CHANTICLEER   

An Orchestra of Voices

Eric S. Brenner, Dan Cromeenes, Dylan Hostetter, Justin Montigne, Benjamin Rauch, William Sauerland Soprano & Alto

Ben Johns, Thomas McCargar, Matthew D. Oltman, Tenor

Eric Alatorre, John Bischoff, Mark Sullivan Baritone & Bass

Joseph Jennings, Music Director

EarthSongs

I.

Domini est terra a 6                Philippe de Monte (1521-1603)

Surge, propera*                      Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)

Descendi in hortum meum      Palestrina

Jubilate Deo omnis terra a 12  Palestrina

II.

To be selected from the following

Hence, Stars, Too Dim of Light      Michael East (c.1580-c.1648)

Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees             John Wilbye (1574-1638)

Sweet Suffolk Owl                           Thomas Vautor (fl.1600-1620)

Quel augellin che canta                    Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

Le Chant des oyseaux                      Clément Janequin (c.1485-1558)

III.

To be selected from the following

From Tang Poems                    Chen Yi (b.1953)

   Written on a Rainy Night*

   Wild Grass*

Spring Dreams                           Chen Yi

Voices of Autumn*‡                   Jackson Hill (b.1941)

 IV.

To be selected from the following

Deux choeurs, Op.68                  Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

   Calme des nuits*                 

   Les Fleurs et les arbres*

Zwei Männerchöre              Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

   Über das Frühjahr

   Eine lichte Mitternacht

V.

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen   Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), arr.Clytus Gottwald

INTERMISSION

VI.

A Boy and a Girl                           Eric Whitacre (b.1970)

Past Life Melodies*                       Sarah Hopkins (b.1958)

VII.

To be selected from the following

Among the Leaves So Green, O      Traditional English, arr. John Byrt

Byker Hill*                                      Traditional English, arr. Mitchell Sandler

Bushes and Briars                   Traditional English, arr. Donald James

The Bluebird                          Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

O Waly, Waly*                     Traditional English, arr. John Rutter

Down by the Sally Gardens*    Trad. Irish, words by W.B. Yeats, arr. Henry G. Mishkin

Galbally Farmer*             Traditional Irish, arr. Mitchell Sandler

The Reel Union               Traditional Irish, arr. Mitchell Sandler

Dúlamán*                        Michael McGlynn (b.1964)

Loch Lomond*               Traditional Scottish, arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams

L’Amour de Moy            15th c. French, arr. Robert Shaw & Alice Parker

Glädjens Blomster           Traditional Swedish, arr. Hugo Alfvén

El Guayaboso                  Guido López-Gavilán (b.1944)

La Vasija de Barro           Luis Alberto Valencia, arr. Javier Zentner

Sakura                             Traditional Japanese, arr. Takatomi Nobunaga

In einem kühlen Grunde  Friedrich Gluck, arr. Harry Frommermann

Gentle Annie                    Stephen Foster (1826-1864), arr. Robert Shaw & Alice Parker

Nelly Bly*‡                     Foster, arr. Jack Halloran

Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair*‡           Foster, arr. Gene Puerling

Shenandoah*                 Traditional American, arr. Marshall Bartholomew & James Erb

VIII.

Popular songs and spirituals to be announced.

Program subject to change.

* These works have been recorded by Chanticleer.

‡ These works have been published in the Chanticleer Choral Series by Hinshaw Music.

PROGRAM NOTES BY: Paul Attinello, Kip Cranna, Joseph Jennings, Stephen Leek, Andrew Morgan, Matthew D. Oltman, Neal Rogers

Domini est terra a 6                             Philippe de Monte (1521-1603)

The city of Prague has a distinguished history as a musical center. Its golden age was in the late 16th and early 17th centuries when it was the capital of the vast Hapsburg realm and the seat of government of the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Rudolf II moved his court there in 1576 and the city remained the center of authority until the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618. Although enjoying mixed success on the political side, Rudolph was a generous patron of the arts and sciences.

The musical chapel of the court was headed by Philippe de Monte, who continued as kapellmeister until his death in 1603. He was born in Mechelen in 1521 and made his way to Naples, Rome and Antwerp. One of the century’s most prolific composers, he excelled in all genres, particularly in five- and six-voice motets. The text below is from the Book of Psalms, 24:1-5.

Surge, propera*              Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)

Descendi in hortum meum                                          Palestrina

Jubilate Deo omnis terra a 12                                            Palestrina

Like Bach, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina has come to represent the quality of perfection in the polyphonic music of his time. As such, he was the first composer to be stylistically emulated by succeeding generations up to our own time. Palestrina composed the Motettorum Liber Quartus Ex Canticis Canticorum (Fourth Book of Motets from the Song of Songs) in 1584, offering a copy to the Duke of Mantua on August 1 of that year. These texts from the Old Testament are attributed to King Solomon and concern themselves with sexual love and courtship. The Christian interpretations are therefore allegorical in character. Though most of Palestrina’s music is reserved in nature owing to the strict modifications in liturgical music brought about by the Counter-Reformation as set down during the Council of Trent, these first two pieces are, in the words of the composer, genere alacriore (of a more animated spirit). These settings show a personal and deeply emotional quality among Palestrina’s work and were received with great success.

Jubilate Deo is one of only a few twelve-part motets in Palestrina’s catalogue of works. The celebratory nature of the text is well-represented by the fanfare-like writing and the dense, rich texture. Unlike most pieces written for multiple choirs (this is for three four-voice choirs), Palestrina employs all twelve parts simultaneously for most of the time, rather than alternating the choruses.

Hence, Stars, Too Dim of Light      Michael East (c.1580-c.1648)

Sweet Honey-Sucking Bees              John Wilbye (1574-1638)

Sweet Suffolk Owl                            Thomas Vautor (fl.1600-1620)

Quel augellin che canta           Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

Le Chant des oyseaux                 Clément Janequin (c.1485-1558)

Madrigals were the popular songs of the Renaissance. They were sung by amateurs and professionals alike in a variety of settings. The texts often dealt with everyday matters, including food and drink, the pursuit of love, and death. The madrigal developed in Italy and quickly spread north through Europe to England. In France, madrigals were known as chansons. Some French composers developed a programmatic style, using nonsense syllables to imitate everyday sounds. The first English madrigals were nothing more than “borrowed” Italian madrigals with newly-written English texts. Eventually, English composers developed their own descriptive style for writing these short, entertaining pieces.

 From Tang Poems                      Chen Yi (b.1953)

   Written on a Rainy Night*

   Wild Grass*

Spring Dreams                            Chen Yi

Chen Yi serves as the Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City and is the recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award (2001-04) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dr. Chen was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Music Composition from the Central Conservatory in Beijing and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University. She served as Composer-in-Residence for the Women's Philharmonic, Chanticleer, and Aptos Creative Arts Center (1993-96), and as a member of the composition faculty at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Chen Yi has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The composer writes: “Beginning in soft unison with alto and tenor, the pan-tonal melody of ‘Written on a Rainy Night’ takes its folk-song elements from southwestern China. When the theme moves to the soprano voice, the continuing motive in the dense bass part frames the entire piece, bringing it into an endless mood of nostalgia. ‘Wild Grass’ features a constant motif formed by two parts with irregular downbeats and vivid padding syllables. It suggests the poet’s sorrow at being apart from a friend, likening it to the grass growing and extending. The melodic material is mixed from the folk story-telling song styles in southeastern China.”

Spring Dreams was commissioned by the Ithaca College School of Music, where it premiered in 1997. In the beginning of the piece, several groups of ostinati are brought in gradually in various tempos, imitating the vivid pulse of birds singing. There is a turning point in the middle of the poem, when the poet clearly wakes up from his sweet dream by hearing a bird singing and he realizes that many flowers must have been ruined by a night of wind and showers. He sympathizes with the fallen petals as he treasures the beautiful springtime.

Voices of Autumn*                         Jackson Hill (b.1941)

Jackson Hill, born in Birmingham, Alabama, was a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where he earned his Ph.D. in musicology. He studied Buddhist liturgical music in Japan at the Chishaku-In in Kyoto, and has made a specialty of Japanese traditional music. Since 1968 Hill has taught at Bucknell University, where he is Presidential Professor of Music.

Much of Hill’s music composed since 1970 displays influences from Japanese traditional music. Voices of Autumn (“Aki no ko-e”) was composed in 1982 following a summer the composer spent in Japan on a Fulbright grant studying Buddhist liturgical chant. Hill’s setting of the ninth-century poem uses several Japanese stylistic devices: a pentatonic scale, absence of harmonic motion, minimal rhythmic forward motion, suspension of time, glissandos, and ornamentation derived from chant and ancient Japanese court music. The work uses deliberate word painting in making musical reference to footsteps in the fallen leaves and in the cry of the stag.

Deux choeurs, Op.68                                                                                    Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

   Calme des nuits* 

   Les Fleurs et les arbres*

The prolific Camille Saint-Saëns left works in virtually every major compositional form. Many remember him ironically for Carnival of the Animals, a private joke dashed off during a vacation, which he did not want performed. In fact Saint-Saëns was an assiduous worker and a rigorous thinker: he avidly followed and wrote about developments in other disciplines, such as science and aesthetic thought.

These Two Choruses reflect a Parnassian ethic of “art for art’s sake” to which this neo-classicist composer subscribed. This view ran counter to the prevailing Romantic movement and, more markedly, to the Impressionism that flourished at the end of the century. But Saint-Saëns was not removed from passion, especially the kind of passion achieved through love for nature. Calme des nuits and Les Fleurs et les arbres (written years apart but published together in 1883 as opus 68) are good examples of that estrained passion, showing his economy and focus. The two pieces are on texts written by Saint-Saëns and are dedicated to his fellow composer, Charles Gounod.

Zwei Männerchöre          Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

   Über das Frühjahr

   Eine lichte Mitternacht

“Über das Frühjahr” is based on a sardonic and appallingly modern text by Bertolt Brecht: it casually presents a dead world without spring, without birds, even without storms. The opening is in properly Brechtian declamation; the main body of the piece, however, offsets Brecht’s satireand cruelty with rich, melancholic music, full of imaginative touches. Hindemith has not written a setting of this poem, but a reaction to it; the music itself becomes the beauty that is being destroyed. At the end is desolation, as the lower voices abandon the tenors to a single, forlorn image.

Composed on a translated poem by Walt Whitman, “Eine lichte Mitternacht” is idiomatically similar to its above contemporary; both employ numerous expressive devices, including a sensual array of seventh and fourth chords, ‘fanning out’ melodies and hypnotic repeated notes. The extraordinary intensity peaks with unexpected chords on the words, “sleep, night, death and the stars.”

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen          Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Austrian composer and conductor Gustav Mahler was one of the last in a long line of great composers of the Austro-German tradition, reaching back as far as Heinrich Schütz. Mahler’s achievements include the revitalization of the symphonic form with song, creating new melodic, tonal and formal methods to expand the resources of the orchestra. Although his output was relatively small, Mahler almost exclusively composed extended works, including nine symphonies and several rchestral song cycles. He was also one of the leading conductors of his day, highlighted by ten years at the Vienna State Opera. Although not reflected in his composition, as a conductor Mahler proved to be an exponent of the emerging Viennese school led by Arnold Schönberg.

This song from Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, composed between 1901 and 1902, displays his indebtedness to the orchestral writing of Debussy. It also points to a new direction in his song writing, which culminated in Das Lied von der Erde, where the voice becomes essentially another instrumental line. As the title implies, the texts are all by Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866), a favorite choice among 19th century composers, including Schubert and Schumann. Originally for voice and piano, Rückert-Lieder is more usually performed in its orchestrated form. The darkly romantic “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” was arranged for chorus by Clytus Gottwald in 1983.

A Boy and a Girl                                Eric Whitacre (b.1970)

An accomplished composer, conductor and lecturer, Eric Whitacre has received composition awards from ASCAP, the Barlow International Composition Competition, the American Choral Directors Association, and the American Composers Forum. In 2001 he became the youngest recipient ever awarded the coveted Raymond C. Brock commission by the American Choral Directors Association; commercially he has worked with such luminaries as Barbra Streisand and Marvin Hamlisch. As a conductor, Mr. Whitacre has appeared with hundreds of professional and educational ensembles throughout the world. In the last five years he has conducted concerts of his choral and symphonic music in Japan, Australia, Singapore, much of Europe, and dozens of American universities and colleges. He received his M.M. in composition from the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied composition with Pulitzer Prize-winner John Corigliano. A Boy and a Girl is a setting of a poem by Nobel laureate Octavio Paz.

Past Life Melodies*                                          Sarah Hopkins (b.1958)

The melodic ideas of Past Life Melodies, like those in all of Sarah Hopkins’ music, are simple in structure and reach deep into the soul. The first melody was one which haunted the composer for many years – a melody which came to her at moments of deep emotion. The second melody reflects her considerable interest in the music of various world cultures, and in this particular case her eight years in Darwin in the north of Australia, where she had much contact with Australian Aboriginal art and music. The third section of the work utilizes a concept called harmonic-overtone singing, which is as ancient a technique as singing itself. Here the separate harmonic voices weave and dart like “golden threads” above the earthy drone sustained by the main body of the choir. The richness and subtlety of colors and the earthy heart quality of the voices, along with an inner rhythm of very simple ideas and materials, offers the listener a communication with the very heart and soul of the music itself.

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