Program Notes

First Half Program Notes Bogoródyitse Dyévo This hymn to the Mother of God recurs The Seal Lullaby (Rejoice, O Virgin Mary) in many places in Orthodox worship. Here it is sung three times with great solemnity, and It is amazing to realize that during Sergi Rachmaninoff was, by nature, a afterwards the priest gives a blessing, which Rudyard Kipling’s lifetime, that great English solemn, brooding introvert. Throughout his brings Vespers to an end on a note of short-story writer, novelist, and poet went life he suffered extended bouts of severe rejoicing. All of the lights are then dimmed from being the unofficial Poet Laureate of depression, self-doubt and writer’s block. and the doors are closed. GH Great Britain to being one of the most Despite the toll these inner torments inflicted denounced poets in English literary history! on his creative instinct, Rachmaninoff was In 1907, Kipling became the first Englishman able to transcend his legendary gloom and Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos, to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. By translate his soul-storm into a language of Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee. the time of his death in 1936, Kipling had soaring lyricism. He became not only the last Blessed art Thou among women, and blessed compiled one of the most diverse collections truly great representative of Russian late is the Fruit of Thy womb, of poetry in all of English literature. Today romanticism, but one of the half-dozen for Thou hast borne the Savior of our souls. we recognize Rudyard Kipling as one of the greatest piano virtuosos of the twentieth best balled writers of all time. Here are two century. Kipling ballads, in musical settings, that Rachmaninoff remained stubbornly Otche Nash (Our Father) justify that claim, leaving no room for doubt. unconcerned with the new aesthetic trends in Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Seal composition swirling around him, e.g., Alexander Gretchaninov was born in Lullaby” prefaces the story “The White Seal” Debussy and the Impressionists, the Serial Moscow in 1864. Unlike Mozart, who from The Jungle Book, first published in music of Arnold Schoenberg and the Second climbed up on a piano bench at age five and magazines in 1893 and ‘94. “The White Seal” Viennese School. Instead, all of his began composing songs. Gretchaninov didn’t is the story of Kotic, a seal who saved his compositions are imbued with the spirit of even see a piano until he was 14. His father species by finding a beach hunters couldn’t Russian singing. was a no-nonsense type who wanted his son get to by land or sea. We sing “The Seal He left Russia in 1917, never to return. to take over the family business. However, Lullaby” set to music by the popular His beloved estate at Ivanovka that had Gretchaninov, at age 17, enrolled in the contemporary composer Eric Whitacre. provided him with the uninterrupted peace Moscow Conservatory without his father’s Kipling (1865-1936) wrote The Jungle and tranquility he needed for composing was blessing or financial support. He remained Book in a farm cottage near Brattleboro, razed to the ground in the revolutionary there until moving on to St. Petersburg to Vermont, not far from his wife’s family’s maelstrom that ensued. begin studies in composition and estate. His tiny study and the quiet location The All-Night Vigil, Op. 37 – popularly orchestration with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov. suited him perfectly. He claimed that he known as the Vespers – stands as the It was a fortunate association, for Rimsky- blocked out the stories in his head, after crowning achievement of the “Golden Age” Korsakov provided his brilliant but destitute which his pen took charge and he watched it of Russian Orthodox sacred choral music. new pupil many extra hours of attention as begin to write. During that period, which began in the 1880’s well as a generous stipend. Hundreds of Kipling’s poems, ballads, and lasted until Communist takeover in 1917, In 1896, Gretchaninov returned to and ditties have been set to music, so it is dozens of Russian composers turned their Moscow and began writing for the theater, the somewhat paradoxical that he himself was creative energies to composing choral music opera, and the Russian Orthodox Church. His utterly tone deaf. One of Kipling’s daughters on texts drawn from the Russian Orthodox choral works achieved considerable success wrote that her father admitted that God “had liturgy. within Russia, and his instrumental works excluded all music from his make-up except Rachmaninoff created a monumental enjoyed even wider acclaim. By 1910, he was the brute instinct for beat, as necessary for the work that elevates the spirit by its lofty considered a composer of such distinction manufacture of verse.” expressiveness and captivates the ear by its that Tsar Nicolas II awarded him an annual Eric Whitacre follows a long line of sheer beauty. As his musical vehicle, pension. Even though the Revolution put an noted composers who have set Kipling’s Rachmaninoff uses a living, breathing end to this largess seven years later, poetry. Whitacre is widely known for his instrument – the human chorus – in a way Gretchaninov remained in Russia until he "Virtual Choir" projects on YouTube, that few composers have used it before or emigrated to France in 1925, then to the stitching together individual voices from since. His choral writing makes full use of United States in 1939 where he remained for around the world in a cyber internet choir. the rich sonority and timbral colors developed the rest of his life, ultimately becoming an YouTube has exposed Whitacre’s music to a by his predecessors in the Russian choral American citizen. He died in New York in new audience and helped it gain an school of the late nineteenth/early twentieth 1956 and is buried outside the church at Rova unprecedented popularity. Orpheus sang his centuries. Farms, a Russian enclave in Ocean County, Lux Aurumque during the Christmas season. After giving due praise to God, the New Jersey. GH Orthodox Church always pays homage to the We sing Gretchaninoff’s Otche Nash,a Virgin. Bogoródyitse Dyévo, perhaps the version of “The Lord’s Prayer” in Church Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is most widely known hymn from Slavonic, the liturgical language of many behind us, Rachmaninoff’s cycle, captures both the branches of Eastern Orthodoxy. NM And black are the waters that sparkled gentle simplicity of the angelic greeting and so green. the awe-struck glorification of her response to The moon, o’er the combers, looks God. downward to find us, At rest in the hollows that rustle Ave Maria sympathies. The last year of his life, 1945, between. was spent in poverty and disgrace in a small Where billow meets billow, then soft be Mascangi’s immortal Imtermezzo room at the Hotel Plaza in Rome. With few thy pillow, Sinfonico from Cavalleria Rusticana provides activities to fill his days and with visits from Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy the melody for this piece. The text, an Ave friends rarer as the war went on—others ease! Maria by Piero Mazzoni, was set as a solo for avoided him for his erstwhile Fascist The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark a tenor or a soprano a decade or so after the connections—he was often alone and lonely. overtake thee, opera’s premiere, with the composer’s Mascagni was never able to duplicate the Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging blessing. Orpheus will sing Mascagni’s success of his first opera. He once remarked, seas! immortal melody for you in a 4-part “It is a pity I wrote Cavalleria first. I was arrangement for men’s voices by our own crowned before I became king!” Mascagni Michael Fraser. died August 2, 1945. A band played the When Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana at his Danny Deever Rusticana won first prize in a contest for one- funeral. GH act operas sponsored by the publishing house Rudyard Kipling’s poem Danny Deever of Edoardo Sonzogno, it started a trend in deals with what, for the times, was an almost Italian opera known as verismo (naturalism or Hail Mary, mother and Saint, unimaginable subject matter – the description realism). Later examples of verismo opera are Sustain the devout one who implores you. of a military execution, the hanging of a Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Puccini’s La As you walk by the river of sorrow soldier, Danny Deever, in the presence of his Bohème. Mascagni and Puccini were fellow And faith, instill (this faith) in my heart. garrison. students at the Milan Royal Conservatory. O compassionate one, you who have suffered First published in a weekly, the Scot’s Italy’s two most prominent composers would so much. Observer, in 1890, the poem was issued two remain life-long friends. See, Ah! See my pain. years later in the Kipling collection, The electrifying debut of Cavalleria In these cruel times, I embrace you Departmental Ditties, Barrack-Room Ballads Rusticana took place on May 17, 1890 at the With an infinity of tears. and Other Verses. Since its publication, it has Teatro Costanzi in Rome. It created a Ah! Do not abandon me been singled out as one of Kipling’s sensation equaled by few other operas. The Hail Mary! outstanding works. It is the first of his poems obscure, impoverished 27-year-old composer Look down on me and do not leave me, to articulate the views and dialect of the was suddenly catapulted to stardom.

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