Program Notes and Texts
Introduction
I would certainly like to praise music with all my heart as the excellent
gift of God which it is and to commend it to everyone. But I am so
overwhelmed by the diversity and magnitude of its virtues and benefits
that I can find neither beginning nor end or method for my discourse. As
much as I want to commend it, my praise is bound to be wanting and
inadequate. For who can comprehend it all? … We can mention only one
point, namely, that next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest
praise. She is mistress and governess of those human emotions which
govern men or more often overwhelm them.
– Thus wrote Martin Luther in his Preface to the 1538 collection of
“Delightful Motets” by his friend, the music publisher of Wittenberg,
Georg Rhau. Luther’s words served as a good introduction 477 years
ago for 52 motets that covered the entire church year – and they can
do so today for these 14 songs (and anthems & motets & chansons &
madrigals & incantations & hymns) that cover a wide range of emotions
and eras. The diversity is wonderful and it is ingrained in music. We may
not be able to “comprehend it all,” but we can certainly enjoy it all.
Réjouissez-vous, bourgeoises by Jean Mouton
Réjouissez-vous bourgeoises, Rejoice, good city women,
Belles filles de Lyon. Beautiful girls of Lyon.
A Lyon il y’a trois choses, In Lyon there are three things,
Toutes trois de grand renom: All three are famous:
La premiére c’est le Rhône The first is the Rhone River
Qui s’en va en Avignon. Which goes to Avignon.
L’autre chose c’est la Saône The other thing is the Saone River
Qui porte le grand poisson. Which has big fish.
C’est pour donner aux marchands They are for the merchants
Quand au fournir ils viendront. When they come to buy at market.
This song or chanson is not quite a riddle – it’s more like flirting. It takes
place pretty quickly, so you have to pay attention to how the singers
never name the third of “the three things” the city of Lyon is famous
for. Well, you actually don’t have to pay attention, for they’re right in
front of you, and they’ve already been named: “the beautiful city girls of
Lyon.”
The words of this flirting song are both flattering and provocative. It’s
enticing to be told that you possess as much renown as the two rivers
whose confluence created the city of Lyon. But it’s more than a little
insulting to be closely associated with the big catch of fish to be had in
the Saône River. And certainly no beautiful girl wants to feel like she’s
there “for the merchants who arrive to provision themselves.” The
response of the pretty city women, however, is left to our imagination.
The song is, after all, like bait – or, to make a pun, like a dance of premating.
Mon coeur se recommande à vous by Orlando di Lasso
Mon coeur se recommende à vous
Tout plein d’ennui et de martyre; Au moins en dépit des jaloux
Faites qu’adieu vous puisse dire.
My heart commends itself to you,
full of weariness and torment;
despite jealous eyes, at least
let me bid you farewell.
Ma bouche qui savait sourire
Et conter propos gracieux
Ne fait maintenant que maudire
Ceux qui m’ont banni de vos yeux. My mouth that was accustomed to smile
and to speak with elegance,
now only curses
those who banished me from your eyes.
This song is sad – but it’s also beautiful. It’s a love letter, written by
someone who was once very close but now is far away. It’s both a
formal farewell – an expression of the kind of pride that wants to have
the last word – and an appeal for one last meeting, even if it’s only to
say the French word for “goodbye,” which is such a strong one it entered
directly into English: “adieu.”
The song, perhaps like all love songs, is a little novel unto itself. There
are other characters in the picture, but we don’t know exactly who they
are. In the first verse, they’re described as those who would be jealous
if the lover, by letter or in person, delivered his final farewell. Who
knows, perhaps the lover has multiple rivals. The second verse refers to
the unknown characters (whom the lover could name very well!) who
have been the cause of the separation. Who knows, they might be her
parents, or his parents for that matter!
The love letter is also a clever poem, containing an indirect message:
“Look how well I write! Doesn’t my pretty poem make you want to love
me anew?”
Orlando di Lasso (I, of course, prefer the name by which he was known
in his natal Belgium – Roland de Lassus) composed this poignant
chanson at some point in the middle of his prolific career. It is one of the
150 “French chansons” he composed!
This famous composer died right when young Shakespeare’s career was
beginning. I mention this because I just have to share the discovery I
made while writing this – it turns out that Shakespeare was a fan of
Roland de Lassus! He anglicized one of his French songs in the last act
of Henry IV, Part 2, where Falstaff is making merry while waiting for
the news that his old bosom buddy, Prince Hal, has become Henry V.
The original begins, “Un jour vis foulon qui fouloit,” “One day I saw a
fuller who was fulling [his fabric].” Justice Silence sings a snatch of the
English version: “Do me right and dub me knight!” (For more songs from
Shakespeare, stay tuned – not only to this concert, but to the Chorale’s
April 2016 concert, “on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the
Bard’s death.”)
Gala Del Diá by Carlos Guastavino, words by Arturo Vazquez
Amo la luz del alba porque te besa
y te devuelve viva y traviesa.
I love the light of dawn because it kisses you,
and makes you alive, alive and fanciful.
Erguida espiga al viento del mediodía,
Amo el sol que te dora madura y mía.
Straight tassel to the wind of noon,
I love the sun that gilds you, ripe and mine.
Ay! corazón de la noche, gala del día!
Mi vida estoy quemando por tu alegría.
Alas! Heart of the night, finery of the day!
My life, I am longing for your happiness!
Cuando la tarde llora su luz perdida,
Amo el trino que prendes sobre mi vida.
When the afternoon cries for its lost light,
I love the song you put in my life.
Quiero tanto a la noche que es infinita,
Como tu hora dulce, obscura y tibia.
I love so much that night that is infinite,
As your sweet hour, dark and warm.
Ay! corazón de la noche, gala del día!
Mi vida estoy quemando por tu alegría.
Alas! Heart of the night, finery of the day!
My life, I am longing for your happiness!
The song is a passionate love song – a genre that never grows old. It is in
Spanish, so there may be something “lost in translation.” The main thing
that is “lost” is the sense of both completion and longing suggested by
the five rhymed couplets. (Note that they all end in “a” or “i-a.”) My
favorite rhyme is that of the second verse, which links melodía with día.
As English speakers we can also be a little envious, for such evocatively
repetitive rhymes are hard to come by in our Anglo-Saxon tongue!
Note also the progression of the poem as it follows the arc of the sun
from the dawn’s early light to the infinite, inviting darkness of the night.
The inevitable progression is interrupted in the middle by the passionate
refrain which combines both day and night. Here night is mentioned
first, but it is the comparison of the lover to the day which provides the
title of the song: Gala del día – “finery of the day.”
Whether you imagine that the words are sung by a man to a woman, or
vice versa, it doesn’t really matter. But we perhaps should question the
lover’s honesty in exclaiming that he/she wants “your happiness.” I think
he/she is really looking out after his/her own alegría!
Lovers Love the Spring by David C. Dickau, words by William Shakespeare
It was a lover and a lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o’er the green corn-field did pass,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding:
Sweet lovers love the spring.
Between the acres of the rye,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
These pretty country folks would lie
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding:
Sweet lovers love the spring.
This carol they began that hour,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
How that a life was but a flower
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding:
Sweet lovers love the spring.
And therefore take the present time,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
For love is crowned with the prime,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding:
Sweet lovers love the spring.
In Shakespeare’s As You Like It (a wonderful pastoral comedy that takes
place in France which is really England) two page boys sing this song
at the request of Touchstone, a royal clown of the exiled court. He and
Audrey, his farmer’s daughter intended, are getting married the next
day. So the “carol” that the page boys begin “this hour” is Shakespeare’s
equivalent of a wedding song. It certainly fits the context, for
Touchstone and Audrey “have the hots” for each other. (And the country
song, “We Got Married in a Fever,” had not yet been written!)
Shakespeare, we all know, could be bawdy – as we hear in verse two!
And he could be terribly politically incorrect, as we’ll see in the witches’
incantation from Macbeth later in the program. But he was being true to
himself – “holding a mirror up to nature as it were,” to quote a famous
line from Hamlet.
Songs which start their lives in one context are soon adapted and
adopted into other settings and uses. So what was originally a “prenuptial song” from Act V, scene iii of As You Like It takes on a life of its
own in this choral setting – which we are hearing closer to “harvest
time” than to “spring time, the only pretty ring time…”
Ave Maria by Josquin des Prés
Ave Maria,
Gratia plena,
Dominus tecum, Virgo serena.
Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with Thee,
Virgin fair.
Ave coelorum Domina, Maria plena gratia, Coelestia, terrestria, Mundum replens laetitia.
Hail, Mistress of the Heavens,
Mary, full of grace,
With heavenly and earthly joy
Thou fill’st the world.
Ave cujus nativitas Nostra fuit solemnitas;
Ut lucifer lux oriens Verum solem praeveniens. Hail Thou, whose birth
Became our feast,
As the morning star, a rising light,
Thour precedest the true sun.
Ave pia humilitas, Sine viro fecunditas, Cujus annuntiatio
Nostra fuit salvatio.
Hail blessed humility.
Inviolate fecundity,
Whose Annunciation
Became our salvation.
Ave vera virginitas, Immaculata castitas, Cujus purificatio Nostra fuit purgatio. Hail, true virginity,
Unspotted chastity,
Whose purification
Became our expiation.
Ave praeclara omnibus. Angelicis virtutibus, Cujus fuit assumptio Nostra glorificatio. Hail Thou, who shinist
With all angelic virtues,
Whose Assumption
Became our glorification.
O Mater Dei, O Mother of God,
Memento mei. Be mindful of me.
Amen. Amen.
Josquin des Prés’s Ave Maria is a choral hymn to the Virgin Mary. But
at the same time it is a love song. Technically it’s a motet that would
be sung as a response to the reading of Scripture during the Mass.
Through its beautiful tenderness, the piece has taken on a life of its
own. It has had to compete (since 1558!) with the shorter version of the
“Ave Maria” which became the standard spoken prayer to the Virgin, as
repeated in the petitions which form the prayer chain of the Rosary.
The motet is also a prayer that rhymes. It begins with the greeting of the
Angel Gabriel to Mary in Luke 1:28. It then expands on Mary’s favored
status and future role as declared by her cousin Elizabeth: “And blessed
be the fruit of your womb.” (Luke 1:42) The hymn covers a large part of
the church year – moving as it does from Christmas to February 2nd (“the
Purification of Mary”) to August 15th (the “Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin Mary”). It concludes with a poignant personal prayer which is
more powerful than the familiar, generic “Remember us sinners” of the
Rosary. It is a first-person singular plea: “Remember me!”
Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden by J.S. Bach
Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden, und preiset ihn, alle Völker!
Denn seine Gnade und Wahrheit waltet über uns in Ewigkeit.
Alleluja!
Praise the Lord, all nations!
Extol him, all peoples!
For great is his steadfast love toward us;
and the faithfulness of the Lord
endures for ever.
Alleluia!
– Psalm 117
This motet is of course a Psalm. And leave it to Bach to take the shortest
one of all 150 and expand it to almost eight minutes of music.
As a Psalm, it follows the structure of Hebrew poetry. It doesn’t rhyme
with ending words, it “rhymes” with repeated thoughts or ideas. (And
thoughts and ideas are not lost in translation!) In verse one, “praise and
nation” rhyme with “extol and peoples.” And in verse two, “steadfast
love” rhymes with “faithfulness.”
So sit back and enjoy the ride as Bach both explores and expresses the
meaning of the words in music. If you don’t know any German, don’t
worry. The motet concludes with variations on a Hebrew word that has
entered unchanged into almost every other language: Alleluia. When we
remember that alleluia means “praise the Lord,” we see Bach’s clever
way of preserving the structure of Psalm 117: it begins and ends the
same way. It is what the French would call a “rondeau.”
Bach, with Luther’s theology behind him, may be said to “govern
our emotions” with this cheerful, elegant and exuberant rendition of
Scripture.
Alleluia by Randall Thompson
Randall Thompson’s 1940 “Alleluia” has become a classic. It is a
perennial favorite for choirs. Why is this so? Well, I think all of us, even
us non-musicians, respond to its beauty and to what I would call its
“momentum.” It carries you along with it. It’s a stream of sound. Like a
stream’s water, it has only one element – one word – “Alleluia” (at least
until the final “Amen”). We have variations on this single word, as the
stream of music courses on.
Perhaps the effect of the piece is different for the singers than for us
in the audience. For the members of the Chamber Chorale are both
flowing down the stream and they are creating it. We are more passive.
The music simply flows over us. (Intermission would be a good time to
ask one of the singers about how they feel when they’re singing this
famous work.)
I know how I feel when hearing it. It brings me back to my love of France
and things French. Thompson wrote the piece out of the strong emotion
he experienced after France was defeated by Germany in the Blitzkrieg
of June 1940.
Perhaps coming right after Bach’s setting of Psalm 117, I don’t need to
repeat that “Alleluia” means “Praise the Lord.” But I think it helps to
know that the Hebrew word “Amen” means Truth – God’s Truth – and
contains within it the religious hope that God’s righteousness will be
done.
Double, Double Toil and Trouble by Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, words from
Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
Thrice, and once the hedge-pig whin’d.
Harpier cries: ’Tis time, ’tis time.
Round about the cauldron go,
In the poison’d entrails throw:
Toad that under cold stone
Days and nights had thirty-one
Swelter’d venom, sleeping got,
Boil thou first in the charmed pot.
Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake
In the cauldron boil and bake,
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog.
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing.
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock, digg’d in dark.
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat and slips of yew,
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips.
Finger of birth-strangl’d babe,
Ditch-delivered by a drab.
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For ingredients for our cauldron.
Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks, whoever knocks!
The descriptive word for this famous passage from Macbeth (with
its very famous refrain) derives from the Latin word for song. It is
an incantation. It’s chanted by the Three Witches, the “Three Weird
Sisters,” at the beginning of Act IV, scene 1. After the first line, it is
entirely in rhymed couplets. The third line gives us one of the names of
the three witches. It’s “Harpier” – a Shakespearian variation of harpy.
The names of the other two are divulged in the very first scene of the
play. They are “Graymalkin” (= Grey Cat) and “Paddock” (= Toad).
The Three Weird Sisters are extremely repulsive characters –
exaggeratedly so. And their language is also repulsively exaggerated.
They no doubt humor themselves to think that they have all the
“ingredients for their cauldron” – but that is unlikely. There are no tigers
in Scotland, and hence no “Tiger’s chaudron” or entrails. Their language
reflects the cruelty of Shakespeare’s world – let’s leave it at that.
For all their histrionic badness, the witches play an important role in
the tragedy. At its outset, they predict Macbeth will become king of
Scotland. Here they appear so that Macbeth may know of his fate – for
he has become king through murdering royalty and rivals.
Out of their double-trouble cauldron, the witches summon three
apparitions. Each one challenges Macbeth with an enigmatic riddle. The
most famous of which is: “Macbeth shall never vanquished be until/
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane Hill/ Shall come against him.”
So this incantation is a prelude to a history lesson: Macbeth will be
defeated in a battle in which Macduff’s soldiers conceal their movement
by covering their armor with branches hewn from the trees of Great
Birnam. And the Scottish kings would descend from Banquo, first a
fellow general and then an enemy of Macbeth.
For all the evil of the play, the conclusion of the tragedy is a positive
one – at least for the highly charged political time in which Macbeth was
written. Queen Elizabeth I had only recently died and James I of England
(James VI of Scotland!) ascended to the throne as the first of the Stuarts.
This distant cousin to Queen Elizabeth traced his royal line back over 500
years to Macbeth’s comrade in arms Banquo. The enemies of James I
had just tried to blow up him and the entire Parliament in the infamous
Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605. That was a mixture far more
nefarious than what the witches were brewing!
Sonnet No. LXIV by Dominick Argento, words by William Shakespeare
When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down rased,
And brass eternal, slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
Whether our English word sonnet derives from the French or from the
Italian, it’s from the same root that gives us the word “sound.’ A sonnet
is literally a “little sound.” But a better translation would be a “concise
sound,” for the structure of a sonnet (14 lines of ten syllables each) is
meant to carry a single main idea, a single “thought” as Shakespeare
names it in the concluding couplet.
The sonnet form is much more like a soliloquy than a dialogue.
Shakespeare wrote 154 of them! They are from an early period in
his career when the London theaters were closed on account of an
outbreak of the plague. So Shakespeare turned his attention inward, and
wrote a large number of concise meditations on the grand themes of
love, friendship, poetry and the mutability of things.
The language and the syntax from more than 400 years ago are not easy
to follow. You need to read it a few times, and you need a few footnotes.
(For “sometime,” read “formerly;” for “store” read “abundance;” for
“to have” read “at having.”) And then there is the fact that Shakespeare
was “overfond” of punning, e.g. his stretching the word “state” in lines 9
and 10 to give it two different meanings: the first being “condition,” the
second being “the stability of a State.” But the central idea or thought is
clear: “Everything changes with Time.”
But enough of these observations of an English Major! This sonnet is a
love song, not a history lesson. It tells the beloved not to let some old,
white-haired man with a scythe take away the loving (time!) they are
having right now! Shakespeare could have expressed this less obliquely.
(And he did, in many places! Read on, Macduff!)
A current event of our modern times has given this sonnet’s third line a
great deal of emotional significance:
“When sometime lofty towers I see down rased”
Many people felt the connection between “Sonnet 64” and the
destruction of the Twin Towers in the World Trade Center on 9/11/01.
Our American composer Dominick Argento was one of them. He wrote
this choral work as a response to 9/11 – thereby linking, as perhaps only
art can do, the past with the present.
The Deepness of the Blue by William Averitt, poems by Langston Hughes
My Loves
I love to see the big white moon
A-shining in the sky;
I love to see the little stars
When the shadow clouds go by.
I love the rain drops falling
On my roof-top in the night;
I love the soft wind’s sighing,
Before the dawn’s gray light.
I love the deepness of the blue
In my Lord’s heaven above;
But better than all these things I think,
I love my lady love.
Poem
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There’s nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began, —
I loved my friend.
Danse Africaine
The low beating of the tom-toms,
The slow beating of the tom-toms,
Low … slow
Slow … low—
Stirs your blood.
Dance!
A night-veiled girl
Whirls softly into a
Circle of light.
Whirls softly … slowly,
Like a wisp of smoke around the fire—
And the tom-toms beat,
And the tom-toms beat,
And the low beating of the tom-toms
Stirs your blood.
My high school English teacher, David Carr, should really be the one
to write the program note for these three lyrical poems. For it was
“Mr. Carr” who introduced us 11th graders to the literature of AfricanAmericans. One of his favorite books was Jean Toomer’s novel Cane. And
he loved Langston Hughes’s short satirical sketches called the “Simple
Stories,” or “The Adventures of Jesse B. Simple of Harlem, U.S.A.”
Mr. Carr could tell us how Hughes’s voice in these short poems is both
universal and unique. He’s expressing emotions we all have felt: the
primacy of sensual love, the sadness of broken friendship, and the
visceral response to the beating of drums. But he does so in his own
words. They seem effortless, but they really require a lot of disciplined
work. They are, after all, art.
Their musical settings by the American composer William Averitt also
require a great deal of disciplined work. But here I need to return
to Martin Luther and say, “My praise is bound to be wanting and
inadequate. For who can comprehend it all?”
Two American Songs arranged by Shawn Kirchner
Angel Band, music by William Bradbury, words by Jefferson Hascall
The latest sun is sinking fast,
my race is almost run.
My strongest trials now are past,
my triumph is begun
O come, angel band
Come and around me stand
O bear me away on your snow-white wings
to my immortal home.
I know I’m near the holy ranks
Of friend and kindred dear;
I’ve brushed the dew on Jordan’s banks,
The crossing must be near. Chorus
I’ve almost gained my heav’nly home –
my spirit loudly sings.
The Holy Ones, behold they come –
I hear the noise of wings. Chorus
Hallelujah, music by William Walker, words by Charles Wesley
Hallelujah …
And let this feeble body fail,
And let it faint or die;
My soul shall quit this mournful vale,
And soar to worlds on high.
And I’ll sing hallelujah,
And you’ll sing hallelujah,
And we’ll all sing hallelujah
When we arrive at home.
O what are all my sufferings here,
If, Lord, Thou count me meet
With that enraptured host to appear,
And worship at Thy feet! Chorus
Give joy or grief, give ease or pain,
Take life or friends away,
But let me find them all again
In that eternal day. Chorus
These songs are, of course, hymns – and “hymns are hymns!” They really
need no program notes, at least not here in a church! They just need
reminders.
So, remember that William Bradbury, who wrote the tune for Angel
Band, also wrote some of our most familiar hymn tunes. These range
from He Leadeth Me to Sweet Hour of Prayer to Just as I Am Without
One Plea. He also wrote the tune for the all-time favorite, Jesus Loves
Me, This I Know. His tune for the text of Rev. Jefferson Hascall’s Angel
Band is not that well-known today. But perhaps Shawn Kirchner’s
arrangement will make it popular again. And we’ll all sing along with
Loretta Lynn when we discover her singing it on YouTube!
Then remember that Charles Wesley (along with his brother John) wrote
literally thousands of hymn texts – from O for a Thousand Tongues to
Sing to Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
And a quick reminder about William Walker’s classic American
hymnbook from 1844: The Sacred Harp. This was compiled for the
popular tradition of communal hymn sings in the south using “shapenote singing.” From this tradition, and this hymnal, come such favorite
hymns as What Wondrous Love is This? and Come Thou Fount of Every
Blessing. And, of course, Hallelujah.
I don’t know about you, but when I hear Hallelujah being sung, I think
of one of my best friends from college – Shannon Stoney. She grew up in
Nashville, and now she’s returned to live just outside of Music City. She
sang – and she still sings – a wonderful
“And I’ll sing hallelujah
And you’ll sing hallelujah
And we’ll all sing hallelujah
When we arrive at home.”
Program Notes by Pastor and Chaplain Donald H. Fox – with gratitude
to Mr. Carr without whose teaching and example he would not have
become an English Major.