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The DeKalb Choral Guild, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Songs of Love

Mary Evelyn Root, Director
Leanne Elmer Herrmann, Accompanist

In conjunction with Arts & Ideas at Oglethorpe University

Celebrating 10 seasons with accompanist Leanne Elmer Herrmann

Saturday, February 13, 1999
Lupton Auditorium
Oglethorpe University
Atlanta, Georgia

This Is My Song by by Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Soliloquy by Morton Gould (1913-1996) from Of Time and the River

Bright Journeys: Songs of Love and Light by Daniel E. Gawthrop (b. 1949)

Ballade No.3 in A-flat major, Op. 47 by Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)
Leanne Elmer Herrmann, piano

Lieder
Ganymed by Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Dein Blaues Auge by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Heimliches Lieben by Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Von Ewiger Liebe by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Leanne Elmer Herrmann, piano, and Mary Evelyn Root, soprano

Etudes, Op. 8 by by Aleksandr Scriabin (1872-1915)
No. 11 in B-flat minor
No. 12 in D-sharp minor
Leanne Elmer Herrmann, piano

The Humming Chorus by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) from Madama Butterfly

Bridal Chorus by Richard Wagner (1813-1883) from Lohengrin

Waltz by Johann Strauss (1825-1899) from Die Fledermaus

Program Notes

by Michaelene Gorney

"This Is My Song" is a harmonization of a well-known melody from the orchestral tone poem Finlandia by Jean Sibelius. The DeKalb Choral Guild has proudly adopted this piece as its theme for the season. This particular harmonization is a composite of versions found in The Church Hymnary (Revised, 1927), The Hymnal (Presbyterian, 1933), and Sibelius' own piano score for Finlandia.

Daniel Gawthrop, composer of Bright Journeys: Songts of Love and Light, was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, performed vocal and instrumental music as a youth, and studied organ and composition at Michigan State University and Brigham Young University. He served for three years as Composer-in-Residence to the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, has received numerous grants and commissions, and has been honored with concerts featuring his choral and organ works. His choral works have been performed by literally hundreds of groups in the U.S. and abroad. Gawthrop has been active as a broadcaster (ten years as announcer for WETA-FM in Washington, D.C.), clinician, church musician, conductor, teacher, critic (The Washington Post) and writer.

According to the publisher, the text of Bright Journeys, by Jane Griner, "...makes use of imagery of the changing light of morning, noonday, and dusk as metaphor for the growth of a love through youth, maturity, and into old age." In a 1997 note to Cliff Norris, DCG Librarian, Gawthrop writes, "...your program notes should certainly say that this piece is really really hard. Doubtless your skills will make it appear quite effortless, so the audience should be made aware that they are witnessing an advanced display of choral wizardry!" He goes on to say, "I consider it one of my better efforts and it is particularly close to my heart." Composer and poet are husband and wife.

Morton Gould, composer and conductor, began his career by composing and publishing his first work, "Just Six," at the age of six. To support his family during the Depression, he worked as a vaudeville pianist and became house pianist for Radio City Music Hall while still a teenager. A pioneer of live radio broadcasts, he starred in, hosted, and conducted, long-running programs on the Mutual and CBS Radio Networks, featuring both symphonic and popular music. Always in touch with popular and classical developments, Gould used jazz, blues, spirituals, and folk music in his works. The Pittsburgh Symphony Association commissioned him in 1992 to compose "The Jogger and the Dinosaur," a concert piece for rapper and orchestra. At the time of his death, Gould was visiting the Disney Institute in Orlando as artist-in-residence and had been honored the evening before with an all-Gould program performed by the U.S. Military Band.

"Soliloquy" is part of a larger work called Of Time and the River, whose text is taken from the novel of the same name by American author Thomas Wolfe.

Frederic Chopin was musically trained by a violinist, Adelbert Zywny, who recognized and encouraged his student's unique talents, and who instilled in him a love of Bach and Mozart. The result was a style freer and much more original than that manifest in the stiff piano-playing of Chopin's day, and one which gave fits to older artists. (One critic recommended having a surgeon at hand when playing Chopin's works!) Chopin furthered the art of the piano by increasing the importance of the left hand and by effective use of the pedals. His music is full of embellishment but technically demanding, to be played fluidly but not lazily. Harmonies considered harsh and disagreeable in his hands became delicate and ethereal, partly because the composer's consumptive frailty demanded that he generate power through gradations of soft sounds and flawless execution rather than sheer muscle. Anton Rubenstein called him "the Piano Bard, the Piano Rhapsodist, the Piano Mind, and the Piano Soul." David Dubal, in The Art of the Piano, calls the Ballade, Op. 47, "the essence of charm and warmth."

Music of the 19th Century, the Romantic Period, shared an intimate relationship with poetry. Composers were well versed in literature of the period while poets and novelists wrote of music with admiration and affection; often they were one and the same. The epitome of this partnership was the Romantic Lied, or song; its foremost composer, Franz Schubert. Schubert was, in reality, a starving artist, not well known, sustained by a few friends, ill and destitute. Yet, in the last year of his short life, he wrote 144 Lieder , over 600 in his lifetime. To his melodic sensitivity Schubert added harmonic color and boldness, with modulations often far from the original tonality. The integral piano "accompaniment" often suggests a pictorial image of the text and is essential to the song's mood.

Aleksandr Scriabin, trained at the Moscow Conservatory, made an American performing debut in 1906. High-strung and excessive, he imparted the same qualities to his music and his performances. Originally influenced by the refinement of Chopin, Scriabin's music later became esoteric and otherworldly with the writing of nearly impossible left-hand configurations, trill effects, and a creative use of whole- and half-pedals, sounding previously unheard tones between the keys. Opus 8 was written in 1895, near the mid-point of his life. Dubal calls No. 11 "a 'touch' study of Russian melodic beauty." Louis Biancolli says of No.12, marked patetico, "Whoever plays it feels momentarily like a god. To have composed that etude is to have married the piano."

A worthy successor to Schubert in the writing of Lieder was Johannes Brahms, whose over 260 songs were written during various stages of his life. Brahms' ideal was the folk song, and never would he detract from a simple melody with an accompaniment too intricate or harmonically inappropriate. While his accompaniments may not be as pictorial as Schubert's, they are still varied, with extended arpeggios and syncopated rhythms. Donald J. Grout assigns to Brahms' Lieder "a certain classic gravity, an introspective, resigned, elegiac mood..."

In 1904, the premiere of Madama Butterfly, by Giacomo Puccini, was booed and hissed. The composer, then at the height if his career, sought refuge in a backstage dressing room. Thus the world greeted what was to become one of Puccini's most popular operas. The opera's initial failure may have been due to the nature of its vocal lines, which resembled spoken drama more than the Italian opera to which audiences were accustomed.

Madama Butterfly is the story of a fifteen-year-old Japanese girl, Cio-Cio San (Butterfly), who is sold in marriage to Lt. Pinkerton, a United States naval officer. Butterfly truly loves her husband, but Pinkerton takes the marriage contract lightly. He returns to his own country to marry "an American girl," as he had always intended. "The Humming Chorus" accompanies a scene in which Butterfly (dressed in her wedding gown), her maid, and a boy (her son by Pinkerton), await Pinkerton's return. They peer through holes in a paper wall. The maid and the boy soon fall asleep, but Butterfly maintains her vigil, standing silent and motionless.

Lohengrin, first performed in 1850, was an early form of Richard Wagner's "music drama," in which choruses, vocal solos and orchestral music were combined in long continuous musical scenes. The sources of this story are Wagner's favorites, medieval legend and folklore. In this telling, Lohengrin, knight of the Holy Grail, falls in love with Elsa, daughter of King Henry the Fowler (a real person who ruled Germany from 1818 to 1836). Elsa marries Lohengrin, even though he cannot reveal "the land from whence I came, nor my race or name." The "Bridal Chorus" is sung after the wedding, as chorus members lead Lohengrin and Elsa to the bridal chamber, get them settled, and leave them alone.

The music of "Waltz King" Johann Strauss represents Vienna of the 1860s, in an era of prosperity brought about by Emperor Franz Josefs encouragement of renovation, construction, and industry. Austria's nouveau riche, some of whom had become millionaires overnight, begged for escapist entertainment on which to spend their money: indulgent nightlife, glittering masked balls, and anew expensive wine called "champagne."

Die Fledermaus was Johann's only successful opera. In it, Prince Orlofsky, jaded and bored at the age of eighteen, gives a masked ball at which guests must enjoy themselves or be thrown out. His interest is piqued, however, by some amusing guests: a man who falls in love with his own (disguised) wife; a maid meeting her employer who is pretending to be a Marquis; and two fake Frenchmen who are really a jailer and his prisoner. The "Waltz" is sung as identities are revealed, jokes are found out, and everyone agrees, "It was great fun! Let's dance!"