UI Chorale Kristina G. Boerger, Director "FILLED with HEARING

UI Chorale Kristina G. Boerger, director

"FILLED WITH HEARING"

William Moersch, percussion

Andreas Ruiz-Gehrt, celesta

Kimberlee Uwate, viola

Su Yuon Lee, cello

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts Foellinger Great Hall Friday, October 25, 2013 7:30 PM

I. THE BARD ON DEATH

JOHN COOK Fear no More the Heat o' the Sun (1918-1984) Stevee Bellas & Samantha Resser, duet

CHARLES WOOD Full Fathom Five (1866-1926)

JAAKKO MÄNTYJÄRVI Come Away, Death (b.1963) ¤¤¤¤

II. THE SONS OF DAVID

WILLIAM BILLINGS David's Lamentation (1746-1800) ¤¤¤¤

Your applause is welcome during the staging breaks, as indicated: ¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤

PIERRE DE LA RUE Absalon fili mi (1452-1518) Myeong Hwan Caleb Lee, ensemble coach ¤¤¤¤

DAVID LANG again (after Ecclesiastes) (b.1957) Angela Yang, ensemble coach

¤¤¤¤

ORLANDO GIBBONS Hosanna to the Son of David

(1583-1625) Janet McCumber, ensemble coach

¤¤¤¤

III. WEEPING

CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI Maria quid ploras (1567-1643)

NED ROREM Tears (b.1923) GIACOMO CARISSIMI Plorate filii Israel (1605-1674) ¤¤¤¤

CALEB BURHANS Super flumina Babylonis (b.1980) Meghan Jain & Soo Hyun Kim, descant Andreas Ruiz-Gehrt, celesta William Moersch, percussion Kimberlee Uwate, viola Su Yuon Lee, cello “FILLED WITH HEARING” Counter-Reformation institution was formed to train missionary Jesuits for work in Protestant Texts and Translations Germany. By the early 1600s the College’s church, Sant’Apollinare, had distinguished itself by the with program notes by Kristina Boerger quality of its music, attracting worshippers of the highest rank. Job conditions were so favorable that Carissimi spent the remaining 44 years of his career in that post, even rejecting an offer to succeed Welcome to the first performance of the UI Chorale’s 2013-2014 season. Tonight we celebrate 500 Monteverdi at San Marco in Venice. Thus content and feeling no need to establish his credentials to years of the power of vocal harmony to elevate verse, whether from the unknown writers of future patrons, Carissimi never bothered to publish his music. Most of his manuscripts were lost in Scripture or from the pens of treasured poets. the early 1800s during Napoleon’s sack of Rome; what little we have is owed to copies made by his students. I. THE BARD ON DEATH Approaching as we are the annual celebrations of the dead as practiced in many Occidental Plorate filii Israel traditions (Samhain, El día de los muertos, All Souls’ Day), we begin with settings of three of Shakespeare’s poems on death. All three are found embedded within his scripts and designated to be Plorate filii Israel. Weep, o ye daughters of Israel. sung onstage as part of the drama. Sadly, we have no record of the music that was used in his time Plorate omnes virgines Weep, all ye virgins, to convey these poems. But generations of composers since have put their own hands to the task. et filiam Jephte unigenitam and for Jephthah’s only daughter, John Cook (1918-1984) was born in Essex, England, and entered Cambridge University as an organ in carmine doloris lamentamini. in sorrowful songs, lament. scholar. A conscientious objector, he left his studies to drive an ambulance during the London Blitz. After the war he served as a copyist to his nation’s most illustrious composers, Ralph Vaughan We close our performance with a most recent setting of a text on weeping that humans have been Williams and Benjamin Britten. Following this, he enjoyed a post as Organist and Choirmaster at singing together for longer than we may accurately know. The voice in Psalm 137 (Al naharot Bavel Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon, later emigrating to Ontario and becoming resident in the original Hebrew) is the collective lament of Israelites captive in Babylon after the sack of conductor and composer at the Stratford Festival there. Spending his last two decades in Boston, he Jerusalem in 587 B.C. In a behavior that recurs throughout histories of captivity (on the cotton served the Church of the Advent, the Longy School of Music, and MIT. plantations of the United States, in Theresienstadt, etc.), the captors seek distraction from their cruelty – or do they mock their captives? – in ordering their victims to perform mirthful songs. Super Given Cook’s involvement with productions of Shakespearean drama, one might expect to find more flumina Babylonis is a song about being unable to sing. Its first recorded use in Latin is found in the settings of The Bard’s texts among his works, but all his other known compositions for chorus are corpus of Medieval plainchant. A round on its English translation (“By the Waters of Babylon”), liturgical. Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun, the iconic funeral song from Cymbeline, reminds us composed in Britain in the 1780s by Philip Hayes, was popularized in the 1970s by inclusion on Don that our shared and inescapable fate carries many advantages. MacLean’s American Pie LP. Fans of reggae music will be familiar with The Melodians’ 1970 recording of the Rastafarian “By the Rivers of Babylon,” in which the captive Israelites symbolize the Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun (from Cymbeline) Black diaspora created by the African slave trade. Our version for mixed chorus and chamber Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, instruments was commissioned by Andrew Megill for the Westminster Kantorei. While voices spin Nor the furious winter’s rages. out the Latin text, the viola’s burbling ostinato represents the flowing riverwaters. Thou thy worldly task hast done, Composer, countertenor, and multi-instrumentalist Caleb Burhans (b. 1980) is one of New York’s Home art gone and ta’en thy wages. busiest concert musicians. He was born in Monterey, CA, to a musician father who played for Ray Golden lads and girls all must, Charles, The Everly Brothers, and Kenny Rogers. In what we have seen is an old tradition, Burhans As chimney sweepers, come to dust. had his own early training as a boy soprano, in Houston. During formative years in Janesville, WI, Fear no more the frown o’ the great; he studied music theory and composition, conducting, and several instruments, going on to attend Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke. Interlochen Arts Academy. He holds a dual bachelor’s degree – in viola performance and Care no more to clothe and eat; composition – from the Eastman School of Music. Specializing in the performance of early music, Tears To thee, the reed is as the oak. The Sceptre, Learning, Physic, must Weep you no more, sad fountains. All follow this, and come to dust. What need you flow so fast? Look how the snowy mountains Fear no more the lightning flash, Heavn’s sun doth gently waste. Nor th’all-dreaded thunderstone. But my sun’s heav’nly eyes Fear not slander, censure rash; View not your weeping Thou hast finished joy and moan: That now lies sleeping softly, All lovers young, all lover must Now softly lies sleeping. Consign to thee, and come to dust.

Sleep is a reconciling, No exorciser harm thee! A rest that peace begets. Nor no witchcraft charm thee! Doth not the sun rise smiling Ghost unlaid forbear thee! When fair at even he sets? Nothing ill come near thee! Rest you then; rest, sad eyes! Quiet consummation have, Melt not in weeping And renowned be thy grave. While she lies sleeping softly, Now softly lies sleeping. The Tempest’s Ariel is similarly optimistic about mortality in her song Full Fathom Five, which celebrates nature’s ever-turning cycle of death, decay, and rebirth. Charles Wood (1866-1926) was a Plorate filii Israel is the closing chorus to the 1649 oratorio Jephte by Giacomo Carissimi (1605- choirboy in the Church of Ireland, later entering with the inaugural class at the Royal College of 1674). The sacred music drama known as the oratorio developed in Rome out of a tradition in which Music to study composition under Charles Hubert Hastings Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford. By lay worshippers, first organized by Filippo Neri in 1540, gathered in an oratorium (“prayer hall”) for the age of 23 he had already begun his teaching career at Cambridge, and when Stanford died, Cook “spiritual exercises;” these included informal sermons, dramatic reenactments of Scriptural passages, assumed his mentor’s position as Cambridge University Professor of Music. Numbered among his and shared devotional singing. During Carissimi’s career, the only music performances permitted own pupils were Herbert Howells and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Cook composed six string quartets during Lent were in the form of Jephte: sung depictions of Bible stories using the techniques of but otherwise devoted most of his creativity to vocal genres, whether art song, part-song, cantata, recitative and aria made so popular by the recent emergence of opera. Like any good opera of the opera, or liturgical music. time, borrowing its formal principles from ancient Greek drama, an oratorio was expected to open and close with choral performance. Full Fathom Five (from The Tempest)

“Plorate filii Israel” exhorts us to weep for the virgin daughter of Jephthah: In return for a military Full fathom five thy father lies; victory over the Ammonites, Jephthah hastily promises God to make a sacrifice of “whatsoever Of his bones are coral made; cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return.” Sadly, what comes forth is no Those are pearls that were his eyes: goat and no sheep but rather his only daughter. The tragedy implicit in her virginity is that she will Nothing of him that doth fade, die in shame, being killed before having had a chance to bear a son – and thus, potentially, the But doth suffer a sea-change Messiah – for the Gileadites. Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Carissimi was born outside of Rome, sang as a choirboy at the cathedral in Tivoli, and by age 24 Hark! now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell. secured a choice post, as teacher and maestro di cappella at the German College in Rome. This

Basilica de Santa Maria dei Frari, where one of his sacred scores is displayed on a music stand next Come Away, Death is sung in Twelfth Night by Festa the Fool, responding to Duke Orsino’s call for a to his crypt and a fresh rose is placed daily across his gravestone. cautionary song about old-fashioned, unrequited love. Our setting is from the Four Shakespeare Songs of Jaakko Mäntyjärvi (b. 1963), a Finnish composer who describes himself as an “eclectic Maria quid ploras traditionalist.” As a performer he has devoted himself to singing in and conducting choirs, and so his compositional output is dominated by choral music. Among his notable commissions are awards Maria quid ploras ad monumentum? Mary, why do you weep at the tomb? from the Tallis Festival, the King’s Singers, and Chanticleer, and his Canticum Calamitatis Maritimae Quaenam fuere tibi causae doloris? What can be the cause of your sorrow? (“Song of Maritime Disaster”) took Third Prize in the 1997 European Composition Competition for Cathedral Choirs. Crucifixerunt amorem meam They have crucified my beloved, et occiderunt eam and they have killed him Come Away, Death (from Twelfth Night) qui mihi dedit vitam. who gave me life.

Come away, come away, Death, Absterge cadentes lacrymas Wipe away your tears that fall And in sad cypress let me be laid. invitis perfidis superbos. because of the perfidious, haughty ones. Fly away, fly away, breath; Ille vivit et vivet in aeternam He lives and shall live forever, I am slain by a fair cruel maid. et possidebis eum. and you shall have him. My shroud of white stuck all with yew, O, prepare it! Aquilino Coppini My part of death no one so true Did share it. Not a flower, not a flower sweet Ned Rorem, eminent American composer, celebrated his 90th birthday this week. A native of On my black coffin let there be strown. Richmond, Virginia, he was educated at the American Conservatory, Northwestern University, the Not a friend, not a friend greet Curtis Institute, and the Juilliard School. His extensive catalogue comprises numerous entries in all of My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown. the following categories: orchestra, orchestra with voice(s), works for chorus and orchestra, chamber A thousand thousand sighs to save, works with voice(s), chamber works, keyboard works, operas, and choral works. In 1974 he received Lay me, O, where the Pulitzer Prize for his orchestral work entitled Air Music. Rorem is also a noted diarist and Sad true lover never find my grave essayist, capturing readers’ attention with his music criticism and with his accounts of intimacies To weep there! with several of America’s leading composers in the mid-20th century.

II. THE SONS OF DAVID In 1950 Rorem composed From an Unknown Past, a cycle for mixed voices and chamber orchestra In our set on texts by and about the sons of King David, the Chorale will be subdivided into three based on anonymous English poems from the 15th and 16th centuries. Tears is the second – and only small ensembles, showcasing the skills required for the performance of vocal chamber music – a cappella – movement in the cycle. The text was first set (circa 1600) by John Dowland, who is unaccompanied, unconducted, and intimately communicative. But first we introduce the set with a assumed to be the poet. It is fitting that Rorem, known as this country’s most important composer of genre that is anything but delicate and that sounds better and better as more people participate. art song, should turn to Dowland as a source; Dowland’s collections of lute-songs constituted the foundation of secular concert repertoire for solo singer in the English language. David’s Lamentation was published in the early-American hymnal The Sacred Harp, which title now designates a particular style also known as shape-note or Fasola singing. This style, autochthonous to the eastern-seaboard states, was printed in a new notational system created to assist in sightsinging. The system featured note-heads of four shapes – flags, circles, rectangles, and diamonds – with each shape corresponding to a specific scale degree in a reduced set of solfège syllables (fa, sol, la, and mi). Hosanna to the Son of David It was common practice for the congregants to approach a new hymn by first singing it through on the syllables, then repeating the hymn with the text added. We will recapitulate this practice Hosanna to the Son of David. onstage. We will also adopt the singing style appropriate to the genre, which is characterized by a Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord. rigid tempo, a steadily loud dynamic, a shallow oral cavity, and a forward and “chesty” resonance Blessed be the King of Israel. that enhances the style’s open fifths and unexpected dissonances. And in another common practice, Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest places. we have transposed the soprano line an octave down to be sung by the altos, leaving the sopranos to Hosanna in the highest heavens. sing the alto line and allowing the tenor melody to be heard with more presence. Listeners intrigued Matthew 21:9, Luke 19:38 by this sound will be happy to know that shape-note singing is a thriving tradition. An Internet search on the term will bring up listings of large, open gatherings in various parts of the country to III. WEEPING which anyone is invited. Bring a lung full of air and a dish to pass! Our final set opens at the empty tomb of Jesus, where angels ask Mary Magdalene: Maria quid ploras? (“Mary, why do you weep?”) The one she loved and who renewed her life has been killed, William Billings (1746-1800), a Bostoner, was the first composer from this country to publish a and now she believes his body to have been stolen. But the angels reassure her that he is immortal significant corpus in an original style. His contribution to American choral music lies not only in his and shall be hers again. By this piece, the vividly emotional palette of the profane Italian madrigal composing but also in his labors as a traveling Music Master; in this capacity he visited the Singing finds its way into the sacred repertoire. The music, by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), was Schools that were convened in town halls across New England with the aim of teaching common originally composed for five solo singers under the title “Dorinda, ah! dirò,” on love poetry from Il citizens to sing euphoniously together during worship. A musical autodidact, he was a tanner by pastor fido by Giovanni Battista Guarini. This contrafactum was made by Monteverdi’s contemporary, trade and friends with another staunch Patriot-tradesman, Paul Revere. In addition to his simple Aquilino Coppini – musician and lyricist to Cardinal Federico Borromeo of Milan – who retrofitted it hymns, which are much loved, he penned a variety of more elaborate compositions, including (and many other madrigals) with Latin devotional text for use in church. In doing so, Coppini was settings of Psalm texts, verses from the Song of Songs, and a clever send-up of au courante composers careful to preserve the original emotional content and also to assign Latin words that carry the same and concertgoers titled “Modern Musicke.” Despite this rich legacy, Billings died in financial ruin. accentuation as the original Italian. (I am obligated to disclose a textual adaptation of my own, made David’s Lamentation with the help of Classicist Jerise Fogel: I have replaced Coppini’s word Judaeis with superbos; David the king was grieved and sore. Coppini’s choice reads as gratuitously anti-Semitic, and because my change violates neither the He went to his chamber and wept. shape of Monteverdi’s music nor the dramatic arc of Coppini’s Scriptural gloss, I have no And as he went, he wept and said: reservations in making it.) Oh, my son. Oh, my son! Monteverdi was born in Cremona and began his musical training as a choirboy in the cathedral Would to God I had died for thee, there. His first important appointment was to the court of Mantua, which he served as a singer, viol O Absalom, my son. player, and music director. It was there that he premiered his first opera – and the oldest one in 2 Samuel 18:33 continual production – L’Orfeo (1607). He spent the latter half of his life in Venice, where he served the great basilica of San Marco as maestro di cappella, eventually taking priestly orders. Over the span As in “David’s Lamentation,” Absalon fili mi expresses the King’s grief on the death of his son of his career, his relentless musical innovation stretched compositional practice from the apotheosis Absalom, who was accidentally beheaded when his horse galloped him into a low-hanging tree of the style identified as the Renaissance into the early experiments of the Baroque. Throughout his branch. This motet was formerly attributed to Josquin Desprez, but experts are now convinced that development, he contributed to the most sophisticated compositional genre from the late the composer was Pierre de la Rue (1452-1518). De la Rue was born near and probably educated at Renaissance, the Italian madrigal. His nine books of madrigals showcase the increasing the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Tournai, in what is now Belgium. Highly employable as a singer, he responsiveness of his rhythms to natural speech inflections, his introduction of formerly served several churches and cathedrals before finding his last post at the Grande chapelle of Holy unacceptable dissonances for communicating emotional strife, and his incorporation of instrumental, Roman Emperor Maximilian, the musical establishment of the Burgundian-Hapsburg court. In this harmonic support of ever-more soloistic and virtuosic singing. Monteverdi is buried in Venice’s capacity, de la Rue traveled widely; a shipwreck on the English Channel landed him in Spain for again (after Ecclesiastes) two years of service to “Joan the Mad” of Castile. According to accounts by his colleagues, he was well liked, temperate, and thrifty. Owing to this last, and to his professional success, he died a very people come One generation passeth away, wealthy man: after his death, chests of money were found in his home, and prebends from the many and people go and another generation cometh, churches he had served were paid out to support numerous relatives, choirs, and charities, as well as the earth goes on and on but the earth abideth forever. to commission the performance of over 300 requiem Masses in his memory. the sun rises the sun sets the sun also ariseth and the sun goeth down, it rushes to where it rises again and hasteth to his place where he arose. One of the hallmarks of de la Rue’s style is the use of extremely low voices. Our performance of the wind blows round The wind goeth toward the south, “Absalon fili mi” has been transposed well upwards, both to accommodate the typical male range and round and turneth about unto the north; and to admit the participation of women. This setting from 2 Samuel is the first in a long tradition of it stops it whirleth about continually cherished vocal pieces on the same passage (including those by Heinrich Schütz, Thomas Weelkes, it blows again and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. Thomas Tomkins, and Eric Whitacre). De la Rue’s version is notable for its early use of text-painting all the rivers run to the sea All the rivers run into the sea; in the falling triads on sed descendam – “but let me descend.” but the sea is never full yet the sea is not full: Absalon fili mi from where the rivers run unto the place from whence the rivers come, they run again thither they return again. these things make me so tired All things are full of labor; Absalon fili mi Absalom, my son, I can’t speak man cannot utter it: quis det ut moriar pro te Absalon? who will grant that I might die for you Absalom? I can’t see the eye is not satisfied with seeing, Non vivam ultra Let me live no more I can’t hear nor the ear filled with hearing. sed descendam in infernum plorans. but descend to hell in weeping. what happened before The thing that hath been, will happen again it is that which shall be. 2 Samuel 18:33 I forgot it all before There is no remembrance of former things; I will forget it all again neither shall there be any remembrance of The text to again is paraphrased from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, which book is introduced in things that are to come with those that shall come after. the Bible as the writing of “Koheleth, son of David and King in Jerusalem.” In this passage, Koheleth is weary of the cosmos’s endlessly repeating cycles and of humans’ seeming inability to learn from paraphrase by David Lang Ecclesiastes 1:4-9, 11 (King James) what we observe. David Lang (b. 1957) evokes these eternal cycles in the structure he created for the piece, and our singers’ staging recapitulates that structure. A native of Los Angeles, Lang holds Hosanna to the Son of David is an anthem for Palm Sunday, setting words from depictions in degrees from Stanford, the University of Iowa, and Yale and now lives in New York City, where he Matthew and Luke of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The pervasively imitative, six-part is a founding member of the Bang on a Can composers’ collective. He has written film scores, music texture of the piece evokes a joyful multitude that sendsup cheers as the procession goes past. for the dance and opera stages, and concert pieces for chorus, chamber orchestra, percussion Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) was England’s leading composer in his day, serving the last Tudor ensemble, and string quartet. In 2009 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his Little Match Girl Passion, and the first Jacobean monarchs. Born in Oxford, he began his career as a choirboy in the Chapel of which combines the Hans Christian Anderson tale about a destitute child with structural elements King’s College, Cambridge, where his older brother Ellis was choirmaster. After becoming a Bachelor inspired by Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion. The recording of Lang’s Passion by Paul Hillier’s Theater of of Music at Cambridge, he served the Chapel Royal and Westminster Cathedral as an organist. His Voices and Ars Nova Copenhagen won the 2010 Grammy for Best Small Ensemble Performance. short life was ended suddenly by apoplexy, but not before he had contributed significantly to the “again”is featured on this same CD, but it was premiered in 2005 by Manhattan’s Cerddorion Vocal emerging keyboard literature and to the viol consort repertoire, in addition to composing part-songs th Ensemble, for whose 10 anniversary I commissioned the piece. and liturgical music for singers. His music is cherished especially for the beauty of its melodic invention. capacity, de la Rue traveled widely; a shipwreck on the English Channel landed him in Spain for again (after Ecclesiastes) two years of service to “Joan the Mad” of Castile. According to accounts by his colleagues, he was well liked, temperate, and thrifty. Owing to this last, and to his professional success, he died a very people come One generation passeth away, wealthy man: after his death, chests of money were found in his home, and prebends from the many and people go and another generation cometh, churches he had served were paid out to support numerous relatives, choirs, and charities, as well as the earth goes on and on but the earth abideth forever. to commission the performance of over 300 requiem Masses in his memory. the sun rises the sun sets the sun also ariseth and the sun goeth down, it rushes to where it rises again and hasteth to his place where he arose. One of the hallmarks of de la Rue’s style is the use of extremely low voices. Our performance of the wind blows round The wind goeth toward the south, “Absalon fili mi” has been transposed well upwards, both to accommodate the typical male range and round and turneth about unto the north; and to admit the participation of women. This setting from 2 Samuel is the first in a long tradition of it stops it whirleth about continually cherished vocal pieces on the same passage (including those by Heinrich Schütz, Thomas Weelkes, it blows again and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. Thomas Tomkins, and Eric Whitacre). De la Rue’s version is notable for its early use of text-painting all the rivers run to the sea All the rivers run into the sea; in the falling triads on sed descendam – “but let me descend.” but the sea is never full yet the sea is not full: Absalon fili mi from where the rivers run unto the place from whence the rivers come, they run again thither they return again. these things make me so tired All things are full of labor; Absalon fili mi Absalom, my son, I can’t speak man cannot utter it: quis det ut moriar pro te Absalon? who will grant that I might die for you Absalom? I can’t see the eye is not satisfied with seeing, Non vivam ultra Let me live no more I can’t hear nor the ear filled with hearing. sed descendam in infernum plorans. but descend to hell in weeping. what happened before The thing that hath been, will happen again it is that which shall be. 2 Samuel 18:33 I forgot it all before There is no remembrance of former things; I will forget it all again neither shall there be any remembrance of The text to again is paraphrased from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, which book is introduced in things that are to come with those that shall come after. the Bible as the writing of “Koheleth, son of David and King in Jerusalem.” In this passage, Koheleth is weary of the cosmos’s endlessly repeating cycles and of humans’ seeming inability to learn from paraphrase by David Lang Ecclesiastes 1:4-9, 11 (King James) what we observe. David Lang (b. 1957) evokes these eternal cycles in the structure he created for the piece, and our singers’ staging recapitulates that structure. A native of Los Angeles, Lang holds Hosanna to the Son of David is an anthem for Palm Sunday, setting words from depictions in degrees from Stanford, the University of Iowa, and Yale and now lives in New York City, where he Matthew and Luke of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The pervasively imitative, six-part is a founding member of the Bang on a Can composers’ collective. He has written film scores, music texture of the piece evokes a joyful multitude that sendsup cheers as the procession goes past. for the dance and opera stages, and concert pieces for chorus, chamber orchestra, percussion Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) was England’s leading composer in his day, serving the last Tudor ensemble, and string quartet. In 2009 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his Little Match Girl Passion, and the first Jacobean monarchs. Born in Oxford, he began his career as a choirboy in the Chapel of which combines the Hans Christian Anderson tale about a destitute child with structural elements King’s College, Cambridge, where his older brother Ellis was choirmaster. After becoming a Bachelor inspired by Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion. The recording of Lang’s Passion by Paul Hillier’s Theater of of Music at Cambridge, he served the Chapel Royal and Westminster Cathedral as an organist. His Voices and Ars Nova Copenhagen won the 2010 Grammy for Best Small Ensemble Performance. short life was ended suddenly by apoplexy, but not before he had contributed significantly to the “again”is featured on this same CD, but it was premiered in 2005 by Manhattan’s Cerddorion Vocal emerging keyboard literature and to the viol consort repertoire, in addition to composing part-songs th Ensemble, for whose 10 anniversary I commissioned the piece. and liturgical music for singers. His music is cherished especially for the beauty of its melodic invention. shape corresponding to a specific scale degree in a reduced set of solfège syllables (fa, sol, la, and mi). Hosanna to the Son of David It was common practice for the congregants to approach a new hymn by first singing it through on the syllables, then repeating the hymn with the text added. We will recapitulate this practice Hosanna to the Son of David. onstage. We will also adopt the singing style appropriate to the genre, which is characterized by a Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord. rigid tempo, a steadily loud dynamic, a shallow oral cavity, and a forward and “chesty” resonance Blessed be the King of Israel. that enhances the style’s open fifths and unexpected dissonances. And in another common practice, Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest places. we have transposed the soprano line an octave down to be sung by the altos, leaving the sopranos to Hosanna in the highest heavens. sing the alto line and allowing the tenor melody to be heard with more presence. Listeners intrigued Matthew 21:9, Luke 19:38 by this sound will be happy to know that shape-note singing is a thriving tradition. An Internet search on the term will bring up listings of large, open gatherings in various parts of the country to III. WEEPING which anyone is invited. Bring a lung full of air and a dish to pass! Our final set opens at the empty tomb of Jesus, where angels ask Mary Magdalene: Maria quid ploras? (“Mary, why do you weep?”) The one she loved and who renewed her life has been killed, William Billings (1746-1800), a Bostoner, was the first composer from this country to publish a and now she believes his body to have been stolen. But the angels reassure her that he is immortal significant corpus in an original style. His contribution to American choral music lies not only in his and shall be hers again. By this piece, the vividly emotional palette of the profane Italian madrigal composing but also in his labors as a traveling Music Master; in this capacity he visited the Singing finds its way into the sacred repertoire. The music, by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), was Schools that were convened in town halls across New England with the aim of teaching common originally composed for five solo singers under the title “Dorinda, ah! dirò,” on love poetry from Il citizens to sing euphoniously together during worship. A musical autodidact, he was a tanner by pastor fido by Giovanni Battista Guarini. This contrafactum was made by Monteverdi’s contemporary, trade and friends with another staunch Patriot-tradesman, Paul Revere. In addition to his simple Aquilino Coppini – musician and lyricist to Cardinal Federico Borromeo of Milan – who retrofitted it hymns, which are much loved, he penned a variety of more elaborate compositions, including (and many other madrigals) with Latin devotional text for use in church. In doing so, Coppini was settings of Psalm texts, verses from the Song of Songs, and a clever send-up of au courante composers careful to preserve the original emotional content and also to assign Latin words that carry the same and concertgoers titled “Modern Musicke.” Despite this rich legacy, Billings died in financial ruin. accentuation as the original Italian. (I am obligated to disclose a textual adaptation of my own, made David’s Lamentation with the help of Classicist Jerise Fogel: I have replaced Coppini’s word Judaeis with superbos; David the king was grieved and sore. Coppini’s choice reads as gratuitously anti-Semitic, and because my change violates neither the He went to his chamber and wept. shape of Monteverdi’s music nor the dramatic arc of Coppini’s Scriptural gloss, I have no And as he went, he wept and said: reservations in making it.) Oh, my son. Oh, my son! Monteverdi was born in Cremona and began his musical training as a choirboy in the cathedral Would to God I had died for thee, there. His first important appointment was to the court of Mantua, which he served as a singer, viol O Absalom, my son. player, and music director. It was there that he premiered his first opera – and the oldest one in 2 Samuel 18:33 continual production – L’Orfeo (1607). He spent the latter half of his life in Venice, where he served the great basilica of San Marco as maestro di cappella, eventually taking priestly orders. Over the span As in “David’s Lamentation,” Absalon fili mi expresses the King’s grief on the death of his son of his career, his relentless musical innovation stretched compositional practice from the apotheosis Absalom, who was accidentally beheaded when his horse galloped him into a low-hanging tree of the style identified as the Renaissance into the early experiments of the Baroque. Throughout his branch. This motet was formerly attributed to Josquin Desprez, but experts are now convinced that development, he contributed to the most sophisticated compositional genre from the late the composer was Pierre de la Rue (1452-1518). De la Rue was born near and probably educated at Renaissance, the Italian madrigal. His nine books of madrigals showcase the increasing the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Tournai, in what is now Belgium. Highly employable as a singer, he responsiveness of his rhythms to natural speech inflections, his introduction of formerly served several churches and cathedrals before finding his last post at the Grande chapelle of Holy unacceptable dissonances for communicating emotional strife, and his incorporation of instrumental, Roman Emperor Maximilian, the musical establishment of the Burgundian-Hapsburg court. In this harmonic support of ever-more soloistic and virtuosic singing. Monteverdi is buried in Venice’s

“FILLED WITH HEARING” Counter-Reformation institution was formed to train missionary Jesuits for work in Protestant Texts and Translations Germany. By the early 1600s the College’s church, Sant’Apollinare, had distinguished itself by the with program notes by Kristina Boerger quality of its music, attracting worshippers of the highest rank. Job conditions were so favorable that Carissimi spent the remaining 44 years of his career in that post, even rejecting an offer to succeed Welcome to the first performance of the UI Chorale’s 2013-2014 season. Tonight we celebrate 500 Monteverdi at San Marco in Venice. Thus content and feeling no need to establish his credentials to years of the power of vocal harmony to elevate verse, whether from the unknown writers of future patrons, Carissimi never bothered to publish his music. Most of his manuscripts were lost in Scripture or from the pens of treasured poets. the early 1800s during Napoleon’s sack of Rome; what little we have is owed to copies made by his students. I. THE BARD ON DEATH Approaching as we are the annual celebrations of the dead as practiced in many Occidental Plorate filii Israel traditions (Samhain, El día de los muertos, All Souls’ Day), we begin with settings of three of Shakespeare’s poems on death. All three are found embedded within his scripts and designated to be Plorate filii Israel. Weep, o ye daughters of Israel. sung onstage as part of the drama. Sadly, we have no record of the music that was used in his time Plorate omnes virgines Weep, all ye virgins, to convey these poems. But generations of composers since have put their own hands to the task. et filiam Jephte unigenitam and for Jephthah’s only daughter, John Cook (1918-1984) was born in Essex, England, and entered Cambridge University as an organ in carmine doloris lamentamini. in sorrowful songs, lament. scholar. A conscientious objector, he left his studies to drive an ambulance during the London Blitz. After the war he served as a copyist to his nation’s most illustrious composers, Ralph Vaughan We close our performance with a most recent setting of a text on weeping that humans have been Williams and Benjamin Britten. Following this, he enjoyed a post as Organist and Choirmaster at singing together for longer than we may accurately know. The voice in Psalm 137 (Al naharot Bavel Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon, later emigrating to Ontario and becoming resident in the original Hebrew) is the collective lament of Israelites captive in Babylon after the sack of conductor and composer at the Stratford Festival there. Spending his last two decades in Boston, he Jerusalem in 587 B.C. In a behavior that recurs throughout histories of captivity (on the cotton served the Church of the Advent, the Longy School of Music, and MIT. plantations of the United States, in Theresienstadt, etc.), the captors seek distraction from their cruelty – or do they mock their captives? – in ordering their victims to perform mirthful songs. Super Given Cook’s involvement with productions of Shakespearean drama, one might expect to find more flumina Babylonis is a song about being unable to sing. Its first recorded use in Latin is found in the settings of The Bard’s texts among his works, but all his other known compositions for chorus are corpus of Medieval plainchant. A round on its English translation (“By the Waters of Babylon”), liturgical. Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun, the iconic funeral song from Cymbeline, reminds us composed in Britain in the 1780s by Philip Hayes, was popularized in the 1970s by inclusion on Don that our shared and inescapable fate carries many advantages. MacLean’s American Pie LP. Fans of reggae music will be familiar with The Melodians’ 1970 recording of the Rastafarian “By the Rivers of Babylon,” in which the captive Israelites symbolize the Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun (from Cymbeline) Black diaspora created by the African slave trade. Our version for mixed chorus and chamber Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, instruments was commissioned by Andrew Megill for the Westminster Kantorei. While voices spin Nor the furious winter’s rages. out the Latin text, the viola’s burbling ostinato represents the flowing riverwaters. Thou thy worldly task hast done, Composer, countertenor, and multi-instrumentalist Caleb Burhans (b. 1980) is one of New York’s Home art gone and ta’en thy wages. busiest concert musicians. He was born in Monterey, CA, to a musician father who played for Ray Golden lads and girls all must, Charles, The Everly Brothers, and Kenny Rogers. In what we have seen is an old tradition, Burhans As chimney sweepers, come to dust. had his own early training as a boy soprano, in Houston. During formative years in Janesville, WI, Fear no more the frown o’ the great; he studied music theory and composition, conducting, and several instruments, going on to attend Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke. Interlochen Arts Academy. He holds a dual bachelor’s degree – in viola performance and Care no more to clothe and eat; composition – from the Eastman School of Music. Specializing in the performance of early music, new music, pop/rock, and improvisation, Burhans has a dazzling list of performance credits to his UI Chorale name, ranging from the VOX Vocal Ensemble and the Trinity Wall Street Choir through the Soprano Alto Tenor Bass Milwaukee Symphony to Ensemble 21 and the new-music orchestra Alarm Will Sound, of which he Stevee Bellas Linnea Bettcher Justin Brauer Christopher Anderson is a founding member. As a composer, Burhans has received commissions from the Trinity Wall Maura Carr Ellen Bialek Alberto De la Paz Riley Ano Street Choir, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Christ and Saint Steven’s Church, Eastman’s Musica Gabriella Ciametti Katie Bruton Yohei Endo Edward Brennan Nova, the Albany Symphony, Tarab Cello Ensemble, and more. This fall he celebrated the release of Meghan Jain Susan Bywaters Noel Fortman Zifeng Forrest Huang his debut CD, Evensong, featuring seven compositions: three in performance by the Trinity Wall Soo Hyun Kim Hannah Loftus Christopher Hoster Dae Kwang Kim Street Choir, three by Alarm Will Sound, and one by the Tarab Cello Ensemble. Nini Marchese Julia McCarren Ryan Kirby Myeong Hwan Caleb Lee Samantha Resser Rosie O'Connor Austin McWilliams John Morefield On a personal note: As a performing colleague and friend of Caleb, I eagerly purchased my copy of Sarah Shulman Danielle Pacelli Joseph Meland Brian Smith Evensong this past summer, after attending a concert of his works at Constellation in Chicago. Most Claire Swale Caitlin Richardson Louis Trzepkowski Eric Spiegel particularly, of course, I was interested in hearing what he was writing for chorus. “Super flumina So Jin Yoo Amy Rife Syrus White Babylonis” appealed to me from its first phrases, and at measure 63 (to be exact) I knew without Madeline Whitesell question that I would program it for my first performance with the UI Chorale. The piece is a Angela Yang beautiful vehicle for connecting my current students with the musicians who have populated my professional life, a life for which my own studenthood here prepared me. At the same time, I am happy for the opportunity – thanks to these beautiful voices – to offer this music to the many Kristina Boerger received her formative musical training from pianist Annie Sherter and holds the listeners here whose desire for fine ensemble singing has supported and challenged me over many doctorate in Choral Conducting and Literature from the University of Illinois. She returned to UI this years. Thank you for joining us tonight. We hope you will find yourselves “filled with hearing.” fall as Interim Director of Choral Activities, having most recently served as Associate Professor of Music at Carroll University, where she directed three choral ensembles and taught the core Super flumina Babylonis curriculum in the choral music-education degree program. Prior to assuming her full-time academic career, she spent a decade as a freelancer in New York City, where she divided her career equally Super flumina Babylonis By the rivers of Babylon, among her loves of conducting, singing, and teaching. Her New York artistic directorships include illic sedimus et flevimus there we sat down and wept three seasons with AMUSE and nine seasons with the Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, as well as two cum recordaremur Sion. when we remembered Zion. seasons directing the Collegiate Chorale and several collaborations with the Christopher Caines In salicibus in medio ejus On the willows in the midst thereof Dance Company. As a singer, she concertized and recorded for nine years with the Western Wind suspendimus organa nostra we hung up our harps. sextet and the Pomerium Renaissance ensemble, with which latter group she still performs. Other Quia illic rogaverunt nos For there they required of us, concert and recording credits include projects with Early Music New York, VOX Vocal Ensemble, qui captivos duxerunt nos who had carried us away captive, the Rose Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the London Philharmonia verba cantionum a song, Chorus, and Bobby McFerrin. Dr. Boerger also taught music history at Barnard College and et qui affligebant nos laetitiam: and those who had afflicted us, mirth: Columbia University and choral conducting at the Manhattan School of Music. In her first life as a Cantate nobis de canticis Sion. Sing to us from the songs of Zion. Midwesterner, she founded AMASONG: Champaign-Urbana’s Premier Lesbian/Feminist Chorus, Quomodo cantabimus canticum Domini How shall we sing the songs of the Lord taught public-school choirs in Kenosha (WI) and Bloomington (IL), and served on the faculties of in terra aliena? in a strange land? Lake Forest College and the Millikin University School of Music. She currently serves the Madison Early Music Festival as instructor, faculty soprano, and conductor of the All-Festival Chorus and Orchestra. Her choral settings of poetry by Sarah White are published by Boosey & Hawkes. Psalm 137:1-4 new music, pop/rock, and improvisation, Burhans has a dazzling list of performance credits to his UI Chorale name, ranging from the VOX Vocal Ensemble and the Trinity Wall Street Choir through the Soprano Alto Tenor Bass Milwaukee Symphony to Ensemble 21 and the new-music orchestra Alarm Will Sound, of which he Stevee Bellas Linnea Bettcher Justin Brauer Christopher Anderson is a founding member. As a composer, Burhans has received commissions from the Trinity Wall Maura Carr Ellen Bialek Alberto De la Paz Riley Ano Street Choir, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Christ and Saint Steven’s Church, Eastman’s Musica Gabriella Ciametti Katie Bruton Yohei Endo Edward Brennan Nova, the Albany Symphony, Tarab Cello Ensemble, and more. This fall he celebrated the release of Meghan Jain Susan Bywaters Noel Fortman Zifeng Forrest Huang his debut CD, Evensong, featuring seven compositions: three in performance by the Trinity Wall Soo Hyun Kim Hannah Loftus Christopher Hoster Dae Kwang Kim Street Choir, three by Alarm Will Sound, and one by the Tarab Cello Ensemble. Nini Marchese Julia McCarren Ryan Kirby Myeong Hwan Caleb Lee Samantha Resser Rosie O'Connor Austin McWilliams John Morefield On a personal note: As a performing colleague and friend of Caleb, I eagerly purchased my copy of Sarah Shulman Danielle Pacelli Joseph Meland Brian Smith Evensong this past summer, after attending a concert of his works at Constellation in Chicago. Most Claire Swale Caitlin Richardson Louis Trzepkowski Eric Spiegel particularly, of course, I was interested in hearing what he was writing for chorus. “Super flumina So Jin Yoo Amy Rife Syrus White Babylonis” appealed to me from its first phrases, and at measure 63 (to be exact) I knew without Madeline Whitesell question that I would program it for my first performance with the UI Chorale. The piece is a Angela Yang beautiful vehicle for connecting my current students with the musicians who have populated my professional life, a life for which my own studenthood here prepared me. At the same time, I am happy for the opportunity – thanks to these beautiful voices – to offer this music to the many Kristina Boerger received her formative musical training from pianist Annie Sherter and holds the listeners here whose desire for fine ensemble singing has supported and challenged me over many doctorate in Choral Conducting and Literature from the University of Illinois. She returned to UI this years. Thank you for joining us tonight. We hope you will find yourselves “filled with hearing.” fall as Interim Director of Choral Activities, having most recently served as Associate Professor of Music at Carroll University, where she directed three choral ensembles and taught the core Super flumina Babylonis curriculum in the choral music-education degree program. Prior to assuming her full-time academic career, she spent a decade as a freelancer in New York City, where she divided her career equally Super flumina Babylonis By the rivers of Babylon, among her loves of conducting, singing, and teaching. Her New York artistic directorships include illic sedimus et flevimus there we sat down and wept three seasons with AMUSE and nine seasons with the Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, as well as two cum recordaremur Sion. when we remembered Zion. seasons directing the Collegiate Chorale and several collaborations with the Christopher Caines In salicibus in medio ejus On the willows in the midst thereof Dance Company. As a singer, she concertized and recorded for nine years with the Western Wind suspendimus organa nostra we hung up our harps. sextet and the Pomerium Renaissance ensemble, with which latter group she still performs. Other Quia illic rogaverunt nos For there they required of us, concert and recording credits include projects with Early Music New York, VOX Vocal Ensemble, qui captivos duxerunt nos who had carried us away captive, the Rose Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the London Philharmonia verba cantionum a song, Chorus, and Bobby McFerrin. Dr. Boerger also taught music history at Barnard College and et qui affligebant nos laetitiam: and those who had afflicted us, mirth: Columbia University and choral conducting at the Manhattan School of Music. In her first life as a Cantate nobis de canticis Sion. Sing to us from the songs of Zion. Midwesterner, she founded AMASONG: Champaign-Urbana’s Premier Lesbian/Feminist Chorus, Quomodo cantabimus canticum Domini How shall we sing the songs of the Lord taught public-school choirs in Kenosha (WI) and Bloomington (IL), and served on the faculties of in terra aliena? in a strange land? Lake Forest College and the Millikin University School of Music. She currently serves the Madison Early Music Festival as instructor, faculty soprano, and conductor of the All-Festival Chorus and Orchestra. Her choral settings of poetry by Sarah White are published by Boosey & Hawkes. Psalm 137:1-4