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Piccolo Spoleto – Choral Festival of Churches

Bryan F. Black, Director
Dianne Power, Guest Accompanist

Saturday May 27, 2006, 6:00 PM
Bethel United Methodist Church
Charleston, South Carolina

Songs of Faith

Slow March from Shaker Songs (1997), arranged Kevin Siegfried (b. 1969)
Text and music by Brother Ephraim Frost, Whitewater, Ohio, 1872.

Bright Morning Star, arranged by Fred Squatrito
Kentucky Appalachian Folksong

Alleluia (1987) by Ralph Manuel (b. 1951)

Aftonbön - Evening Prayer (1990) by Egil Hovland (b. 1924)
Poem by Karin Boye (1900-1941) edited by Philip Brunelle
Paul Scherr, flute

Great Day (1997), Traditional Spiritual, arr. by Moses Hogan (b. 1957)
Ally Stewart, soprano

Songs of Love

Amor de mi Alma [You are the Love of my Soul] (2001) by Z. Randall Stroope (b. 1953)
Words by Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-1536)

See the Chariot at Hand (1931) from the opera Sir John in Love by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Poem by Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

Zelený Majerán [Green Marjoram] (1986) by Jirí Laburda (b. 1931)
Slovak Folk Song

Kein Schöner Land (2005), German Folk Song, arranged Bryan Black (b. 1969)

Just for Fun

Love Lost (1969) by Paul Sjolund (b. 1935)
1. One Perfect Rose - Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
2. When You’re Away - Samuel Hoffenstein (1890-1947)
3. Careless Talk - Mark Hollis
4. Your Little Hands - Samuel Hoffenstein

Cindy (1989), American Folk Song, arranged by Dr. Mack Wilberg (b. 1955)

Program Notes

by Michaelene Gorney

As President of the DeKalb Choral Guild, I can think of no better way to end our 28^th Anniversary Season than with this concert at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival of Churches 2006. For this concert, Director Bryan F. Black has once again selected a program true to the Guild's mission, one which promotes appreciation of the beauty and breadth of choral music. From the reverential to the rousing to the knee-slappingly ridiculous, the Guild embraces them all! Whether at home, in Charleston, or abroad, the DeKalb Choral Guild strives to be a choral world apart from all others, presenting music in the diversity of styles that is our hallmark, and presenting it well. Welcome!

Paying tribute to the Shakers with voice and movement, we open the concert with "Benediction," adapted from the song "Slow March" by Brother Ephraim Frost, Whitewater, Ohio, 1872.¹ The simplicity and utility of Shaker tunes is respectfully preserved in this and other arrangements by Kevin Siegfried, in 2003 an Adjunct Faculty member of the New England Conservatory of Music, a Harvard University Teaching Fellow, and resident composer of St. John's Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.² "Love ye one another."

The melody of Bright Morning Star, as heard in this concert, is based on a version sung by C. D. Howell, recorded on September 10, 1937, in Harlan, Kentucky, by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax for the Archive of American Song of the Library of Congress.³ This arrangement is by Fred Squatrito, pianist and teacher at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, who also lectures on the relationship of science and music, viewing both science and the arts as expressions of rational and irrational thinking, and music as a form of "heightened speech."⁴ "Day is a-breakin'…."

"Alleluia," an original composition by Ralph Manuel (b. 1951), earned its composer a place as finalist in the 2001 Newly-Published Music Competition. Manuel, who has written sacred choral anthems, vocal solos and duets, and keyboard arrangements, is a missionary of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. According to Hal Leonard publishers, he currently serves in Recife, Brazil, where he teaches music at the North Brazil Baptist Theological Seminary. "Alleluia."

Egil Hovland is a prolific Norwegian composer whose style embraces Gregorian chant, neo-classicism, and atonality. Having trained at the Oslo Conservatory as a church musician, he was organist and choirmaster in Fredrikstad for 46 years and has been active in updating liturgical books of the Church of Norway. Hovland writes: "Karin Boye (1900-1941) was a Swedish writer who expressed, especially through her lyrics, her deep personal conflict between the need to accept herself as she was versus the expectations of society that she would accept the ethical and social conventions of the day. The tension was so great that she finally took her own life. In 'Evening Prayer' Karin Boye brings together her personal confession and her deep longing for total surrender. This gives the text a gripping atmosphere which the composer has attempted to capture in his music."⁵ "…you can finish what I found of joy and sorrow."

According to Larry Marietta⁶, "'Great Day' originated during the Civil War with the promised Great Day when all the slaves would be emancipated…..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." Pianist, conductor, clinician, and arranger, Moses Hogan (1957-2003) graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, later studying at the Juillard School and Louisiana State University. At the time of his untimely death, greatly mourned in the worldwide choral community, he was artist-in-residence at Dillard University in New Orleans and, since 1993, had been artistic director of the Moses Hogan Chorale, an outgrowth of the New World ensemble he organized in 1980 to explore choral music.⁷ "Great Day the righteous marchin"…"

The poem "Amor de mi Alma" ("You Are the Love of my Soul") was written by Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-1536), a leading poet of the Spanish Renaissance, a man skilled in "music, arms, letters, and in the battles of love," who died at the age of 33 of combat wounds. His poem is heard tonight in a sumptuously rich musical setting by Z. Randall Stroope (b. 1953), Kayser Professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, a conductor, lecturer and composer who has performed with choruses throughout the world.⁸ In listening to this setting, it is hard to imagine either man, poet or musician, being more passionate about anything except that done "por vos."

Poetry of Ben Jonson (1572-1637) serves as inspiration for "See the Chariot at Hand," the Wedding Chorus from a cantata by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) called In Windsor Forest.⁹ "See the chariot at hand here of Love," a tribute to Venus, is the first line of Jonson's poem "The Triumph," the fourth in A Celebration of Charis in Ten Lyric Pieces. ¹⁰ Vaughan Williams presents Jonson's poem as a gentle waltz of lilting triplets, with slower-moving duplets providing rhythmic contrast and dramatic emphasis. "And well the car Love guideth."

Zelený Majerán [Green Marjoram] (1986) is a Slovak folk song, heard on this concert as arranged by Jirí Laburda (b. 1931), Czech composer and professor at the Conservatory of Music in Prague. ¹¹ This prize-winning setting of Slovakian folk poetry reveals Laburda's affection for amateur choirs and a sensitive understanding of text underlay and rich modal harmonies. The Guild was pleased to sing this for the composer at the St. Nikolas Church in Prague during a tour of Germany and the Czech Republic in September, 2005. "…vedela by, komu mám rúcku dat'."

"Kein Schöner Land" is an old German folk-song with text by A. W. F. von Zuccalmaglio, arranged by Bryan F. Black "with love for the DeKalb Choral Guild, European Tour – 2005."¹² Says Black, who holds a Zertifikat Deutsch als Fremdsprache from the Goethe-Institut in Berlin, "How can one resist the charm of a folk song that ends the day by thinking of beautiful singing under the oak trees with wishes for a peaceful night?" "…unter Linden Abendzeit."

Love Lost, written in 1969 by Paul Sjolund, an American composer from the Midwest, is a cycle of satirical poems on love. The first was written by Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), an American critic, satirical poet, and short-story writer also known for her malicious wit. The second and fourth are by Samuel Hoffenstein (1890-1947), a writer of light verse for Collier's magazine, referred to in The Blockhead Journal as "The thinking man's Ogden Nash." The third is by Mark Hollis. The texts are indeed satirical, punctuated with poignant doses of reality and practicality both amusing and painful. But such can be love, and we cannot be less than honest! "When you're away…"

"Cindy," an American folk song, extols the virtues of a young woman so colorful and so full of life that she requires two choirs to adequately portray her passion. This boisterous, knee-slapping tribute to her charms is one of many masterful arrangements by Dr. Mack Wilberg (b. 1955), Associate Conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and conductor of the Temple Square Chorale. Feel free to slap along! "If I can't have my Cindy, I'll have no girl at all!"

References

¹ Shaker Songs arr. Kevin Siegdfried, earthsongs, Corville. Oregon, 1997.

² Sound Currents 2, http://www.soundcurrents.org/index.html.

³ "Bright Morning Star," arr. Fred Squatrito, Third Planet Music, Santa Cruz, California.

⁴ "The Art and Science of Music: An Interview with Cabrillo Instructor Fred Squatrito," cyber-times.com, Times Publishing Group, 2006, http://www.cyber-times.com/newspapers/archives/00000036.shtml.

⁵ "Karin Boye's Evening Prayer (Afterbön)" by Egil Hovland, ed. Philip Brunelle, Norsk Musikforlag A/S, Oslo, Norway, for Walton Music, Hal Leonard Corporation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

⁶ Music Director of the First Congregational Church of Berkeley

⁷ "Primarily A Cappella, Moses Hogan," http://www.singers.com/choral/moseshogan.html.

⁸ "Amor de mi Alma" by Z. Randall Stroope, Walton Music, Inc., 2004

⁹ "See the Chariot at Hand" by R Vaughan Williams, text by Ben Jonson, Oxford University Press, New York, New York, and Oxford, England, 1931

¹⁰ The Songs and Poems of Ben Jonson., Philip Allan & Co., London, 1924

¹¹ "Zelený Majerán" by Jirí Laburda, Alliance Publications, Fish Creek, Wisconsin, 2000.

¹² "Kein Schöner Land" by Bryan F. Black, 2005.