The
Seraphim Singers
Sunday, November 10, 2013, 4:00 pm
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Cohasset
~~~
Sunday, November 17, 2013, 3:00 pm
Mission Church, Boston
Kindly silence cell phones and pagers.
Kindly hold your applause until the conclusion of each set.
Hymn to St. Cecilia
Benjamin Britten 1913 – 1976
Soloists: Rachael Luther, Julie Button, Alison LaRosa Montez, Mark
Nemeskal, John Totter (11/10), Daryl Bichel (11/17)
A Hymn of St. Columba
Britten
Selections from A.M.D.G.
Britten
II. Rosa Mystica
III. God’s grandeur
V. O Deus, ego amo te
VII. Heaven-haven
~~~
Allegro marziale e ben marcato
Frank Bridge 1879 – 1941
Heinrich Christensen, Organ
~~~
Francis Poulenc 1899 – 1963
Mass in G Major
I. Kyrie
II. Gloria
III. Sanctus
IV. Benedictus
V. Agnus Dei
Soloists: Rachael Luther, Julie Button, Teri Kowiak, Mark Williams
~~~
Prelude and Fugue on a theme by Victoria
Heinrich Christensen, Organ
~~~
1
Britten
Three Motets
Salve Regina
Videntes stellam
Hodie Christus natus est
A Hymn to the Virgin
Poulenc
Britten
Soloists: Leslie Price, Nicole Ruttan, Tom Manguem, John Totter (11/10),
Daryl Bichel (11/17)
Festival Te Deum
Britten
Soloist: Julie Button
About the Ensemble
The Seraphim Singers has created a special niche among Boston’s performing elite
with sensitive and probing performances of a wide variety of the masterpieces
of sacred choral music drawn from the earliest times to the twenty-Þrst century.
Founded in 1997 and directed by Jennifer Lester, The Seraphim Singers has
gathered critical acclaim for its advanced technique and superb sense of style.
In residence at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help (known fondly among
Bostonians as “the Mission Church”), the ensemble includes gifted and talented
organists, choir directors, composers and other professional musicians whose
vast knowledge and experience nourish a passion for arresting and demanding
repertoire.
The Seraphim Singers has honed critically acclaimed, reÞned and elegant
interpretations of sacred masterworks composed over the centuries, from
Palestrina,Victoria and Byrd of the Renaissance; Bach, Monteverdi, and Handel of
the Baroque; Mendelssohn and Rheinberger of the Romantic; to Widor, Vierne,
Langlais, Copland, and Durußé of the twentieth century.
Committed to the creation and performance of new music,The Seraphim Singers
has a long roster of composers whom the ensemble has commissioned. Well
known for advancing works by local living composers, the ensemble has given
premiere performances of works by Thomas Bold, Avner Dorman, Elliott Gyger,
Graham Ramsay, Eric Sawyer, Julian Wachner and James Woodman, and has
recorded choral compositions of Elliott Gyger for the ARSIS Audio label.
By integrating the old with the new, The Seraphim Singers has consistently
brought to light the timeless transcendence inherent in all great sacred choral
compositions.
Program Notes
The similarities between Francis Poulenc and Benjamin Britten are striking.
They were introduced to the joys of music by mothers who were competent
pianists. Both began composing, with some success, before having any rigorous
training in composition. Even after attaining fame as composers, both Britten
and Poulenc continued to perform as pianists, on one occasion appearing
as the soloists together in Poulenc’s Concerto for 2 Pianos (London, 1955).
Each grew up in comfortable circumstances without Þnancial stress (the Poulenc family
was by any standards very well off).Though Poulenc was born in Paris, he chose to live
a portion of each year in a remote sparsely populated area; Britten never warmed to
cities and was most at ease in his home in Adleburgh, located about twenty-Þve miles
south of his childhood home. Each had an ability to transform traditional harmonic
function into something novel while remaining accessible. Though both composed
successfully for instruments, it was to vocal writing that they both gravitated and
produced their largest scale and arguably greatest compositions. There was also a
parallel between Britten’s long professional association with the tenor Peter Pears
and Poulenc’s twenty-four
year role as accompanist for
the baritone Pierre Bernac
(both
composers
wrote
many works with these
singers speciÞcally in mind).
Both Britten and Poulenc
felt a kinship with ordinary
people; Britten disliked the
British class system and
Poulenc’s creative impulse
drew from the directness and
unpretentiousness of common
tastes. Both had one deeply
religious parent and one who
was not. (Britten’s mother was
a faithful member of her lowchurch Anglican parish who
was also drawn to the claims
of Christian Science; Poulenc’s Peter Pears (le ), Francis Poulenc, and Benjamin Bri!en are
father was a deeply devout pictured in Cannes, 1950’s. Bri!en and Poulenc are known to
Catholic, a characteristic he have collaborated, as they premiered Poulenc’s Concerto for
2 Pianos in 1955.
considered part of his Aveyron
lineage.) Both composers as young men rejected their parents’ faith, but Poulenc, at age
37, would experience a conversion and become a committed Roman Catholic the rest
of his life. Britten, however, never relented from a wariness with organized religion and
creedal distinctions. Being a life-long paciÞst, he felt most closely aligned to Quakerism.
The sexual orientation of Poulenc and Britten has for decades been a subject
of interest and comparison. Poulenc has sometimes been labeled “the Þrst
openly gay composer,” though to be speciÞc he was bisexual. Homosexuality
was against the law in Britain until 1967, but given his reserved, private nature,
Britten was able to sustain a 37-year relationship with Peter Pears without legal
interference. Poulenc lived a freer lifestyle until his conversion to Catholicism.
At that point the focus of his composition redirected to more religious themes.
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) was born November 22nd (St.Cecilia’s Day) in the East
Anglian county of Suffolk and remains in the minds of many the Þnest English composer
since Henry Purcell.The son of an amateur-musician mother and a dentist father, Britten
and his two older sisters and brother enjoyed a comfortable childhood in attractive
surroundings in the town of Lowestoft. (An amenity of his spacious childhood home
was a view of the North Sea.) Though his compositions are staples of orchestra, choir,
and opera repertories, Britten’s early artistic environment was in fact quite provincial.
Britten was a complicated, almost contradictory Þgure. Forward looking in his political
and ethical views, he was reticent and conservative in manner. Extolled by many for
his kindness and generosity, he could be dismissive, particularly to those expressing
criticism. Despite attaining fame and fortune within his lifetime, he was nonetheless
viliÞed in some quarters for his lifelong paciÞsm, a conviction that didn’t sit well
with many of his fellow countrymen during England’s darkest hours of World War II.
No one, however, questioned his talent. From an early age he was blessed with
a Mozartean inner-ear ability to digest a music score without relying on a piano.
(Also like Mozart, he studied the viola.) From an early age his ability as a pianist
drew attention. It is perhaps understandable that today we overlook that he was
a pianist of distinction, serving as soloist in the premiere of his piano concerto
and accompanying recitals not only of his partner Peter Pears, but of artists of
stature like Yehudi Menuhin. And though he was not a physically natural conductor,
recordings of performances he led are celebrated for their clarity and cohesion.
This depth of musicianship did not come out of the blue. He was nurtured Þrst by
his mother who sought out the best advice available when her son’s innate abilities
came to light. At age eleven Britten heard Frank Bridge’s suite The Sea conducted
by the composer and, as he would later write, was “knocked sideways.” Since
Britten’s viola teacher was a friend of Bridge, the young boy was introduced to
the composer, who seems to have taken an immediate interest in Britten’s musical
development. It was a pivotal event in Britten’s career as he would for the next
few years submit his compositions for review to Bridge, who was well acquainted
with trends of European modernism. At Bridge’s suggestion, Britten would later enter
the Royal College of Music in 1930 to study with John Ireland. By the time he had
Þnished his studies there in 1933, Britten had completed his Simple Symphony and
soon after Jubilate Deo and his Þrst Te Deum. Beginning in 1935 he began writing
music for a series of documentary Þlms about the General Post OfÞce produced
by the BBC, a task that required discipline and speed; it also enabled Britten to
make a living as a composer. While in this capacity, he met the poet W.H. Auden
and started a friendship and collaboration that was to inßuence Britten’s life. He
would soon join Auden in creating theatre works with leftist leanings. In 1938, at
age 25, Britten enjoyed his Þrst popular success with a London premiere of the
Piano Concerto (with himself as soloist), but with the advent of the war he followed
Auden’s lead and, accompanied by Pears, left Britain in 1939 for the United States.
Despite a couple of very high-proÞle concerts with major American orchestras,
Britten deeply missed his homeland and courageously returned to England in 1942.
Though facing the opprobrium of many at home, he registered as a conscientious
objector and gradually reestablished his good standing. His Þrst major undertaking
upon returning was the opera Peter Grimes, which opened in June 1945 to be hailed
by public and critics. Other operas followed: The Rape of Lucretia in 1946, Albert
Herring in 1947, and Billy Budd in 1951. In the late 1940s Britten came up with an
idea of starting a music festival in the small seaside town of Aldeburgh where he
now resided. The festival opened in 1948 and was an immediate success. Besides
attracting international artists like Richter and Rostropovich, Britten’s operas A
Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960) and Death in Venice (1973) were premiered there.
****
A Hymn to the Virgin is an early work (1930) composed before Britten had settled into
a distinctive voice. Though he had just completed an atonal work, A Hymn to the Virgin
looks back to antiphonal writing reminiscent of Victoria or Allegri. It is nonetheless
prescient of things to come. The work’s melody is similar to the one borrowed from
Dowland for Lachrymae, its use of variation anticipates A Boy Was Born, and, most telling,
its mixture of English poetry and Latin prayer anticipates a technique so effectively
employed in War Requiem. Though perhaps an unusual choice for such a low-church
Anglican parish, the Þrst performance was given in 1931 by the Lowestoft Musical
Society in his mother’s church and with her in attendance. It would be performed
again 45 years later a few miles to the south in Aldeburgh at the composer’s funeral.
It is difÞcult to know exactly why Britten withdrew the seven settings of poems by
Gerard Manley Hopkins entitled A.M.D.G., and why they were never performed in
the composer’s lifetime. Sketched in August 1939, shortly after Britten’s arrival in
the United States, the songs were originally intended for performance by Pears’s
Round Table Singers in London during November of that year. It was only as
recently as 1984 that A.M.D.G. was given its Þrst performance and only published
in 1989. The initials “A.M.D.G.” stand for the motto of the Jesuits (Ad maiorem Dei
gloriam - ”to the greater glory of God”), the religious order of which Hopkins
was a member. Britten sets “Rosa mystica” as a ternary waltz in which parallel
thirds are juxtaposed against an ostinato pedal point; “God’s Grandeur” is almost
humorous with its angular subject, its chromatic runs, and its vivid picture-painting
(“bleared,” “smeared”). “O Deus, ego amo te” consists almost entirely of rootposition major triads in unmeasured speech rhythms, and the Þnal song, “Heaven-
Haven,” sets one of Hopkins’s earliest poems to music of the utmost simplicity.
The Festival Te Deum is the second setting Britten made of the text attributed to St.
Ambrose (ca. 338-397), the inßuential fourth century bishop of Milan. (The Latin
original was translated into English during the 16th century English Reformation
and became part of the Anglican Morning Prayer; it is, however, usually sung by a
choir rather than the congregation.) The Festival Te Deum for chorus and organ was
composed in 1945 for the 100th anniversary of St. Mark’s Church, Swindon,Wiltshire,
England. It is divided into three sections: a quiet beginning, an energetic middle, and
a calm, but intense third section. It is interesting to note that the chorus parts and
the accompaniment are in two different time signatures: 3/4 in the organ and 5/8
in the voices. The use of Lydian mode (a mode of chant similar to a modern major
scale with a raised fourth tone) also shows a composer exploring new possibilities
for sonority. The Þrst section is sung in unison in a rhythm as if the words were
being spoken, thus leading to constantly changing time signatures. The second section
begins with an explosive choral passage, “Thou art the King of Glory,” followed by
an energetic organ response. The Þnal section returns to the original calmness of
the Þrst section, with the introduction of a soprano soloist singing, “O Lord, save
Thy people.” The chorus enters on the text, “Vouchsafe O Lord to keep us this day,”
rising to a tremendous climax on the text, “O Lord, in Thee have I trusted.” The
work ends with the quiet plea by soloist and chorus, “Let me never be confounded.”
The Prelude and Fugue on a Theme by Victoria is Britten’s only ofÞcial composition
for organ, although he did leave behind a few other sketches and short pieces
he had composed as presents for organist friends. It was written in 1946 for St.
Matthew’s Church in Northampton, the same church that commissioned his famous
cantata Rejoice in the Lamb. Britten based the piece on the plainsong antiphon “Ecce
Sacerdos Magnos” that Victoria used for the motet of the same name in 1585.
A Hymn of St. Columba is a short work commissioned in 1962 for the 1400th anniversary
of the voyage Columba made from Ireland to the island of Iona.The Þrst performance
was given outdoors at Churchill, County Donegal, where St. Columba was said to have
preached. Regrettably, the premiere was mostly inaudible because of the strength of
the wind! The anthem is an example of Britten’s ability to apply his dramatic skills
to a work designed to be sung within the context of an Anglican service. The piece
is about the Þre within Columba for his missionary task and the words recall the
Dies Irae: “King of Kings and Lord most high, his day of judgment comes near, Day
of wrath and vengeance, Day of shadows and dark clouds...” Britten brilliantly sets
the mood with a driving, ominous pedal ostinato which keeps returning throughout
the piece. The broad unison melody which begins the anthem returns at the end
brießy as a canon between sopranos/tenors and altos/basses before closing, without
slowing down, with two almost menacing, yet quiet repetitions of the word “Domini.”
The Þrst reference to the Hymn to St. Cecilia is from 1935, when Britten wrote in
his diary, “I’m having great difÞculty in Þnding Latin words for a proposed Hymn to
St. Cecilia - spend morning hunting.” Britten had already worked with W. H. Auden
on a number of large-scale works, including the operetta Paul Bunyan, when Britten
asked that Auden provide him a text for his ode to St. Cecilia; Auden complied,
sending the poem in sections throughout 1940. Britten began setting the Hymn to St.
Cecilia in late 1940 in the United States, where Britten, Pears and Auden had exiled
themselves as conscientious objectors during the second world war. The Hymn to St.
Cecilia was Þnished on Britten’s voyage home from America to England, in 1942. New
York Customs had conÞscated the Þrst section, thinking the work might be some
type of code, and so Britten re-wrote the manuscript from memory while aboard
the MS Axel Johnson and Þnished it on April 2, 1942. (It was on this same voyage
that he sketched out A Ceremony of Carols.) The piece was Þrst performed in 1942
on St. Cecilia’s Day (November 22nd), Britten’s 29th birthday, by the BBC Singers.
There is little doubt that Auden planted in Britten’s mind issues that would thereafter
inform the composer’s work: innocence and corruption, the individual and society,
and the acceptance or denial of desires. In the Hymn to St. Cecilia, Auden not only
dedicates the poem to Britten, but Þnishes it with two stanzas that both acknowledge
the composer’s struggle with his loss of innocence and urge him to celebrate it, ending
with the lines:“O bless the freedom that you never chose, O wear your tribulation like
a rose.” Auden’s work is in three stanzas, each ending with the same ode to St Cecilia
which Britten replicates in the music. The Þrst section is very similar to the refrain,
based around the E Phrygian scale and with the same melody. The second section
is a scherzo in a modiÞed fugue form while the third section is more lyrical, with
solos in each voice describing a different instrument, a tradition in odes to St. Cecilia.
In his poem, Auden deliberately conßates Christian mythology (St. Cecilia, about
whom very little is known except that she existed at some point in the early
Christian era and was a martyr), Greek mythology (Aphrodite, goddess of love,
beauty, and procreation), music itself (in the second section, “I cannot grow, I have
no shadow to run away from, I only play”), and the innocence of composers as a
species (in the third section, “O dear white children casual as birds, Playing among
the ruined languages”). Britten probably recognized this as a reference to his own
paciÞsm and lack of direct political involvement, stances to which he held Þrmly
even in the face of what seemed like Britain’s impending defeat by the Germans.
Each section has its own unusual thematic and harmonic developments, and
sparkles with Britten’s typical ingenuity while presenting almost unprecedented
technical obstacles. The work is famous among singers not only for the challenges
of sustaining intonation over such an extended length, but also for conveying shifts
in mood that span from spiritual innocence to a sensuality bordering on the erotic.
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was the son of the founder of Poulenc Frères, a company
that merged in 1928 with another Þrm to become Rhône-Poulenc, a leading producer
of organic chemicals, synthetic Þbers, and pharmaceuticals. (After mergers beginning
in 1999, the business is now part of SanoÞ, the third largest pharmaceutical company
in the world.) His mother, an amateur pianist, taught him to play the instrument and
passed on a deep love of the arts. Marcel Royer, his mother’s brother, introduced the
young boy to Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, works by the master that Poulenc would
admire throughout his whole life. Another signiÞcant inßuence was the Catalonian
pianist Ricardo Viñes with whom Poulenc began piano studies in 1914; Viñes, who
introduced many now well-known works in concert, made it a point to teach him the
music of his time: Debussy, Stravinsky, Satie, and others. Despite a lack of training in
composition, Poulenc achieved public success at the age of 18 and shortly thereafter
became recognized as a member of the aesthetic cult “Les Six.” Featured together
in concert programs, these artists rejected romanticism and pretentiousness; strove
to be overtly nationalistic; and valued simplicity, brevity, and straightforwardness.
They exhibited a fondness for the freedom of childhood, music from the dance hall
and circus, and the commonplace in general. Poulenc’s representative early works,
such as the Bestiare songs and the Mouvements Perpétuels for piano employ diatonic
nursery- or café tunes in regular rhythms dressed in sophisticated harmonies and
simultaneous sounding tonalities that demonstrate a “regressive” attribute which
would even grow stronger in his later church music. But compared with his Les
Six comrades, Poulenc appears a classicist. He never experimented with the popular
devices of “machine music,” asymmetrical rhythms, and poly-harmonies as cultivated
by Honegger and Milhaud. Futuristic projections had little interest for him; he was
content to follow the neo-Classical formation of Ravel’s piano music and songs.
Though Poulenc’s father, a devout Roman Catholic, had instilled a strong sense of faith in
his son, his death in 1917 brought with it a relinquishment of the young man’s religious
interests. Almost twenty years later, however, after the death of a close friend, Poulenc
visited the 15th pilgrimage church of Notre Dame in the southwestern village of
Rocamadour and recovered, in the words of the composer,“the faith of my childhood.”
It also kindled an interest in choral music. Though he had harmonized Bach chorale
melodies in the 1920s as part of his studies with the composer Charles Koechlin, he
now began composing pieces for accompanied and unaccompanied choir in earnest.
These works have a distinguishing characteristic of sounding highly individualistic
and modern while at the same time being indebted to styles from an earlier age.
Poulenc distinguished himself in many genres. His Concerto for Organ from 1934 remains
the Þnest example of its kind among modern composers; Gloria, commissioned by
the Koussevitsky Foundation and premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
in 1961, is perhaps his most popular work. However the composition in which he
invested himself most completely was the 1956 French language opera, Dialogue
of the Carmelites. It is the work in which many critics feel the composer most
successfully reconciled his two natures, the voyou (street imp) and moine (monk).
****
Poulenc’s Messe en sol majeur (Mass in G Major), completed in August of 1937, is
one of the most important unaccompanied compositions from the twentieth
century. Requiring hushed dynamics at high registers, widely spaced intervals
(including the awkward tritone), and modulatory passages far from the original
key, it is also one of the most difÞcult for performers. Though completed twenty
years after his father’s death, the work is dedicated to him and is among a series
of works bearing witness to the composer’s recommitment to Roman Catholicism
after a visit on August 22, 1936, to Rocamadour, home of the statue of the Black
Virgin, an ancient place of pilgrimage. The Mass in G, the composer’s Þrst largescale liturgical work, was premiered in Paris on April 3, 1938 in a performance
by Les Chœurs de Lyon. The Mass is a “missa brevis,” that is to say the Credo is
omitted, and it contains some of the most beautiful choral passages Poulenc was
to write. Neither capitulating to sentimental piety nor parading a deep profundity,
the work’s melodic and harmonic inventiveness captivates with a childlike directness.
The motet Salve Regina, dating from May 1941 and composed at the composer’s estate
in Noizay, exhibits Poulenc’s natural gift of lyricism. Salve Regina, a text well known by
Catholics as Hail, Holy Queen, is a four-part motet of folk-like accessibility.This apparent
simplicity belies an unusual and sophisticated ending. Videntes stellam (1951) and Hodie
Christus natus est (1952) come from the collection Quatre Motets pour le temps de Noël.
As with the Mass in G, short, almost clipped, phrases are a stylistic feature. In the case of
Videntes stellam, they prompt a breathless, reverential awe which perfectly illuminates
the text; with Hodie Christus natus est they add a sense of urgency to the proclamation.
Randolph Nichols
Frank Bridge (1879-1941) was born in Brighton and studied at the Royal College
of Music in London from 1899 to 1903 under Charles Villiers Stanford and others.
Bridge had strong paciÞst convictions, and he was deeply disturbed by the First World
War, after which his compositions, beginning with the Piano Sonata, were marked by
a radical change in musical language. Bridge was frustrated that his later works were
largely ignored while his earlier “Edwardian” works continued to receive attention.
Bridge is mostly remembered for privately tutoring Benjamin Britten, who later
championed his teacher’s music and paid homage to him in the Variations on a Theme
of Frank Bridge (1937), based on a theme from the second of Bridge’s Three Idylls
for String Quartet (1906). Britten was Bridge’s only composition pupil; nonetheless,
Britten spoke very highly of his teaching, saying famously in 1963 that he still felt
he “hadn’t come up to the technical standards” that Bridge had set for him.
The “Allegro marziale” is the Þnal piece of three from his First Book of Organ
Pieces of 1905, so it is still in the “Edwardian” period. Although Bridge was not an
organist himself and not personally associated with music of the English Church,
his short pieces for organ have been among the most performed of all his output.