OUR AMERICAN HERITAGE
June 7-8-9, 2012
Program Notes by Sanford Dole
Program Notes by Sanford Dole
Long-time fans of Bay Choral Guild will know that when planning a season of concerts I like to cover many different eras and genres over the year. The idea is to offer something for every musical taste, presenting some “feel good” pieces along the way as well as challenging works that expand one’s knowledge of styles outside his or her musical comfort zone. With that in mind, after concerts in December and March that included a lot of new and different repertoire, we are going to let our hair down a bit tonight. For this last concert of our season we are moving to the dessert course, offering an array of sweets and delectable morsels that we hope you will enjoy.
The original concept for the first half of the program was to trace the progress of American compositional styles from the late 18th century through the 19th and 20th centuries to the present day. And I wanted to pay homage to key American composers who influenced that trajectory. I think we’ve accomplished this. However, rather than present the works chronologically, it ended up making more sense musically to group the pieces by subject rather than date. And I think that hearing a very contemporary piece next to an earlier work brings both into relief, clarifying the composer’s intent.
Our first set, To Music, opens with the oldest piece on the show, published in 1790. William Billings is considered by many to be the foremost representative of early American music. Billings was born in Boston in 1746. Largely self-trained in music, he was a tanner by trade and a friend of such figures of the American Revolution as Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. Billings’s New England Psalm-Singer (1770), engraved by Revere, was the first collection of music entirely by an American. Modern Musick, from his last publication, displays Billing’s typical four-square style and enjoyment of musical jokes.
Composer/conductor Steven Sametz is a professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He wrote I Have Had Singing for the Berkshire Choral Festival. The text is a paraphrase of an old English horseman’s story recounting his life in a bleak, unfertile land filled with little joy. “But,” the man said, “there was always singing; the boys in the field, the chapels were full of singing. I have had pleasure enough; I have had singing.”
Dudley Buck gained prominence in the 19th century as a popular touring organist, performing both his own compositions and transcriptions of symphonic works. He was also a prolific composer of choral music, most of it sacred. After he lost everything—home, organ, concert hall, manuscripts—in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Buck returned to his native New England, where he applied his sacred-music skill to more secular works. He composed Hymn to Music in 1877 for the St. Cecilia Vocal Society of Brooklyn, N.Y. The musical idioms of the late-romantic era are evident in this lush setting.
We’ll then move on to another diverse set of pieces under the heading Peace and Quiet. In a program of Americana I felt we had to include Aaron Copland. The tune Simple Gifts, which Copland used so memorably in the ballet Appalachian Spring, now seems an important part of our American heritage. This classic arrangement, one I’ve sung my whole life, comes from Copland’s set of Old American Songs.
Amy Beach, born in 1867, was the first woman composer to achieve wide recognition in America. A child prodigy, she made her debut on the piano at age 16 and two years later toured as the soloist in Chopin’s Piano Concerto with the Boston Symphony. After marrying Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a man 24 years her senior, she stopped performing at his request to concentrate on composing. After he died in 1910 she toured Europe for three years playing her own compositions. Now known as Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, she later moved to New York where she became the virtual composer-in-residence at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. I suspect that the benediction Peace I leave with you was first performed there.
As one of the more popular composers of choral music in the 21st century, the inclusion of Eric Whitacre in this survey seemed appropriate. And this work, Sleep, has an interesting history. Originally set to Robert Frost’s immortal poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the premiere performance was a huge hit at a choral conductors conference, and many asked for the score. But to his dismay, Whitacre had not secured the rights to use the poem. The Frost estate refused permission to let him publish it, as there were already too many settings. So he ended up asking his friend and frequent collaborator, Charles Anthony Silvestri, to write a new poem to fit the already existing music. The result is magical and very moving.
In planning this program, my very first selection was Samuel Barber’s Reincarnations. I consider this to be “core repertoire” for any choral musician in this country and therefore an important component of this program. Although we sang them on our last program of American music five years ago, there are many in the group today for whom this music is new. The title doesn’t refer to the subject matter of the three texts by Irish poet James Stephens (1882-1950) but instead refers to the entire set of poems Stephens wrote based on the work of 19th-century poet Anthony Raftery. Stephens could barely speak Gaelic, so when he set out to translate Raftery’s work, he wound up with something beyond simple translations. He called the results a set of “reincarnations.” Mary Hines is named after a woman purported to be the most beautiful woman in all of western Ireland. Anthony O’Daly was an Irish environmentalist unjustly accused of firing a gun at another man. He was eventually condemned, and refusing offers from the guards to help him escape, went quietly and was hanged. The Coolin takes its name from the curly lock of blonde hair at the nape of the neck, which eventually became used as a nickname for a loved one.
Our final set, Sacred Sentiments, encompasses a disparate set of motets with religious texts. I wanted to include the music of the great iconoclast Charles Ives. The son of a band leader, Ives was greatly influenced by the open-minded approach to music lessons he received from his father. These included exercises such as being asked to sing a hymn in one key while his father played it in another. That sort of practice, along with the experience of hearing his father’s band play one song while marching around the town square at the same time that another band was playing a different piece on the opposite side of the square led to wildly experimental works that would influence later generations of composers. An example of the kind of fun he had in this regard is his Sixty-Seventh Psalm. Composed for 8-part chorus, the four women’s parts are in C major, while the four men’s parts sing simultaneously in G minor. The resulting dissonances lend the piece a piquancy that is still somewhat shocking almost 120 years later. Interestingly Ives was also well-regarded in the business world. During his career as an insurance executive, Ives devised creative ways to structure life-insurance packages for people of means, which laid the foundation for the modern practice of estate-planning.
Another beloved figure in American choral music is Randall Thompson. The composer of such works as The Peaceable Kingdom, Frostiana, and The Testament of Freedom, he is perhaps best known for his Alleluia, commissioned for the opening of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in 1940. But I have chosen to present an equally wonderful, if lesser known motet, The Best of Rooms. Set to English Renaissance writer Robert Herrick’s poem, Christ’s Part (1647), this piece displays Thompson’s deft handling of the individual lines allowing for an ease of singing. Towards the end the tempo picks up a little as the choir sings long melismas on a single word that I find reminiscent of Alleluia.
To conclude the “classical” portion of the program we’ll present another early American hymn tune as arranged by Aaron Copland. At the River is a heartfelt, yet noble hymn presented with a simplicity that lends it a certain grandeur that I find very appealing.
While there has been a lot of wonderful “serious” or “art” music written by American composers, an argument could be made that our most important contribution to the world’s musical culture is in the area of popular entertainment. With that in mind I wanted to pay homage to many of our greatest artists in the fields of the Broadway musical, film scores, and of course, America’s truly original musical forms, jazz and spirituals. But to start off we’ll go farther back to a time when popular song performed in people’s homes was the primary form of musical enrichment. Stephen Foster, described in one source as the “father of American music,” wrote over 200 songs in the decades preceding the Civil War. Many of these became well known when they were performed in the blackface minstrel shows that were popular at the time. Our medley contains snippets of several of his most beloved songs.
Richard Rodgers composed more than 900 songs and music for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. His compositions have had a significant impact on popular music down to the present day and have an enduring broad appeal. Eight of these wonderful songs plus two purely instrumental pieces are presented in the medley.
Perhaps the greatest musical of the 1950’s, West Side Story was a collaboration of two leading lights of the times, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and music by Leonard Bernstein. The arrangement we perform begins with the driving rhythms of Something’s Coming then morphs seamlessly into the hauntingly beautiful Tonight.
Our salute to movie music beings with my own arrangement created for Chanticleer’s 25th Reunion concert in 2003. It begins with the love theme from the 1965 film The Sandpiper, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, composed by Johnny Mandel. It then transitions into the theme from Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film featuring his iconic Little Tramp character fighting to survive in the modern, industrialized world. With lyrics by Turner and Page, Charlie Chaplin wrote the music to this endearing song himself.
One of our greatest composers and certainly one of the cleverest lyricists was Irving Berlin. His first song was published in 1907, and his tune Alexander’s Ragtime Band became an international hit in 1911. During his 60-year career (he died in 1989 at the age of 101) he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. While his music could easily be the subject of an entire concert, our medley gives a small sampling of three of his delightful songs from the movies.
Although singing jazz stylings is not our bread and butter as a choir, I felt it important to include at least one jazz tune in this survey of American music. Composed in 1939, Take the A Train became the signature song of Duke Ellington’s band after an ASCAP ruling raised the licensing fees on broadcast use of music by ASCAP-registered composers. Ellington turned to his son, Mercer, and Billy Strayhorn—both registered with ASCAP rival BMI—to come up with an entirely new book of tunes for the band. Ellington offered Strayhorn a job in his organization and gave him money to travel from Pittsburgh to New York City. Ellington wrote directions for Strayhorn to get to his house by subway, directions that began, “Take the ‘A’ Train.”
We’ll conclude our show with two arrangements of traditional spirituals by Moses Hogan. Born in New Orleans in 1957, he went on to study at the Oberlin Conservatory and the Juilliard School. The Moses Hogan Chorale gained international acclaim in the 1980s and ‘90s. Sadly, Hogan died at age 45 from a brain tumor. Fortunately he left behind over 70 published works, which have become staples in the repertoires of high school, college, church, community, and professional choirs worldwide. I love the simple presentation of Deep River and the driving rhythms of Elijah Rock.
Thank you so much for being a part of our musical family this year! It has been a joy to have you along for the ride as we’ve explored a variety of musical styles and genres. We hope to see you again next season, when we’ll present three completely different programs: all-Renaissance in December, all-Mozart in February/March and all-contemporary in June.
The original concept for the first half of the program was to trace the progress of American compositional styles from the late 18th century through the 19th and 20th centuries to the present day. And I wanted to pay homage to key American composers who influenced that trajectory. I think we’ve accomplished this. However, rather than present the works chronologically, it ended up making more sense musically to group the pieces by subject rather than date. And I think that hearing a very contemporary piece next to an earlier work brings both into relief, clarifying the composer’s intent.
Our first set, To Music, opens with the oldest piece on the show, published in 1790. William Billings is considered by many to be the foremost representative of early American music. Billings was born in Boston in 1746. Largely self-trained in music, he was a tanner by trade and a friend of such figures of the American Revolution as Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. Billings’s New England Psalm-Singer (1770), engraved by Revere, was the first collection of music entirely by an American. Modern Musick, from his last publication, displays Billing’s typical four-square style and enjoyment of musical jokes.
Composer/conductor Steven Sametz is a professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He wrote I Have Had Singing for the Berkshire Choral Festival. The text is a paraphrase of an old English horseman’s story recounting his life in a bleak, unfertile land filled with little joy. “But,” the man said, “there was always singing; the boys in the field, the chapels were full of singing. I have had pleasure enough; I have had singing.”
Dudley Buck gained prominence in the 19th century as a popular touring organist, performing both his own compositions and transcriptions of symphonic works. He was also a prolific composer of choral music, most of it sacred. After he lost everything—home, organ, concert hall, manuscripts—in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Buck returned to his native New England, where he applied his sacred-music skill to more secular works. He composed Hymn to Music in 1877 for the St. Cecilia Vocal Society of Brooklyn, N.Y. The musical idioms of the late-romantic era are evident in this lush setting.
We’ll then move on to another diverse set of pieces under the heading Peace and Quiet. In a program of Americana I felt we had to include Aaron Copland. The tune Simple Gifts, which Copland used so memorably in the ballet Appalachian Spring, now seems an important part of our American heritage. This classic arrangement, one I’ve sung my whole life, comes from Copland’s set of Old American Songs.
Amy Beach, born in 1867, was the first woman composer to achieve wide recognition in America. A child prodigy, she made her debut on the piano at age 16 and two years later toured as the soloist in Chopin’s Piano Concerto with the Boston Symphony. After marrying Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a man 24 years her senior, she stopped performing at his request to concentrate on composing. After he died in 1910 she toured Europe for three years playing her own compositions. Now known as Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, she later moved to New York where she became the virtual composer-in-residence at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. I suspect that the benediction Peace I leave with you was first performed there.
As one of the more popular composers of choral music in the 21st century, the inclusion of Eric Whitacre in this survey seemed appropriate. And this work, Sleep, has an interesting history. Originally set to Robert Frost’s immortal poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the premiere performance was a huge hit at a choral conductors conference, and many asked for the score. But to his dismay, Whitacre had not secured the rights to use the poem. The Frost estate refused permission to let him publish it, as there were already too many settings. So he ended up asking his friend and frequent collaborator, Charles Anthony Silvestri, to write a new poem to fit the already existing music. The result is magical and very moving.
In planning this program, my very first selection was Samuel Barber’s Reincarnations. I consider this to be “core repertoire” for any choral musician in this country and therefore an important component of this program. Although we sang them on our last program of American music five years ago, there are many in the group today for whom this music is new. The title doesn’t refer to the subject matter of the three texts by Irish poet James Stephens (1882-1950) but instead refers to the entire set of poems Stephens wrote based on the work of 19th-century poet Anthony Raftery. Stephens could barely speak Gaelic, so when he set out to translate Raftery’s work, he wound up with something beyond simple translations. He called the results a set of “reincarnations.” Mary Hines is named after a woman purported to be the most beautiful woman in all of western Ireland. Anthony O’Daly was an Irish environmentalist unjustly accused of firing a gun at another man. He was eventually condemned, and refusing offers from the guards to help him escape, went quietly and was hanged. The Coolin takes its name from the curly lock of blonde hair at the nape of the neck, which eventually became used as a nickname for a loved one.
Our final set, Sacred Sentiments, encompasses a disparate set of motets with religious texts. I wanted to include the music of the great iconoclast Charles Ives. The son of a band leader, Ives was greatly influenced by the open-minded approach to music lessons he received from his father. These included exercises such as being asked to sing a hymn in one key while his father played it in another. That sort of practice, along with the experience of hearing his father’s band play one song while marching around the town square at the same time that another band was playing a different piece on the opposite side of the square led to wildly experimental works that would influence later generations of composers. An example of the kind of fun he had in this regard is his Sixty-Seventh Psalm. Composed for 8-part chorus, the four women’s parts are in C major, while the four men’s parts sing simultaneously in G minor. The resulting dissonances lend the piece a piquancy that is still somewhat shocking almost 120 years later. Interestingly Ives was also well-regarded in the business world. During his career as an insurance executive, Ives devised creative ways to structure life-insurance packages for people of means, which laid the foundation for the modern practice of estate-planning.
Another beloved figure in American choral music is Randall Thompson. The composer of such works as The Peaceable Kingdom, Frostiana, and The Testament of Freedom, he is perhaps best known for his Alleluia, commissioned for the opening of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in 1940. But I have chosen to present an equally wonderful, if lesser known motet, The Best of Rooms. Set to English Renaissance writer Robert Herrick’s poem, Christ’s Part (1647), this piece displays Thompson’s deft handling of the individual lines allowing for an ease of singing. Towards the end the tempo picks up a little as the choir sings long melismas on a single word that I find reminiscent of Alleluia.
To conclude the “classical” portion of the program we’ll present another early American hymn tune as arranged by Aaron Copland. At the River is a heartfelt, yet noble hymn presented with a simplicity that lends it a certain grandeur that I find very appealing.
While there has been a lot of wonderful “serious” or “art” music written by American composers, an argument could be made that our most important contribution to the world’s musical culture is in the area of popular entertainment. With that in mind I wanted to pay homage to many of our greatest artists in the fields of the Broadway musical, film scores, and of course, America’s truly original musical forms, jazz and spirituals. But to start off we’ll go farther back to a time when popular song performed in people’s homes was the primary form of musical enrichment. Stephen Foster, described in one source as the “father of American music,” wrote over 200 songs in the decades preceding the Civil War. Many of these became well known when they were performed in the blackface minstrel shows that were popular at the time. Our medley contains snippets of several of his most beloved songs.
Richard Rodgers composed more than 900 songs and music for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. His compositions have had a significant impact on popular music down to the present day and have an enduring broad appeal. Eight of these wonderful songs plus two purely instrumental pieces are presented in the medley.
Perhaps the greatest musical of the 1950’s, West Side Story was a collaboration of two leading lights of the times, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and music by Leonard Bernstein. The arrangement we perform begins with the driving rhythms of Something’s Coming then morphs seamlessly into the hauntingly beautiful Tonight.
Our salute to movie music beings with my own arrangement created for Chanticleer’s 25th Reunion concert in 2003. It begins with the love theme from the 1965 film The Sandpiper, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, composed by Johnny Mandel. It then transitions into the theme from Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film featuring his iconic Little Tramp character fighting to survive in the modern, industrialized world. With lyrics by Turner and Page, Charlie Chaplin wrote the music to this endearing song himself.
One of our greatest composers and certainly one of the cleverest lyricists was Irving Berlin. His first song was published in 1907, and his tune Alexander’s Ragtime Band became an international hit in 1911. During his 60-year career (he died in 1989 at the age of 101) he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. While his music could easily be the subject of an entire concert, our medley gives a small sampling of three of his delightful songs from the movies.
Although singing jazz stylings is not our bread and butter as a choir, I felt it important to include at least one jazz tune in this survey of American music. Composed in 1939, Take the A Train became the signature song of Duke Ellington’s band after an ASCAP ruling raised the licensing fees on broadcast use of music by ASCAP-registered composers. Ellington turned to his son, Mercer, and Billy Strayhorn—both registered with ASCAP rival BMI—to come up with an entirely new book of tunes for the band. Ellington offered Strayhorn a job in his organization and gave him money to travel from Pittsburgh to New York City. Ellington wrote directions for Strayhorn to get to his house by subway, directions that began, “Take the ‘A’ Train.”
We’ll conclude our show with two arrangements of traditional spirituals by Moses Hogan. Born in New Orleans in 1957, he went on to study at the Oberlin Conservatory and the Juilliard School. The Moses Hogan Chorale gained international acclaim in the 1980s and ‘90s. Sadly, Hogan died at age 45 from a brain tumor. Fortunately he left behind over 70 published works, which have become staples in the repertoires of high school, college, church, community, and professional choirs worldwide. I love the simple presentation of Deep River and the driving rhythms of Elijah Rock.
Thank you so much for being a part of our musical family this year! It has been a joy to have you along for the ride as we’ve explored a variety of musical styles and genres. We hope to see you again next season, when we’ll present three completely different programs: all-Renaissance in December, all-Mozart in February/March and all-contemporary in June.
