©1998-2008
The DeKalb Choral Guild, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Bryan F. Black, Director
Leanne Elmer Herrmann, Accompanist

Presented in conjunction with Arts & Ideas at Oglethorpe University

Saturday, May 17, 2003
Conant Center for the Arts
Oglethorpe University
Atlanta, Georgia

Celebrating 25 years of music, camaraderie and community

Fanfare

Buccinate in Neomenia Tuba by Giovanni Croce (c. 1560-1609)
From Prompuarii sacros harmonicos sive motettos, Strasbourg, 1612. Text: Psalm 81:3

Serenade to Music (1938) by Ralph Vaughan-Williams (1872-1958)
Text by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Soloists Robert Amar Ben Bailey Terry Carpenter Peggy Emery Polly Nelms Hickman Victoria Lawson Barb Pettitt Richard Wagner Laura Wyatt

Instrumentalists Lisa Morrison, violin Robert Goin, bass Lisa Sayre, oboe Joe Butler, clarinet Jeanne Carere, flute Amy Black, horn Jeff Kerschner, timpani Leanne Elmer Herrmann, piano

Psalmii

Sicut Cervus by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525-1594)
Text: Psalm 42:1

Psalmo Brasileiro [Brazilian Psalm] (1941) by Jean Berger (1909-2002)
Text by Jorge de Lima
Sopranos: Polly Nelms Hickman, Victora Lawson, Barb Pettitt, Lauren Pickard

Blazhén muzh (1912) by Pavel Chesnokov (1877-1944)
From Op. 44. Texts from Psalm 1:1, 2:11-12, 3:9
John Scott, baritone

Richte Mich, Gott [Vindicate me, God] (1844) by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Text: Psalm 43

Intermission

Processional

Cantus in Harmonia (1999) by Dr. Mack Wilberg (b. 1955)
Text adapted from Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day by Alexander Pope (1688-1745)
Melody based on the medieval secular tune "Olim in Armonia"
Percussion: Ellery Trafford, Jeff Kerschner, and Jason Mraz
Piano: Leanne Elmer Herrmann and Verleen Baerg

Reflections and Recognitions

In honor of the Guild's twenty-five years, we take a look back at our accomplishments
and look forward to a future of excellent music.

William O. Baker, Founding Director (1978-1992)
Mary E. Root, Director (1992-2000)
Bryan F. Black, Director (2000-present)
Leanne Elmer Herrmann, Accompanist (1988-present)

Folk Songs and Spirituals

Ergen Deda [The Old Bachelor] by Petar Lyondev
Bulgarian Folk Song
Percussion: Ellery Trafford

Sigalagala [Let there be ululation!] arr. S. A. Otieno
Traditional Luo (Kenyan) Spiritual
Soloists: Bob Amar and Terese Rabbitt
Percussion: Ellery Trafford, Jeff Kerschner, and Jason Mraz

Love and Pizen, Op. 60, No. 3 by Kirke Mechem (b. 1925)
from Choral Variations on American Folksongs (1995)

Great Day! (1989) arr. André J. Thomas
Traditional Spiritual

World Premiere

If Music Be the Food of Love (2003) by Donald McCullough (b. 1955)
Text by Colonel Henry Heveningham

Future Promise

The Promise of Living (1954) by Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Thanksgiving Song from The Tender Land, Words by Horace Everett
Piano: Leanne Elmer Herrmann and Verleen Baerg

Program Notes

by Michaelene Gorney

Could there be a more daunting task than the selection of music for this remarkable occasion, the 25th Anniversary of the DeKalb Choral Guild? Such music must surely represent not only a diversity of choral styles, but the history of the Guild itself as we have grown, and continue to grow, in "Concordia et Harmonia." We meet this challenge tonight with a program that celebrates, ponders, and revels in music expressed in a variety of genres, languages, rhythms, and moods. Welcome to the 25th Anniversary Concert of the DeKalb Choral Guild!

The evening begins with a call to blow the trumpet in celebration of the season of the new moon. "Buccinate in neomenia tuba" by Giovanni da Croce (c. 1557-1609) represents the polychoral style as performed in Venice at the Cathedral of Saint Mark, a bastion of high-church tradition in the 16th century. The list of choirmasters at Saint Mark's was a virtual "Who's Who" of renowned conductors and singers, all of them composers as well. Among them were: the Gabrieli's, Andrea and Giovanni; Gioseffo Zarlino, a theorist and the first to give documented prominence to the "major"-sounding Ionian mode; and Croce, one of Zarlino's students, who became choirmaster at Saint Mark's in 1603. Characteristics of the Venetian style to be heard in Buccinate are the cori spezzati (divided choir), the antiphonal singing, and the joining of choirs for a massed ending. "Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon on the day of our solemn feast."

The exuberance and fanfare of the Croce are followed by the "soft stillness" and "sweetest touches" of "Serenade to Music" by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). This evocative tribute to music was composed for and dedicated to Sir Henry J. Wood, eminent conductor of the orchestra at Queen's Hall in London, who, with Robert Newman, founded the successful Promenade Concerts that are today simply referred to as "the Proms." At its 1938 premier, Sergei Rachmaninoff was seen to have tears in his eyes; he later wrote to Sir Henry that he had never been so moved by music. Here are set the classic words of William Shakespeare, taken from The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene I. In this nocturnal scene, set in Portia's garden, the characters Jessica and Lorenzo thoughtfully ponder music and its effects, both heavenly and earthly. Vaughan Williams' introduction to the "Serenade for Music" allows for performance by a combination of soloists and chorus, even though it was originally written for sixteen selected soloists whose initials are immortalized in his score. With tonight's performance, the Guild reveals another facet of itself with soloists who are, first and foremost, Guild members. "How many things by season season'd are to their right praise and true perfection!"

The 150 poems contained in the Book of Psalms have repeatedly been used as texts for musical compositions, first as chant melodies within the context of the early Christian church, then as the basis for polyphonic settings (with separate melodies sung simultaneously) beginning in the 15th century. Inscriptions indicate that the Psalms were to be sung according to specific melodies and perhaps with instrumental accompaniment—would that we could hear them in their original form!

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594) was born in the small town in Italy from which he took his name. From choirboy to choirmaster at the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, he lived his entire life in that city, refusing offers that would have taken him elsewhere. Later in life, Palestrina was charged with revising liturgical books to enact changes made by the Council of Trent, changes intended to purge Roman Catholic church music of "barbarisms, obscurities, contrarieties, and superfluities," "a result of the clumsiness or negligence or even wickedness of the composers, scribes, and printers." As a Counter Reformation conservative, Palestrina "blushed and grieved" to have earlier in his life written madrigals that were settings of profane love poems. Palestrina's church music exemplifies the stile antico, a conservative style for its time as compared to the stile moderno, the progressive writing practiced by his younger contemporaries. His music, which was copied by composers wishing to learn polyphony, embraced the clarity of individual melodic lines and allowed dissonance (clashing of notes) only when associated with smaller note values, on certain portions of the beat (usually unaccented), and with strict rules regarding its placement within the melody. The result is the smoothly flowing, sublimely polyphonic—indeed, almost homophonic - texture heard in the motet "Sicut Cervus," a setting of Psalm 42:1. Also to be heard in the opening of "Sicut Cervus" is the Palestrina curve, a gradual rise in the melody followed by a downward movement that balances the line with almost mathematical precision. It is not without reason that Palestrina was, and is still, considered a master of his craft.
"As the hart desires the water-brooks…"

Composer Jean Berger (1909-2002) was born to a Jewish family in Hamm, Germany. His international orientation began in his twenties, when he lived in Paris and toured Europe and the Near East as a pianist and accompanist. From 1939 to 1941, he was assistant conductor of the Treatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro and on the faculty of the Conservatoire Brasileiro de Musica. There he learned Portuguese and, using Brazil as his home base, toured South America. In 1941, Berger arrived in New York City, was drafted into the army and became a United States citizen in 1943. After the war, he worked for CBS and NBC as an arranger and accompanist. A new teaching career then took him to Middlebury College in Vermont, the University of Illinois, the University of Colorado, and Colorado Women's College. In "Psalmo Brasileiro," sung tonight with the Portuguese text by Jorge de Lima, Berger embraces the South American rhythms and language with which he was so familiar. The text is a compilation of Psalm fragments and a prayer to the Blessed Virgin. These are followed by much rejoicing on that word which, of all words in any language, must be the word most often heard in choral music: Alleluia!

Pavel Chesnokov (1877-1944), born near Moscow, graduated from the Moscow Synodal Choir School in 1895 and from the Moscow Conservatory in 1917, where he became a professor in 1920. He also taught in Moscow public schools, directed church choirs, conducted the Russian Choral Society, the Moscow State Choir and the Moscow Academic Choir, and taught conducting. His more than 500 sacred choral works were all written before the communist revolution of 1917. "Blazhén Muzh," No. 2 of Chesnokov's All-Night Vigil, Op. 44, is a setting of Psalm 1:1, Psalm 2:11-12 and Psalm 3:9. The All-Night Vigil, celebrated within the Orthodox Church every Saturday and on the eve of feast days, is actually three services in one - the Great Vespers, Matins, and the First Hour – which take place from evening into the night and through the dawn which follows. Although the Psalms of "Blazhén Muzh" are traditionally recited during Vespers, this work, for solo voice and chorus, is more suitable for the concert hall than the church, where solo chanters would traditionally be accompanied by a sustained drone. According to music editor Vladimir Morosan, Chesnokov's music is characterized by a variety of textures, from "austere unisons" to "sumptuous eight-voice polyphony," and colorful harmony spiced with chromaticism. The dark weightiness typical of Russian choral music is achieved by using the rich lower registers of all voice parts, most notably the bass. Alliluya.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847), born into a Jewish family which became Protestant upon its move to Berlin, was a phenomenally talented and successful composer from an early age. Within the span of his brief life, he produced hundreds of stage, orchestral, choral, piano, and chamber works, both sacred and secular, and his death was mourned from Russia to America. Among the most well known of his works are the incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Hebrides for orchestra, and the oratorio Elijah, previously performed by the DeKalb Choral Guild. In this setting of "Richte mich, Gott," Mendelssohn successfully imparts heroic Romanticism to the text of Psalm 43. In early 1844, he completed settings of Psalms 2, 22 and 43 for the cathedral choir of Berlin, having recently visited Italy to study the earlier polyphonic masters. (It is hard to imagine that Palestrina and Croce were not among them!) Although Music Editor Charles L. Fuller finds this setting somewhat "Venetian" in style due to its contrasting vocal colors and conservative counterpoint, that assessment seems a bit forced; it is essentially a product of its time, with its doubling of the melody by strong male voices, its solid hymn-like chordal movement, and the dance-like variation of the original melody in 3/8 meter. "…your light and your truth, let them guide me.."

Unlike the Psalms, there is nothing of the religious or prayerful about the ritualistic "Cantus in Harmonia" by Dr. Mack Wilberg (b. 1955), Associate Conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and conductor of the Temple Square Chorale. Though subtitled "to St. Cecilia," the work is not a tribute to Cecilia, the patron saint of music, but rather a laudation to music itself, her craft. The tune heard in "Cantus in Harmonia" is based on "Olim in armonia," found in Secular Medieval Latin Song: An Anthology, edited by medieval scholar Bryan Gillingham. To this tune Wilberg adapts a joy-inspiring text from the "Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day" by Alexander Pope (1688-1744), poet of the Enlightenment. Pope, echoing Shakespeare as heard in Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music, wonders at the ability of music to inspire joy, exaltation, healing, sleep, and, in its martial mode, the call to arms. "Cantus in harmonia, cantus in concordia."

Tonight's homage to folk music, another seemingly infinite source of choral inspiration, takes us to Eastern Europe, Africa, Appalachia and African-America. We begin with "Ergen Deda," a Bulgarian folk song sung by the women of the Guild in an arrangement by Petar Lyondev (b. 1938). According to editor Dr. Madlen Batchvarova, Director of Choral Studies at Hanover College in Indiana, this song comes from the Shope region near the Bulgarian capital of Sophia. It tells of an old bachelor who struts down the street in festive attire (including a "kalpak" or sheepskin hat), hoping to find a new wife as he joins the young ladies engaged in a circle dance ("horo") at a village festival. But alas for the old bachelor, they all run away, leaving him only with Angelina ("the angel girl"), the youngest. Elements of Bulgarian folk music that can be heard in "Ergen Deda" are its asymmetrical rhythm (7/16), close intervals between voices, and the often drone-like repetitiveness of the harmonizing voices. Many thanks to Dr. Batchvarova for her sharing her knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, Bulgarian music and language! "Doom ta-ka-ta-ka-ta...Hei!"

"Sigalagala," arranged by S. A Otieno, is a spiritual sung in Luo, a language of the Nyanza Province of Kenya that is also spoken in Tanzania. Featured in the last stanza of "Sigalagala" is the vocal practice of ululation, described by Albert Alan Owen as "a kind of vocal howling and wailing, used to simulate and stimulate great emotion," in this case, joy and jubilation at the coming of Jesus. Owen notes that this characteristic of African music, in the form of non-specific pitches, is essential to the 20th century blues, as are the call-and-response patterns, repetition, and the layering of voices and rhythm instruments. Arranger S. A. Otieno, who, according to Earthsongs music publisher, died a few years ago, was a member of the Muungano National Choir of Kenya formed in 1979 and directed by Boniface Mganga. "Let there be ululation!"

In Choral Variations on American Folk Songs, composer Kirke Mecham (b. 1925) sees himself as continuing the folk song tradition, one in which tunes are "handed down by memory from singer to singer, from region to region, from generation to generation," with changes along the way. "Love and Pizen (Springfield Mountain)," the third of the Choral Variations, tells the tale of one Thomas Myrick of Springfield Mountain (now Wilbraham), Massachusetts, who was engaged to marry Sarah Blake. But alas, Thomas was bitten by a rattlesnake in Connecticut on August 7, 1761, and died. This song was originally very somber, urging listeners to repent and to "be prepared when God doth call." But it soon became the subject of parody and is found in several versions, including one for the music hall in the 1830s. Mecham's version evokes the comic melodrama of the music hall and has an original refrain with a text composed of nonsense syllables, some intended to imitate the banjo. "Too roo tiddleum, fling dang diddle dum."

According to Larry Marietta, Music Director of the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, "… 'Great Day' originated during the Civil War with the promised Great Day when all the slaves would be emancipated. Characteristically, this spiritual carries images from several passages of scripture: from Nehemiah (restoration of the walls of Jerusalem), Revelation (a look at the walls of the New Jerusalem at the end of time), and Leviticus (the year of Jubilee when all will be liberated). The tune was eventually written down and arranged by Joseph T. Jones (1902-1983), a Presbyterian minister born of slave parents, who is credited with establishing the Sunday School Movement of the [southern] Presbyterian Church of the U.S." André J. Thomas, Director of Choral Studies and Professor of Choral Music Education at Florida State University arranged this evening's version of "Great Day." In addition to his work as a conductor and a clinician in the United States, Europe, Asia, New Zealand, and Australia, Dr. Thomas has distinguished himself as a composer and arranger with many publications to his credit. Our conductor fondly remembers singing this arrangement with Dr. Thomas during his years at FSU. Performed with a solid stately tempo, "Great Day" is a solemn processional moved forward by sweeping arpeggios in the piano and a rhythmic choral response to the expansive opening three-note motive. The arrangement builds to a strong finale as massed voices swell in unison, lending their collective strength to the final proclamation. "Great day, the righteous marchin'…"

With great pleasure we present tonight the world premiere of "If Music Be the Food of Love" by Donald McCullough, commissioned by the DeKalb Choral Guild, Bryan Black, Conductor, on the occasion of its Twenty-Fifth Anniversary. The Guild became familiar with McCullough's work in April 2001, when performing his "We Remember Them" (1999) and Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps (1998) at a concert commemorating Yam Ha'Shoah, the Day of Holocaust Remembrance. McCullough, music director of the Master Chorale of Washington and the Master Chorale Chamber Singers, last weekend presented another world premiere with a performance of his Let My People Go!, a series of spiritual arrangements and dramatic readings. "If Music Be the Food of Love," tonight's offering, takes as its text a 17th century poem by Colonel Henry Heveningham. While the first line of the poem may be Shakespeare's (from Twelfth Night), the rest is all Heveningham's, and now McCullough's, as the composer intuitively sets these impassioned words to music with striking effect. With this commissioned work, one which will certainly be performed many more times and by many different voices, the Dekalb Choral Guild extends the choral legacy beyond itself for years to come. "Tho' yet the treat is only sound, Sure I must perish by your charms…"

"The Promise of Living" by Aaron Copland (1900-1990) is the choral finale to Act I of The Tender Land, originally commissioned by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II as a television opera. The libretto of The Tender Land was written by Horace Everett, the pseudonym of Erik Johns, a dancer and painter. In the opera, "The Promise of Living" is sung at Thanksgiving dinner, where it serves to voice the varied and differing dreams, hopes and aspirations of three generations of an American farm family. Copland intended to provide operatic material that would be natural for young American singers to sing and to perform; thus his setting preserves the rhythm of natural speech, largely as unrhymed free verse and with one note per syllable. The result is a folk-like music that does not actually quote folk music, much like the "American pastoral" ballet Appalachian Spring. Director Bryan F. Black envisioned The Promise of Living as a fit ending to this 25th Anniversary Concert of the DeKalb Choral Guild because it so realistically describes the Guild as we rehearse and perform: loving our labor, sharing our love, growing, singing in joy, knowing the fields, working together, and bringing forth a harvest, though, to quote Heveningham once again, "the treat is only sound." "And let our song be heard...The promise of living…is labor and sharing and loving."

Sources used in the preparation of these notes:
Music in the Renaissance by Gustave Reese, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1959
A History of Western Music by Donald Jay Grout, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973
Georgia State University Symphonic Wind Ensemble and University Singers Concert Program, February 21, 2003.
Vaughan Williams, Hyperion CD A66420, Christopher Palmer, annotator
"Blazhén Muzh", Op. 44, No. 2, by Pavel Chesnokov, ed. Vladimir Morosan, Music Russica, 1997
"Brasilian Psalm" by Jean Berger, G. Schirmer, Inc., 1941
"Cantus in Harmonia (to St. Cecilia)" by Mack Wilberg, Oxford University Press, 1993
"Choral Variations on American Folk Songs" by Kirke Mecham, G. Schirmer, Inc., 1995
Correspondence and interviews with Madlen Batchvarova, Bryan F. Black and Donald McCullough
http://www.springfieldchorale.org
http://www.canticanova.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/
http://www.artsongupdate.org
http://www.academyofsaintcecilia.com/thoughtsASC.htm
http://www.hn.psu.edu/Faculty/KKemmerer/poets/pope/default.htm
http://members.aol.com/aaocompose/20thCentury3.html
http://www.music.fsu.edu/bios/thomas.htm
http://www.fccb.org/music/m990117.html
http://www.masterchorale.org
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/acrhive
http://www/theatlantic.com/issues/2000/01/001schiff