Traditions! - Notes on the Program -
From the Amazing Mind of Chris Shepard
From the Amazing Mind of Chris Shepard
Whenever I perform music in another language, I’m reminded of the wonderful quote attributed to Charlemagne, “to have another language is to possess a second soul.” One of the great joys of being singers is the opportunity to glimpse that second soul when we are performing music from other cultures and other traditions. True, it is not quite the same as actually being able to converse in that language, but singing music that is indigenous to another culture at least allows us to be “cultural tourists,” sampling another element of the culture just as we might visit its cultural sites and eat its national dishes on our travels. Like watching Anthony Bourdain on CNN, listening to a concert of choral music representing several different traditions from both home and abroad is just another kind of armchair (or pew, in this case) traveling.
As is true of any trip, we begin at home. Before the choir enters the stage, two of this evening’s guest musicians give us a glimpse of our own early American heritage. Violinist Leah Nelson plays two arrangements of Scottish folksongs by the English composer William McGibbons, music that was very popular in England’s North American colonies. Just as African-American spirituals would ultimately lead to many forms of contemporary American music, Scottish fiddle tunes like these would ultimately migrate to Appalachia and become a major influence on bluegrass and country music. Kirk Bobkowski joins Leah to sing Adams and Liberty, whose text by Robert Treat Paine (grandson of the revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine) cheers for John Adams in the 1800 presidential election. The tune, “To Anacreon in Heaven”, by John Stafford Smith, would later be used for a far more famous set of words… but I won’t spoil the surprise for you.
It is stunning that choral music inspired by Latin American music has really only been a major part of the choral repertoire in America for a few decades. After all, Columbus was exploring on behalf of the Spanish crown, so Spanish settlements predate the English settlements that ultimately became the United States. Perhaps the earliest truly significant Latin-American composition was Ariel Ramirez’s Misa Criolla, a work that integrates both indigenous and western-influenced South American musical forms; it was composed in 1964 as one of the first non-Latin Masses to be written after Vatican II. The individual movements are based on folk music and dance forms, often derived from Andean cultural influences, with most of the forms originating in Argentina. The Kyrie is based on the vidala-baguala, a plaintive style from the lonely high Andean plateau. The infectious Gloria features the carnavalito rhythm. The hypnotic, repetitive rhythmic ostinato of the Credo finds its roots in the chacerera trunca, a folk theme from central Argentina. We travel to Bolivia for the Sanctus, which employs the evocative carnaval cochabambino 6/8 rhythmic pattern. The final movement, Agnus Dei, capturing some of the same loneliness as the opening Kyrie, originates on the pampas, the vast lowland plains found in southern Argentina. It is the music of the gauchos, shaped by the guitar and solo voices. In the recording led by Ramírez, the choir and soloists are accompanied by native Andean instruments; however, the piece is designed to accommodate western instruments as well, as we perform it this evening. The work has been recorded many times over the past five decades, including a recording featuring José Carreras.
Eric Whitacre, one of the world’s most popular choral composers, isn’t exactly associated with Jewish music. But his wife, Hila Plitmann, was born and raised in Jerusalem. Whitacre writes that when they were traveling with a violinist in Germany in 1996, he asked Plitmann “to write [him] a few ‘postcards’ in her native tongue, and a few days later she presented [him] with these exquisite and delicate Hebrew poems.” They began life as solo songs with violin and piano accompaniment, but Whitacre later arranged them for mixed chorus. The musical language is essentially Whitacre’s own, but he does incorporate elements of Jewish music, including modal melodic lines, as well as sections that are reminiscent of improvisation and tambourine-inspired dance rhythms. Perhaps the most inventive of the set is the fourth movement. Whitacre sets the text “What snow! Like little dreams falling from the sky,” with accompanying voices imitating the German cathedral bells he heard ringing during the couple’s travels. In terms of the “second soul” aspect of the use of Hebrew for these poems, I would note that when choirs sing in Hebrew, it is almost always in sacred music, such as Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. It is far rarer for an American choir to sing a secular piece in modern Hebrew.
One of the great joys of traveling with friends is to experience a culture that may not have been on your “bucket list,” but that you visit because it’s where your friend’s family comes from. That’s the case with Marty Sedek’s Three Polish Lullabies that we premiere this evening. I approached Marty, our associate conductor and a highly respected composer, to write a piece for this concert. Knowing that he and his parents emigrated from Poland (and he himself has spent many summers there and speaks Polish fluently), I particularly wanted him to write something to express that heritage. His composer’s note from 2016 is particularly poignant, as he very sadly lost his mother to cancer in March. It is a fitting reminder that, so often, music from different traditions lives on only because it is passed down from parent to child. When a composer like Marty transcribes that music, it is given an eternal life; and in this case, it has become a beautiful legacy for his mom, Eva Maria Sedek. Such is the extraordinary power of music.
Marty writes: “One June day, I found myself listening to my mother rocking my then three-year-old nephew to sleep. She was humming a simple, beautiful melody. Happening to have my music sketch notebook on me, I quickly notated the tune. When commissioned to write a Polish work for this concert on the theme of tradition, I had just performed Górecki’s setting of these same traditional folk lullabies. I decided to set these charming little folk songs, using my mother’s melody as a theme. I asked my mom what the tune was—‘Oh, I don’t know, it was nothing,’ she answered…. Now it’s something!”
Was there really any uniquely “American” music before composers began marrying elements of African-American music to the folk music and art forms imported from Europe? Certainly the lineage of the African-American tradition, from spirituals to gospel to jazz, to blues and rhythm & blues, to rock & roll and hip hop, is a distinctly American inheritance. And all along the way, elements of that invigorating tradition—complex syncopated rhythms, the blues scales and jazz modes, improvisation and even the “call and response” structure—has imbedded itself in American music, both in and outside of the concert hall. The set of African-American inspired music on this evening’s program explores a number of genres that, like humanity itself, find their roots on the African continent.
The great jazz pianist George Shearing (1919-2011) was born in England, but emigrated to the United States after World War II. He had a remarkably long and successful career as a performer and composer, including the jazz standard Lullaby of Birdland. Though not previously a choral composer, he was commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers in 1985 to set Shakespeare texts. The collaboration was so successful that he wrote a second set, Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare, for the Mostly Madrigal Singers in 2001; Shearing’s friend, composer John Rutter, was guest conductor of the premiere. Like Rutter’s vocal writing, Shearing’s music shows the composer’s real gift for setting the texts in a natural way for the singers, saving the most complex jazz harmonies for the idiomatic piano part. It is little wonder that these choral works have increasingly become a standard part of the choral repertoire.
A handful of composers stand out as truly outstanding arrangers of African-American spirituals, that body of melodies that have their roots in the pain and suffering of slavery. H.T. Burleigh, brothers John R. and J. Weldon Johnson, R. Nathaniel Dett, William Dawson—these are names synonymous with the collection and arrangement of spirituals for soloists and choirs. These men were joined in the last part of the twentieth century by Moses Hogan, whose arrangements for the Moses Hogan Chorale have become extremely popular worldwide. Hogan tragically died at the age of 45 in 2003 of a brain tumor. His arrangement of Ride On, King Jesus was commissioned by Spelman College in 1999.
Another important contemporary composer who draws on the rich heritage of African-American music is Mark Miller, a local resident who is on the faculty of the Drew Theological Seminary and is Minister of Music at Christ Church in Summit, as well as a composer-in-residence with the Harmonium Choral Society. Published in 2016, his Roll Down, Justice! is a fitting expression of Miller’s admiration for Cornell West’s quote, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”
Calling the Bahamian folksong All My Trials “African-American” is a bit of a stretch, as it comes from the Caribbean rather than the United States. However, it has so much in common with the vast body of spirituals—equating death with freedom from strife, the use of the trope “hush, little baby,” as well as its adoption by protestors during the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s. Some of the greatest folksingers of that decade recorded the song, including Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. This 2016 arrangement by Vermont composer Gwyneth Walker captures the powerful beauty and simplicity of the original.
Paul Halley wrote Ubi Caritas when he was serving as Director of Music at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This piece marries a Gregorian chant tune with African chant and drumming. The multicultural programming at the Cathedral was the source of Halley’s inspiration: he writes that an African drum group rehearsed downstairs, and sometimes their music could be heard in the sanctuary, as the choir was singing ancient church music. The resulting piece, Ubi Caritas, manages to capture both the meditative peacefulness of the original chant melody and the life-affirming joy of the African chants. Musically united by the African drums' rolling rhythms, each tradition maintains its integrity while combining to form something new and unique. What a fitting way to close this concert that celebrates so many different musical traditions, each made fresh through the different composers' new interpretations.
Chris Shepard © 2017
As is true of any trip, we begin at home. Before the choir enters the stage, two of this evening’s guest musicians give us a glimpse of our own early American heritage. Violinist Leah Nelson plays two arrangements of Scottish folksongs by the English composer William McGibbons, music that was very popular in England’s North American colonies. Just as African-American spirituals would ultimately lead to many forms of contemporary American music, Scottish fiddle tunes like these would ultimately migrate to Appalachia and become a major influence on bluegrass and country music. Kirk Bobkowski joins Leah to sing Adams and Liberty, whose text by Robert Treat Paine (grandson of the revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine) cheers for John Adams in the 1800 presidential election. The tune, “To Anacreon in Heaven”, by John Stafford Smith, would later be used for a far more famous set of words… but I won’t spoil the surprise for you.
It is stunning that choral music inspired by Latin American music has really only been a major part of the choral repertoire in America for a few decades. After all, Columbus was exploring on behalf of the Spanish crown, so Spanish settlements predate the English settlements that ultimately became the United States. Perhaps the earliest truly significant Latin-American composition was Ariel Ramirez’s Misa Criolla, a work that integrates both indigenous and western-influenced South American musical forms; it was composed in 1964 as one of the first non-Latin Masses to be written after Vatican II. The individual movements are based on folk music and dance forms, often derived from Andean cultural influences, with most of the forms originating in Argentina. The Kyrie is based on the vidala-baguala, a plaintive style from the lonely high Andean plateau. The infectious Gloria features the carnavalito rhythm. The hypnotic, repetitive rhythmic ostinato of the Credo finds its roots in the chacerera trunca, a folk theme from central Argentina. We travel to Bolivia for the Sanctus, which employs the evocative carnaval cochabambino 6/8 rhythmic pattern. The final movement, Agnus Dei, capturing some of the same loneliness as the opening Kyrie, originates on the pampas, the vast lowland plains found in southern Argentina. It is the music of the gauchos, shaped by the guitar and solo voices. In the recording led by Ramírez, the choir and soloists are accompanied by native Andean instruments; however, the piece is designed to accommodate western instruments as well, as we perform it this evening. The work has been recorded many times over the past five decades, including a recording featuring José Carreras.
Eric Whitacre, one of the world’s most popular choral composers, isn’t exactly associated with Jewish music. But his wife, Hila Plitmann, was born and raised in Jerusalem. Whitacre writes that when they were traveling with a violinist in Germany in 1996, he asked Plitmann “to write [him] a few ‘postcards’ in her native tongue, and a few days later she presented [him] with these exquisite and delicate Hebrew poems.” They began life as solo songs with violin and piano accompaniment, but Whitacre later arranged them for mixed chorus. The musical language is essentially Whitacre’s own, but he does incorporate elements of Jewish music, including modal melodic lines, as well as sections that are reminiscent of improvisation and tambourine-inspired dance rhythms. Perhaps the most inventive of the set is the fourth movement. Whitacre sets the text “What snow! Like little dreams falling from the sky,” with accompanying voices imitating the German cathedral bells he heard ringing during the couple’s travels. In terms of the “second soul” aspect of the use of Hebrew for these poems, I would note that when choirs sing in Hebrew, it is almost always in sacred music, such as Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. It is far rarer for an American choir to sing a secular piece in modern Hebrew.
One of the great joys of traveling with friends is to experience a culture that may not have been on your “bucket list,” but that you visit because it’s where your friend’s family comes from. That’s the case with Marty Sedek’s Three Polish Lullabies that we premiere this evening. I approached Marty, our associate conductor and a highly respected composer, to write a piece for this concert. Knowing that he and his parents emigrated from Poland (and he himself has spent many summers there and speaks Polish fluently), I particularly wanted him to write something to express that heritage. His composer’s note from 2016 is particularly poignant, as he very sadly lost his mother to cancer in March. It is a fitting reminder that, so often, music from different traditions lives on only because it is passed down from parent to child. When a composer like Marty transcribes that music, it is given an eternal life; and in this case, it has become a beautiful legacy for his mom, Eva Maria Sedek. Such is the extraordinary power of music.
Marty writes: “One June day, I found myself listening to my mother rocking my then three-year-old nephew to sleep. She was humming a simple, beautiful melody. Happening to have my music sketch notebook on me, I quickly notated the tune. When commissioned to write a Polish work for this concert on the theme of tradition, I had just performed Górecki’s setting of these same traditional folk lullabies. I decided to set these charming little folk songs, using my mother’s melody as a theme. I asked my mom what the tune was—‘Oh, I don’t know, it was nothing,’ she answered…. Now it’s something!”
Was there really any uniquely “American” music before composers began marrying elements of African-American music to the folk music and art forms imported from Europe? Certainly the lineage of the African-American tradition, from spirituals to gospel to jazz, to blues and rhythm & blues, to rock & roll and hip hop, is a distinctly American inheritance. And all along the way, elements of that invigorating tradition—complex syncopated rhythms, the blues scales and jazz modes, improvisation and even the “call and response” structure—has imbedded itself in American music, both in and outside of the concert hall. The set of African-American inspired music on this evening’s program explores a number of genres that, like humanity itself, find their roots on the African continent.
The great jazz pianist George Shearing (1919-2011) was born in England, but emigrated to the United States after World War II. He had a remarkably long and successful career as a performer and composer, including the jazz standard Lullaby of Birdland. Though not previously a choral composer, he was commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers in 1985 to set Shakespeare texts. The collaboration was so successful that he wrote a second set, Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare, for the Mostly Madrigal Singers in 2001; Shearing’s friend, composer John Rutter, was guest conductor of the premiere. Like Rutter’s vocal writing, Shearing’s music shows the composer’s real gift for setting the texts in a natural way for the singers, saving the most complex jazz harmonies for the idiomatic piano part. It is little wonder that these choral works have increasingly become a standard part of the choral repertoire.
A handful of composers stand out as truly outstanding arrangers of African-American spirituals, that body of melodies that have their roots in the pain and suffering of slavery. H.T. Burleigh, brothers John R. and J. Weldon Johnson, R. Nathaniel Dett, William Dawson—these are names synonymous with the collection and arrangement of spirituals for soloists and choirs. These men were joined in the last part of the twentieth century by Moses Hogan, whose arrangements for the Moses Hogan Chorale have become extremely popular worldwide. Hogan tragically died at the age of 45 in 2003 of a brain tumor. His arrangement of Ride On, King Jesus was commissioned by Spelman College in 1999.
Another important contemporary composer who draws on the rich heritage of African-American music is Mark Miller, a local resident who is on the faculty of the Drew Theological Seminary and is Minister of Music at Christ Church in Summit, as well as a composer-in-residence with the Harmonium Choral Society. Published in 2016, his Roll Down, Justice! is a fitting expression of Miller’s admiration for Cornell West’s quote, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”
Calling the Bahamian folksong All My Trials “African-American” is a bit of a stretch, as it comes from the Caribbean rather than the United States. However, it has so much in common with the vast body of spirituals—equating death with freedom from strife, the use of the trope “hush, little baby,” as well as its adoption by protestors during the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s. Some of the greatest folksingers of that decade recorded the song, including Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. This 2016 arrangement by Vermont composer Gwyneth Walker captures the powerful beauty and simplicity of the original.
Paul Halley wrote Ubi Caritas when he was serving as Director of Music at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This piece marries a Gregorian chant tune with African chant and drumming. The multicultural programming at the Cathedral was the source of Halley’s inspiration: he writes that an African drum group rehearsed downstairs, and sometimes their music could be heard in the sanctuary, as the choir was singing ancient church music. The resulting piece, Ubi Caritas, manages to capture both the meditative peacefulness of the original chant melody and the life-affirming joy of the African chants. Musically united by the African drums' rolling rhythms, each tradition maintains its integrity while combining to form something new and unique. What a fitting way to close this concert that celebrates so many different musical traditions, each made fresh through the different composers' new interpretations.
Chris Shepard © 2017