Welcome to the second program of Bay Choral Guild’s 2021-2022 season. Thank you for staying safe during this precarious time and for following the protocols that allow venturing out to public events such as concerts. We appreciate your efforts and are grateful to have you with us! Singing together as a group is important to all of us, and we have been vigilant in our efforts to do so safely. This includes all of us taking Covid tests this week to assure that you and we are in as safe an environment as is possible.
This is a time like no other in our group’s 43-year history. When I was planning the season last spring, I realized that we had reason to pause and honor those whom we had lost since our Elijah performances in March 2020. Little did I know that in the U.S. alone, by early February of this year, the death toll from Covid would reach over 900,000 souls. Surely everyone knows of someone who has perished from Covid during the pandemic. So we want to offer a moment to stop and grieve for all of those people.
But the impetus for this program reaches far beyond that. Cancer is another major cause of premature death these days; my own sister died of gallbladder cancer this past November. Today we are taking a moment to honor one of our own. Sue Mann, a soprano in BCG for several years, died of cancer in early 2021. She was a bright and bubbly person who loved music and loved singing. To this day I miss her ebullient smile as she sang and the radiant joy she projected. You can find some testimonials about Sue, whose day job was teaching young violin students, on page 2 of this program booklet.
With that said, let’s talk about the music you will hear, all of it unaccompanied. We begin with the opening movement from the beloved Requiem composed by Gabriel Fauré. You may know that this work is usually performed with an orchestra, or sometimes in an organ transcription. The version on this program is one I created to perform at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, where I am music director. The church intentionally has neither organ nor piano; rather, all of the service music is sung, unaccompanied, by the entire congregation. When one of our members died, I was told that his favorite piece was the Fauré Requiem. To honor his memory I created this a cappella version of the opening movement to be sung at his memorial.
The centerpiece of the program follows: Requiem by Eleanor Daley. One of Canada’s leading composers, Daley lives and works in Toronto, where she is a church choir director, clinician, and accompanist. Her works are frequently performed throughout North America, and she has been commissioned by European music festivals as well as the American Choral Directors Association.
Requiem was premiered in 1993 and won the award for outstanding choral work the following year from the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors. Following the model of fellow Canadian composer Healey Willan, her musical style puts an emphasis on the meaning of the texts and sensitivity to natural word stresses. For added clarity much of the music is homophonic in nature. The influence of English composer Herbert Howells’ Requiem can be seen in the choice of texts, which include excerpts from the traditional Latin Requiem Mass, the Book of Common Prayer, and humanist poetry. To quote Andrew James Robinette’s doctoral thesis on the work, “She uses texture, harmonic color, harmonic rhythm, modality, tempo, and key to express the text and her concept of death. For example, the opening chord is rich and somber, but also consonant and beautiful, immediately creating a complicated mood. The slow harmonic rhythms of ‘Requiem aeternam’ and ‘Requiem aeternam II’ help depict eternal rest. The texture and dominance of consonant harmonies evoke a sense of peace, unity, and hopefulness.”
American-born René Clausen is now conductor emeritus of The Concordia Choir after his retirement in 2020 from his professorship at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. His compositions are widely performed, and he is a frequent guest conductor, guest composer and lecturer, both nationally and internationally. In fact, I’m surprised that I have not programmed his music before, as I find it quite beautiful. In Pace, which sets verses from Psalms 4 and 132 in the Latin Vulgate version, is representative of his style. Lush textures, including close dissonances such as the major and minor second, push the boundaries of chordal language. Traditional progressions are blurred by his use of tone clusters. However, the overall effect is calming, as the text implores the dying to go to sleep in peace.
After intermission we present a series of shorter works by an array of 20th- and 21st-century composers from around the world. Ivo Antognini, who lives and teaches in Lugano, Switzerland, holds dual Swiss and Italian citizenship. Although he plays jazz piano, and his early compositions included film and television scores, his career took a turn after he was asked to write a piece for a local children’s choir in 2006. He discovered a love of choral music, and since then his output is almost exclusively for choirs, much of it unaccompanied. I have programmed his music often over the past few years with all of my choirs. I find his style to be very approachable for the audience and singable for the chorus, while always interesting and engaging. Remember sets a beautiful text by 19th-century poet Christina G. Rossetti. The poem is written from the point of view of the dying soul imploring the living loved one to remember all the good things they had in life.
Jake Runestad is a blazing star in the choral music world right now. Only 35, he has been commissioned and performed by many of the leading choruses in the world, including England’s Voces8, the Netherlands Radio Choir, and closer to home, Pacific Chorale and the Santa Fe Desert Chorale. His output also includes opera and works for orchestral and wind ensemble. Conspirare’s album of his choral music, The Hope of Loving, was nominated for a Grammy in 2019.
Runestad’s Let My Love Be Heard sets a poignant poem by Alfred Noyes imploring angels to hold our sorrows. It concludes, “And as grief once more mounts to heaven and sings, let my love be heard whispering in your wings.” At this point the music takes off, as the women’s voices portray the angels’ wings in a long, arching melody while the men intone “Let my love be heard.” Since its composition in 2014, this simple and achingly beautiful music has been a comfort to many. One notable case occurred in November of 2015, after Jonathan Talberg’s choir at California State University, Long Beach, sang at a vigil for a student who was killed in the Paris terrorist attacks. The following day, rather than return to rehearsing their normal repertoire, Dr. Talberg decided to help his singers process their emotions by introducing this piece. They learned it that afternoon and made a recording of it as they sang it in their rehearsal hall. That recording has since gone on to be viewed over one million times on YouTube.
Bay Choral Guild performed There Will Be Rest, by Frank Ticheli, on our Poet’s Corner program in 2014. Ticheli lives in Los Angeles, where he is a Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California. He is better known for his concert band compositions—in fact, he later arranged this very piece for concert band, naming it Rest—but his choral works are often performed, and it’s no wonder. The lush harmonies and thoughtful text setting make There Will Be Rest well worth a repeat hearing. The work sets the beguiling poem of the same name by American lyric poet Sara Teasdale. Ticheli writes, “Haunted by depression in later years, Teasdale took her own life at the age of 48. Many of her poems address the pain that tormented her spirit, but to the end she seemed to draw strength and hope from the stars and their permanent radiance. ‘There will be Rest,’ one of her last poems, is a perfect summary of her lifelong concern for the stars and their ancient promise of peace. This choral setting is designed to capture the poem’s purity of spirit and delicate lyricism.”
Australian-American composer Melissa Dunphy composed Halcyon Days on a commission from Voces8. It is one of six new works the group premiered on their globally live-streamed “LIVE From London – Christmas 2020” festival. She writes, “We all have good years and bad years, but few years have been as stormy for so many people as 2020. It’s hard to think of the upcoming winter holidays without acknowledging the effects of current events, as millions of people sacrifice precious time with their loved ones for the safety of their communities. Along with poet Jacqueline Goldfinger, my hope for this December is that we each can create our own Halcyon Days—a period of calm during winter storms—where we can reflect on what we have lost but rise up to face the new year with joy and grace.”
Welsh multi-instrumentalist and composer Karl Jenkins first became known for a series of new-age albums titled Adiemus. The albums use wordless vocal parts that sound somewhat like Latin superimposed on orchestral textures. But he may have reached his broadest audience with Palladio, a string orchestra piece whose first movement served as the soundtrack for a long-running series of DeBeers diamond commercials in the 1990s. His large-scale choral/orchestral work The Armed Man: a Mass for Peace, which is dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis, was premiered in 2000 to great acclaim. Among his notable 21st-century works is Requiem, from 2005, in which Jenkins interjects movements featuring Japanese death poems in the form of haiku with those traditionally encountered in a Requiem Mass. In Paradisum, an a cappella adaptation of a movement from Requiem, is an example of his lyrical, popular style.
Pavel Chesnokov is one of my favorite composers of Russian Orthodox church music. He is the most prolific composer associated with the Moscow Synodal School, where he was a professor and also directed various church choirs around Moscow. He produced nearly 400 sacred choral works before the Russian revolution put an end to sacred art. In response, he composed an additional hundred secular choral works. O Tebye Raduyetsia (All of Creation Rejoices) is a setting of the Hymn to the Mother of God, which is sung ten times during the church year. Although not specifically a memorial piece, the nature of the music seems to fit into the overall mood of our program.
After the grand climax of O Tebye Raduyetsia I’ve chosen to end the program with a benediction of sorts. If you’ve been moved by the memories of loved ones who’ve passed, I hope that the simple commendation, Peace I leave with you, will send you home comforted. Amy Beach was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Originally trained as a pianist, she performed Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto with the Boston Symphony at age 18. That same year she married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a man 24 years her senior. He insisted she limit her performing to two public recitals per year, with all proceeds going to charity, and instead devote herself to composing. Her Gaelic Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. After her husband’s death in 1910 she began performing more and was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany. Peace I leave with you is part of a set of three Choral Responses published in 1891.
Thank you for attending tonight’s concert. We hope you have appreciated the chance to honor your loved ones. We look forward to seeing you again the first weekend of June for our season finale, O Sing Joyfully.
This is a time like no other in our group’s 43-year history. When I was planning the season last spring, I realized that we had reason to pause and honor those whom we had lost since our Elijah performances in March 2020. Little did I know that in the U.S. alone, by early February of this year, the death toll from Covid would reach over 900,000 souls. Surely everyone knows of someone who has perished from Covid during the pandemic. So we want to offer a moment to stop and grieve for all of those people.
But the impetus for this program reaches far beyond that. Cancer is another major cause of premature death these days; my own sister died of gallbladder cancer this past November. Today we are taking a moment to honor one of our own. Sue Mann, a soprano in BCG for several years, died of cancer in early 2021. She was a bright and bubbly person who loved music and loved singing. To this day I miss her ebullient smile as she sang and the radiant joy she projected. You can find some testimonials about Sue, whose day job was teaching young violin students, on page 2 of this program booklet.
With that said, let’s talk about the music you will hear, all of it unaccompanied. We begin with the opening movement from the beloved Requiem composed by Gabriel Fauré. You may know that this work is usually performed with an orchestra, or sometimes in an organ transcription. The version on this program is one I created to perform at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, where I am music director. The church intentionally has neither organ nor piano; rather, all of the service music is sung, unaccompanied, by the entire congregation. When one of our members died, I was told that his favorite piece was the Fauré Requiem. To honor his memory I created this a cappella version of the opening movement to be sung at his memorial.
The centerpiece of the program follows: Requiem by Eleanor Daley. One of Canada’s leading composers, Daley lives and works in Toronto, where she is a church choir director, clinician, and accompanist. Her works are frequently performed throughout North America, and she has been commissioned by European music festivals as well as the American Choral Directors Association.
Requiem was premiered in 1993 and won the award for outstanding choral work the following year from the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors. Following the model of fellow Canadian composer Healey Willan, her musical style puts an emphasis on the meaning of the texts and sensitivity to natural word stresses. For added clarity much of the music is homophonic in nature. The influence of English composer Herbert Howells’ Requiem can be seen in the choice of texts, which include excerpts from the traditional Latin Requiem Mass, the Book of Common Prayer, and humanist poetry. To quote Andrew James Robinette’s doctoral thesis on the work, “She uses texture, harmonic color, harmonic rhythm, modality, tempo, and key to express the text and her concept of death. For example, the opening chord is rich and somber, but also consonant and beautiful, immediately creating a complicated mood. The slow harmonic rhythms of ‘Requiem aeternam’ and ‘Requiem aeternam II’ help depict eternal rest. The texture and dominance of consonant harmonies evoke a sense of peace, unity, and hopefulness.”
American-born René Clausen is now conductor emeritus of The Concordia Choir after his retirement in 2020 from his professorship at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. His compositions are widely performed, and he is a frequent guest conductor, guest composer and lecturer, both nationally and internationally. In fact, I’m surprised that I have not programmed his music before, as I find it quite beautiful. In Pace, which sets verses from Psalms 4 and 132 in the Latin Vulgate version, is representative of his style. Lush textures, including close dissonances such as the major and minor second, push the boundaries of chordal language. Traditional progressions are blurred by his use of tone clusters. However, the overall effect is calming, as the text implores the dying to go to sleep in peace.
After intermission we present a series of shorter works by an array of 20th- and 21st-century composers from around the world. Ivo Antognini, who lives and teaches in Lugano, Switzerland, holds dual Swiss and Italian citizenship. Although he plays jazz piano, and his early compositions included film and television scores, his career took a turn after he was asked to write a piece for a local children’s choir in 2006. He discovered a love of choral music, and since then his output is almost exclusively for choirs, much of it unaccompanied. I have programmed his music often over the past few years with all of my choirs. I find his style to be very approachable for the audience and singable for the chorus, while always interesting and engaging. Remember sets a beautiful text by 19th-century poet Christina G. Rossetti. The poem is written from the point of view of the dying soul imploring the living loved one to remember all the good things they had in life.
Jake Runestad is a blazing star in the choral music world right now. Only 35, he has been commissioned and performed by many of the leading choruses in the world, including England’s Voces8, the Netherlands Radio Choir, and closer to home, Pacific Chorale and the Santa Fe Desert Chorale. His output also includes opera and works for orchestral and wind ensemble. Conspirare’s album of his choral music, The Hope of Loving, was nominated for a Grammy in 2019.
Runestad’s Let My Love Be Heard sets a poignant poem by Alfred Noyes imploring angels to hold our sorrows. It concludes, “And as grief once more mounts to heaven and sings, let my love be heard whispering in your wings.” At this point the music takes off, as the women’s voices portray the angels’ wings in a long, arching melody while the men intone “Let my love be heard.” Since its composition in 2014, this simple and achingly beautiful music has been a comfort to many. One notable case occurred in November of 2015, after Jonathan Talberg’s choir at California State University, Long Beach, sang at a vigil for a student who was killed in the Paris terrorist attacks. The following day, rather than return to rehearsing their normal repertoire, Dr. Talberg decided to help his singers process their emotions by introducing this piece. They learned it that afternoon and made a recording of it as they sang it in their rehearsal hall. That recording has since gone on to be viewed over one million times on YouTube.
Bay Choral Guild performed There Will Be Rest, by Frank Ticheli, on our Poet’s Corner program in 2014. Ticheli lives in Los Angeles, where he is a Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California. He is better known for his concert band compositions—in fact, he later arranged this very piece for concert band, naming it Rest—but his choral works are often performed, and it’s no wonder. The lush harmonies and thoughtful text setting make There Will Be Rest well worth a repeat hearing. The work sets the beguiling poem of the same name by American lyric poet Sara Teasdale. Ticheli writes, “Haunted by depression in later years, Teasdale took her own life at the age of 48. Many of her poems address the pain that tormented her spirit, but to the end she seemed to draw strength and hope from the stars and their permanent radiance. ‘There will be Rest,’ one of her last poems, is a perfect summary of her lifelong concern for the stars and their ancient promise of peace. This choral setting is designed to capture the poem’s purity of spirit and delicate lyricism.”
Australian-American composer Melissa Dunphy composed Halcyon Days on a commission from Voces8. It is one of six new works the group premiered on their globally live-streamed “LIVE From London – Christmas 2020” festival. She writes, “We all have good years and bad years, but few years have been as stormy for so many people as 2020. It’s hard to think of the upcoming winter holidays without acknowledging the effects of current events, as millions of people sacrifice precious time with their loved ones for the safety of their communities. Along with poet Jacqueline Goldfinger, my hope for this December is that we each can create our own Halcyon Days—a period of calm during winter storms—where we can reflect on what we have lost but rise up to face the new year with joy and grace.”
Welsh multi-instrumentalist and composer Karl Jenkins first became known for a series of new-age albums titled Adiemus. The albums use wordless vocal parts that sound somewhat like Latin superimposed on orchestral textures. But he may have reached his broadest audience with Palladio, a string orchestra piece whose first movement served as the soundtrack for a long-running series of DeBeers diamond commercials in the 1990s. His large-scale choral/orchestral work The Armed Man: a Mass for Peace, which is dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis, was premiered in 2000 to great acclaim. Among his notable 21st-century works is Requiem, from 2005, in which Jenkins interjects movements featuring Japanese death poems in the form of haiku with those traditionally encountered in a Requiem Mass. In Paradisum, an a cappella adaptation of a movement from Requiem, is an example of his lyrical, popular style.
Pavel Chesnokov is one of my favorite composers of Russian Orthodox church music. He is the most prolific composer associated with the Moscow Synodal School, where he was a professor and also directed various church choirs around Moscow. He produced nearly 400 sacred choral works before the Russian revolution put an end to sacred art. In response, he composed an additional hundred secular choral works. O Tebye Raduyetsia (All of Creation Rejoices) is a setting of the Hymn to the Mother of God, which is sung ten times during the church year. Although not specifically a memorial piece, the nature of the music seems to fit into the overall mood of our program.
After the grand climax of O Tebye Raduyetsia I’ve chosen to end the program with a benediction of sorts. If you’ve been moved by the memories of loved ones who’ve passed, I hope that the simple commendation, Peace I leave with you, will send you home comforted. Amy Beach was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Originally trained as a pianist, she performed Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto with the Boston Symphony at age 18. That same year she married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a man 24 years her senior. He insisted she limit her performing to two public recitals per year, with all proceeds going to charity, and instead devote herself to composing. Her Gaelic Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. After her husband’s death in 1910 she began performing more and was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany. Peace I leave with you is part of a set of three Choral Responses published in 1891.
Thank you for attending tonight’s concert. We hope you have appreciated the chance to honor your loved ones. We look forward to seeing you again the first weekend of June for our season finale, O Sing Joyfully.
