June 5, 6, 7, 2009
Program Notes by Sanford Dole
Since the 1960s public school music teachers have made a big effort to look beyond the traditional resources of sacred music from the Renaissance and the Baroque when choosing choral repertoire. Mandates to promote multiculturalism and prohibitions of church music at some schools have helped fuel this pursuit. Publishers have responded by offering an ever-growing list of folk music and contemporary works from all over the world.
I’ve heard many such pieces in concerts at conferences of the American Choral Directors Association over the years, and I’m pleased to share my favorites. After focusing on Eastern Europe in December and France in March, we end our season of “The Global Village” by taking you around the world. Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg made it in eighty days. By jet you could do it now in just two. We’re trying for eighty minutes. Hold on tight.
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We start off in the steppes of Inner Mongolia, a long way from home both geographically and culturally. Growing up as the son of a herdsman, composer Se Enkhbayar learned the ancient poems of that traditionally nomadic culture. We sing his setting of one of those poems, “Naiman Sharag,” or “Eight Chestnut Horses.” Words, melody, and rhythms together evoke the majestic horses of Genghis Khan, a symbol of Mongolian national identity.
Victor Paranjoti composed his “Dravidian Dithyramb” in 1962 for his own choir, likening this “expression of uninhibited festivity” to the ancient Greek dithyrambs, passionate hymns to Dionysus. The piece combines elements from the ragas of the Dravidian peoples of South India and the tarana, a classic musical form of the Hindustani North that uses Persian and Arabic phonemes as nonsense syllables. The propulsive rhythms and vocal imitation of the tabla, a hand drum, make for an exhilarating musical ride.
We travel next to England. Ralph Vaughan Williams, striving to establish a national idiom for English composers, often incorporated folk material in his orchestral works, and he also arranged a number of traditional folk songs for chorus, always feeling free to take liberties. He said, “There is no original version of any particular tune. In one sense it is as old as the beginning of music; in another sense it is born afresh with the singer of today who sang it.” Michael Kennedy’s musical biography of the composer applies his words to the two songs on our program:
In these settings Vaughan Williams became the “singer of today,” and he practically recreated the songs. “The Lover’s Ghost,” for instance, is in effect variations on a canto fermo, with part-writing and polyphony which rank with Weelkes and Dowland in beauty and skill. Similarly in “Just as the tide was flowing” there is a most testing florid passage for all the voices, yet the essential spirit of the song is preserved.
I am thrilled to introduce our audiences to the cycle “Neslēgtais Gredzens,” or “The Unclosed Ring,” by Latvian composer Juris Karlsons. Jānis Rainis, 1865–1929, Latvia’s greatest poet and a fervent nationalist, wrote the poems. Karlsons deftly captures the mood of each in soundscapes that underscore the verbal images. In the first, the women’s layered melodies suggest the waves of a large, deep lake. The middle song evokes the vast stillness of night as each chord echoes into the distance. And the last song whirls us around and around in the excitement and frivolity of a playful dance.
The brutality underlying the Australian folk song “Moreton Bay” contrasts sharply with its beautiful melody, and it is only for a moment that anguish touches the beguiling arrangement by American composer Ken Neufeld. Located on the shore of Moreton Bay on Australia’s eastern coast, the city of Brisbane was first established as a British penal colony that was notorious for particularly harsh treatment of prisoners. An Irish convict who managed to survive his time at Moreton Bay wrote the poem that later evolved into this folk song.
Composer and conductor Gary Kent Walth of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse has channeled the Japanese pentatonic scale into his award-winning “Two Japanese Proverbs.” It is a delightful fantasia on the eight Japanese words in the traditional sayings “adversity reveals a person’s true character” and “to lose is to win.”
Hailing from Vancouver, Brian Tate arranged the song “Kaki Lambe” out of love for African and African-American musical traditions. The published score notes that the chant is “an invocation to Kaki Lambe, the masked father of destiny, who appears from the forest to revitalize and heal the community.” Although very few are animists these days, Senegalese workers in the rice fields often sing the song. Listening to it, you can hear why it is popular with them and also with drummers worldwide.
Our last stop before intermission is in the Philippine Islands for two folk songs arranged by George G. Hernandez, a local composer and a fellow graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The first song is in the language of the Bikol region, far to the east of Manila. “Caturog na, Nonoy” is a lullaby that the composer remembers hearing as a child at siesta time. The lyrics of “Rosas Pandan” are in a Visayan language spoken on many of the southern islands. Rosas is a girl from the hills of Pandan who comes down to join in the village festivities. She sings a saucy balitaw, and her dancing so excites one young man that by the end he is drooling.
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For the second half of our program, we cross to the Americas, going first to Northeastern Brazil, which seems to be a hotbed for delightful folk tunes with catchy, syncopated dance rhythms. The arrangement of “Muié Rendêra” by C. A. Pinto Fonseca interleaves two folk songs about Lampião, a Brazilian folk hero similar to Robin Hood. Once the tenors and basses have laid down a rhythmic groove, the altos launch into the jaunty melody “Virgulino é Lampião,” and then the sopranos reply with the more lyrical title song.
“Suíte nordestina,” or “Northeastern Suite,” of Ronaldo Miranda offers four more folk songs from the same region in Brazil. The first and third songs are slow and from the heart, and the second and fourth have rhythms and comic, rapid-fire lyrics characteristic of the embolada popular on the coast.
Switching from Portuguese to Spanish, we sing a pair of Venezuelan cradle songs by Alberto Grau, esteemed throughout South America as a choral conductor and composer. The song “Duérmete sonriendo” is dedicated to the first woman in Grau’s choir to give birth, and he dedicated “Duérmete apegado a mí” to his own daughter. The lyrics are from the Argentinian poet Gabriela Mistral, who in 1945 became the first writer not from Europe or the United States to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
“Salseo” is by another Venezuelan composer, Oscar Galián. For years I’ve been longing to perform this piece. When I hear it, I can’t help but imagine myself on vacation sitting outdoors on a balmy evening sipping a caipirinha or a margarita. Before breaking into its jazzy tune, “Salseo” opens with basses imitating a surdo, or bass drum. Other sections of the choir enter in turn also imitating percussion instruments in a samba band. Listen for the repinique (two-headed drum), cabasa (shaker), claves (wooden sticks), and agogô (cow bells). Then let the warm, evening breezes waft over you.
Finally we return home to classic American songs, including a few by Stephen Foster, a genius of American music. His “Nelly Bly” as arranged by Jack Halloran is such a fun song that it has become a staple for Chanticleer on tour.
There may be countless arrangements of the folk song “Shenandoah,” but James Erb wrote what I consider to be the definitive version in 1971. It has graced many a choral program since then.
I composed “Girls of the Old West,” one of my earliest arrangements, in 1985 to be sung as the finale of the first Chanticleer Reunion Concert. I can still remember the sound of the soloists’ voices, as well as the audience reaction as this medley of familiar tunes unfolded. It was a very exciting moment! Because it was scored for a specific male choir capable of extreme ranges, there had never been another opportunity for me to perform the piece. So I revised it for this concert. The new version is for mixed choir, but as you will hear, it does still feature the tenors and basses. I hope you feel right at home with this very American music.
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We all hope that you find the entire concert fun and enlightening. We’ve certainly enjoyed putting it together and learning more about different styles of music around the globe. With so many words in so many languages, our heartfelt thanks go to all the language coaches who helped us prepare the program.
Please come back next season for another series of exciting musical experiences. In our mission to entertain you and enrich your life with the glories of choral music, the new season will explore a wide variety of great music from different eras, styles, and genres. So invite your friends to join you. Meanwhile, all of us in the Bay Choral Guild hope you have a wonderful and relaxing summer.
With caipirinha in hand, here’s to music!
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