Muse
Saturday, October 12 & Monday, October 14, 2024
Bel Canto Company
Welborn E. Young, Artistic Director and Conductor
Ebenezer Lutheran Church, Greensboro, NC
Digital Program Order & Translations
(PDF – Zoomable for Low Vision)
“My favorite way to describe Sogno di Volare is that it celebrates human exceptionalism.”
– Christopher Tin
What inspires you, excites your imagination, reveals a deepness in your soul not previously known by you? Love, nature, poetry, and art, each can become my Muse in the never-ending pursuit of the making exceptional music. Sogno di Volare, composed by grammy award winner Christopher Tin, became my Muse for programming tonight’s concert because of its joy, optimism, and power. The composers and poets represented tonight are all inspired by their own Muses to create. Bel Canto Company invites you to listen and find joy, inspiration, and peace, and possibly even find your own Muse.
Large Structure, Opening and Closing Works
Two works bookend the rounded large structure of the program. A common theme of both works is the experience, or dreamed experience, of flight. High Flight, composed by Stacy Garrop, a contemporary American Multi-award-winning composer, is a setting of the familiar sonnet by James Gillespie Macgee Jr. The sonnet reflects both the joyous and ethereal experiences of flight. An allegorical relationship between death and transcendence is also present. Garrop’s setting is in two major sections. The first section is jubilant and powerful to reflect the thrill of escaping the earth where all boundaries and strife are left behind. Garrop sets the first eleven lines of the poem with a frenetic bright tempo and driving rhythms that alternate with sections of powerful chords. “With awe” is the composer’s directive for the second shorter section of the work and is a setting of the last three lines of text. Separated from the first section by a grand pause and a much slower tempo, the music has a peaceful, almost reverent, character.
Concluding the program is Sogno di Volare, composed by Christopher Tin. Translated as Dreams of Flying adapts notes from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Tin composed Sogno as thematic music for the Civilization gaming enterprise. It is the music woven into Civilization VI. Tin sets the text in a verse refrain (ritornello return) form. The Allegro Energico e Maestoso is unvarying. Musical motives alternate between rapid eighth note rhythms in the introduction and each verse and large, powerful pillar chords used for each refrain. You feel the power and joy emanating from the concluding lines of the refrain and translated, “Gaze towards the sky, you’ll know that That is where our heart will feel at home.”
Program First Half: Tribulation and Nature
Following Garrop’s High Flight, Frank Ticheli’s Earth Song and Rosephanye Powell’s To Sit And Dream share the thematic idea of transforming tribulation and suffering. Ticheli set his own words to music. Rosephanye Powell sets Langston Hughes’s poem To Sit And Dream with it’s difficult message of tribulation and suffering and a request to “Help me make our world anew”.
Earth Song, an interesting counterpoint to High Flight, is a motet-like, a cappella setting that feels sacred. War-time offences such as pain, a scorched earth, and torn hearts are relieved through the power of “music and singing” and “the light of song.” Langston Hughes addresses “our problem world” with the hope that those who dare to dream can “make our world anew”. Powell makes use of jazz influenced harmony in an effort to reference the place and time Hughes was writing. She also incorporates “dark” and “bright” harmonic colors to represent “our problem world” and “our world anew” respectively.
The first half concludes with three works in which nature is used as metaphor for various aspects of our lives. We Bloomed in Spring, composed by Edie Hill on words of St. Teresa of Avila, is a most curious work. The soul, our soul, is “God Himself” and “our bodies are the leaves of God.” As seasons change and leaves fall, the soul is still present, not to perish. Hill creates a glorious work in a more contemporary madrigal-esque style utilizing word painting, modified melismas, and some dramatic tempi shifts. The mystery of our souls remains a mystery with an ambiguous added note chord that remains unresolved at the end of the piece.
According to Jake Runestad, he selected two excerpts from Henry David Thoreau’s journals as the text for Reflections. The excerpts “explore the essential value of seizing opportunities and living fully, without sacrificing the viral wellsprings of introspection and reflection.” The image of water is also a prominent sonic and visual inspiration. The first half of the work “bustles like a swiftly flowing stream. The piano oscillates between consecutive perfect fifths that gradually shift and descend by step.” He describes the second half as a calm lake with a perfect reflection. “Perfect fifths continue to permeate the melodies and harmonies.” This is Runestad at his best, storytelling through choral music.
The final work of the first half is I Thank You God For Most This Amazing Day by Dan Forrest on text by e. e. cummings. This audience is quite familiar with the cinematic scope and beauty of Forrest’s music. This work is no exception. Forrest describes the work as “brimming with joy and life…[that] captures the magic of e. e. cummings beloved poem.”
Program Second Half: Love and Death
Love, whether given or received, in abundance or in meager amounts, can transform a body, an experience, a life. Give Me Hunger by Stacy Garrop, a setting of Carl Sandburg’s poem by the same name and Maria Rainer Rilke’s poem Sa Nuit d’Été set by Morten Lauridsen show two very different perspectives of life-altering love.
Both the text and the musical setting of Give Me Hunger are in two parts. The speaker in part one of the poem appeals to the gods for the experiences that will lead to self-knowledge – hunger, suffering, and want – believing in the power of these experiences to reveal the grateful authentic soul. Garrop uses an incessant, rapid, even agitating ostinato on the text “Give Me Hunger” throughout the first section of this two-part musical structure. Over the ostinato are various linear melodic passages often using modal and chromatic devices. Part one concludes with an almost frustrated scream on the text. In contrast, the speaker in part two requests that in addition to the humbling experiences they also request “a little love.” Musically, a grand pause further segregates the frustration of part one from the calm of part two. A slower tempo, haunting melody, and a repeated slow harmonic sequence in the lower voices create a stark contrast to the opening part. One of the most satisfying moments is a lovely A-major chord in the lower voices as a resting finalis.
Sa Nuit d’Été is one movement from Morten Lauridsen’s Three Nocturnes. Images of night and the rose feature prominently in Rilke’s later poetry. The opening three lines allude to the density of the petals of a rose that prevents the speaker from reaching its “heart.” This passionate poem speaks of a fantastical love and transcendence. Lauridsen’s compositional style is ever present: his harmonic signature, a major or minor chord in first inversion, with an added second, fourth, or ninth; primarily syllabic setting of the text with soaring melodic lines that outline the harmonic signature; imitation across eight parts that blurs the text; and a rounded structure. Overall, the beauty of the writing and the efficiency of the construction with the Rilke text is lovely.
Death, the response to death, or the transcendent nature of death is a thematic element that link the four works preceding Sogno di Volare, the final piece of the concert.
Often memorial music is for family and friends of those who are now absent. This is the case with Remembrance, words and music by British composer Will Todd. The poem expresses unending love and a promise of sorts that “You are with me forever.” Todd’s choral compositions typically are jazz or jazz infused settings. Remembrance is all but jazz free. It is simple, straight forward with lovely lyrical lines and a harmonic language that is merely enough to support the melody. There is a warmth that matches the sentiment of the text.
The traditional spiritual setting of Way Over In Beulah Lan’ is given contemporary life by Stacy Gibbs. This verse/refrain spiritual testifies to a glorious, abundant, joyful “good time” when we get “way over in Beulah lan’.” According to Isaiah 62:4 from the English Standard Version of the Bible is a place where “you no more be termed Forsaken, …, you shall be called My Delight…”
Florence Price sets her own text in Resignation. The shear heartfelt sentiment throughout this poem and Price’s setting of her text expresses the daily pain and fatigue caused by hardship and injustice, but balanced by the relief of knowing you will one day arrive “home” where you will be greeted by those who have gone before. Price’s setting is built as a two-part form with each of the parts having different but linked melodic content, a musically antecedent consequence structure. Price repeats the structure and concludes with an additional consequence element. Antecedent musical ideas are found in the first four lines beginning with line 1 “My heart, it is shattered and flagging.” The Consequence musical ideas begin on line 5 “My Master has pointed the way.” That pattern is repeated beginning at line 9. The repeated Consequence begins at Line 17 “I’, tired and want to go home,” and indicates that comfort and peace are not of this world.
The last selection with this transcendence theme is Sweet River arranged by Shawn Kirchner. This is another example of the glories that are ours in the afterlife set to music that is equally uplifting. The original Sweet River is from the Sacred Harp tradition, and thus was taught in a call and response manner and through the use of solfeggio symbols as noteheads in the music. Kirchner has amplified the tradition by adding divisi in each voice part, extending the vocal ranges, and added a running, “jaunty” accompaniment.
A Muse comes in many forms but is powerless to inspire and move us if we are not open to the experience. Therefore, they often appear when we are overwrought, tired, or concerned. In those times our defenses are down, and we are searching, whether we know it or not, opening our hearts to the influence of the Muse. I wish you all peace and an abundance of Muse inspired experiences.
– Bill
Welborn E. Young, October 4, 2024
[revised 10/10/2024]