is packed with humanity, almost unachievable by mere mortals, and can feed from those challenges that we, as humans, face on a daily basis.

That’s why I’m glad that Cecilia had the foresight to reserve Jordan Hall for this occasion, even before I had been hired as music director! What a gift for all of us to end the 138th season of this great organization with a performance of Bach’s masterpiece. It is very real, very relevant, and very exciting.

We will be ready! Won’t you join us?

ENDLESSE PERFECTNESSE CONCERT PREVIEW, NOV. 2

BY SHERI ANN CHENG

Catch this SoundCloud preview of Take Him Earth for Cherishing by Herbert Howells, from our upcoming concert, Endlesse Perfectnesse: Music for All Souls on November 2nd, 2013.

Honoring the souls of the departed, the concert's centerpiece is the Durufle Requiem.  

Nicholas White will make his debut as Cecilia's new Music Director at this concert.  Soloists are organist Barbara Bruns, cellist Sam Ou, and contralto Emily Marvosh.

Concert is at 8PM at All Saints Parish in Brookline, MA.

Ticket information can be found here.