Feeling or Fancy?

Sunday, April 26, 2026, 3:30pm
Monday, April 27, 2026, 7:30pm
Virginia Somerville Sutton Theatre, Greensboro, NC

Program Order, Texts & Translations (PDF)

Season Playbill, Directions, and More

Program Notes from Artistic Director Welborn Young

What is love? Really, what is it? Artists, Poets, Musicians, Theologians all attempt to express through their creative endeavors, “love.” For choral musicians, the ongoing argument of whether the text is the mistress of the music or music is the mistress of the text has been debated for centuries. I have often thought it really is a marriage of convenience. A quick glance at the program titles and the Text and Translations section of the program illustrates the breadth of the choral genres and the depth of the poets enlisted to portray various aspects of love. Madrigals, songs from the Yiddish stage, Chansons, popular song, and contemporary settings illuminate the words of poets including Lord Byron, William Shakespeare, Johnny Mercer, e. e. cummings, and others. The secret of “love” remains a mystery but I hope you will fall in love with our humble homage to “love.” 

My study of the madrigal genre in my doctoral studies at U of Illinois and my preparations to teach the development of the genre to my masters and doctoral students has locked it forever, I fear, in my heart. The Italian madrigal imported to England in c. 1588 with Nicolas Younge’s Musica Transalpina  launched a brief age of English madrigal composition. Thomas Morley’s Fire, Fire (1595) represents a more developed stage in English madrigal composition in which English words were set to new music instead of English words set to Italian imported music. Fire, Fire like most madrigals are about seductions, attraction, heartbreak, and infidelity. Here both parties are burning one for the other. The cries for help are immediately followed by sigh motives. The fa, la, la, la moments are code for succumbing to or resolving the fire. Steven Chatman’s An Elizabethan Summer is the source of Cuckoo and Golden Slumber Kiss Your Lips. The Shakespearean text of Cuckoo reveals that a married man may not be in his marriage bed when the morning bird, the cuckoo, begins to sing. The Fa, la, la, la in this instance is replaced by the mocking “cuckoo” sound alerting the married man of morning.  Golden Slumbers on text by Thomas Dekker is a much gentler portrayal of pretty wantons. Set in a homorhythmic three pattern, the feeling of being rocked back and forth for comfort is set as a lullaby. 

The development of French multi-voiced Chanson overlaps with that of the madrigal in the sixteenth century. On poetry of Jean Antoine de Baïf Revecy venir du Printemps by Claude le Jeune utilizes four of the five verses. These verses paint spring vignettes. The first three verses accent the “season of beauty.” The “season of love” appears in the fourth verse. Each verse (chant) is preceded and followed by the refrain (rechants). La Rose Complète, text by Rilke and music by Morten Lauridsen is the fourth title in his Le Chansons des Roses. It is in this choral cycle that Lauridsen’s harmonic and melodic signature are codified. Rilke’s rose imagery is the source of many language arts studies. For our purposes these words of explanation are beneficial:  “The living rose is ‘fully awake’ but discreet, possessing many pages of detailed happiness we will never read.” “[It] displays the tender moments in the continual departure.” According to Lauridsen each rose bears its own personality, so does a lover.

The most recognizable Yiddish music theatre title Bai mir bisti Sheyn (To me you’re beautiful) comes from the 1932 musical comedy M’ken lebn nor m’lost nit (One Could Really Live, but They Won’t Let You)—officially subtitled in English as I Would If I Could. Jazz motives, dance tempi, an “Andrew Sisters” trio, modal inflections, and Klezmer clarinet are all hallmarks of this work. The 1938 And the Angels Sing by Ziggy Elman also relies on Klezmer music. The instrumental Klezmer clarinet break in cut-time about two-thirds into the piece. Elman was the trumpeter for Benny Goodman’s band. 

One of the most important Latin songs of the twentieth century is the 1932 Besame Mucho, a bolero song. In the 1960s many pop arrangements emerged. The Mikhai Serkov choral arrangement you will hear is rather “cheeky” with moments of humor, extended vocalizations, and imitation of instruments. It’s truly a crowd pleaser. Written in honor of the 25th wedding anniversary of Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, Benjamin Britten’s Five Flower Songs are written in the style of earlier British composers Parry, Elgar, and Stanford as four-part unaccompanied works. The Elmhirsts were botanists. The Ballad of Green Broom is the tale of an unambitious son who ultimately finds and marries a rich older woman. The story progresses as each voice part relays details of the story before handing off the next set of details to another voice part. And, as the story progresses the tempo gets faster and faster making this a tour-de-force of humor. One of the most intriguing and ingenious, creative composers to emerge in the last decade is Jacob Collier. I can remember watching his earliest videos as a tweenager in which he played and sang all of the parts of his arrangements. He is now an international musical phenom who performs to large crowds, who lectures about his approach to composition, and inspires choral participation in his concerts. Little Blue is his text and music. You can find this in simple solo and choral arrangements with instrumental accompaniment. I was drawn to this particular a cappella arrangement because BCC has the musical skill to do it. If you were to look at the score, you might become overwhelmed with the rhythmic subdivision. But, once you find the “groove” it sings a bit easier. 

The lush contemporary works such as I Love You by Spencer Wiles, She Walks In Beauty by Paul Mealor, and i carry your heart by Taylor Scott Davis are all subtle and rich settings of the poetic text sure to evoke an emotional response. I hope you find a new musical love or rekindle an old musical love that you find in this program.

-Bill