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Neo Choral II, the Dale Warland Singers, February Walker Art Center Neo Choral II The Dale Warland Singers· February 4, 1993 Walker Art Center presents 3.I:d.Yimd.ar Neo Choral II What lack ye? What is it you will buy? The Dale Warland Singers Any points, pins or laces? 8:00 pm, Thursday, February 4, 1993 Any laces, points or pins? Come choose, come buy. Dale Warland, Conductor What is it you will buy? I have pretty poking sticks, And many other tricks. Street Cries (from ·Shoemaker·s Holiday·) (1967) ~ Dominick Argento (b. 1927) Come, cheap for your love And buy for your money A delicate ballad Of the ferret Everyone Sang (1991) and coney. Dominick Argento (b. 1927) The windmill blown down By the witch's fart, Jerry Rubino, Conductor And Saint George that O! broke the dragon's heart! A Toccata of Galuppi·s (1990) Dominick Argento (b. 1927) ·Street Cries· was premiered 25 years ago. The event took place about fifty yards behind Intermission you, in the aisles of the Guthrie Theater. The production was ·Shoemaker's Holiday,· music In the Land of Wu (1989) by Argento, words by Thomas Decker, who was Jackie T. Gabel (b. 1949) one of the first dramatists in Shakespeare's time to write about common folk. Argento set A.M.D.G. (Ad majorem Dei gloriam) (1939) -rnuch of the text to a kind of popular music, as Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) opposed to a more serious style, and he left a lot of the spoken dialogue in place, so the 1. Heaven-Haven result fits into a genre of opera known as 2. 0 Deus, ego amo te ballad opera. The actors, portraying 3. Rosa Mystica shoemakers and peddlers, opened the 4. The Soldier production by walking down the Guthrie's 5. Prayer II aisles singing ·Street Cries.· (Since many of 6. God's Grandeur them didn't read music, Argento himself had to 7. Prayer I teach them their notes by note, which "was actually a lot of fun," he remembers.) Technically, ·Street Cries" is a quodlibet, a This program is supported in part with funds collection of individual tunes which, when piled from the Music Program of the National on top of each other, create harmony. Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. .. Everyone Sang Program Notes and Texts Everyone suddenly burst out singing; Street Cries And I was filled with such delight ~ As prisoned birds must find in freedom What do you lack, gentlemen? Winging wildly across the white What is it you will buy? Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out Fine knacks for the ladies, Cheap, choice, brave of sight. and new! What is it you will buy? Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted, Fine gloves, fine glasses, Any busks or masks? And beauty came like the setting sun. My heart was shaken with tears, and horror ~ Drifted away ... 0 but every one New brooms, green brooms, Will you buy any? Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the Come, maidens, come quickly, Let me take a singing will never be done. penny! -Siegfried Sassoon New, green brooms! This short, ebullient work was commissioned b the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association for their All-State High School Chorus. The premiere was in April, 1991 in Pittsburgh. The poem is by Britain's Siegfried Sassoon, VI. considered by many to be the poet of WWI. Well'j and it was graceful of them - they'd break Sassoon wrote it in 1919, shortly after the talk off and afford Armistice was signed, and it expresses his joy -She, to bite her mask's black velvet - he, to t the coming peace. Argento says the poem, finger on his sword, .ven though it's linked to those times, "ls While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at appropriate really for any occasion of the clavichord? celebration.· To convey revelry, Argento writes passages of wordless music in which, he VII. says, "each attacked pitch is to be sung to What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths syllables of the chorister's own choosing - very diminished, sigh on sigh, spirited, jubilant and varied. The effect should Told them something? Those suspensions, be spontaneous and exuberant, not uniform. those solutions - 'Must we die?' Those commiserating sevenths - 'Life might A Toccata· of Galupplls last! we can but try!' I. • Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find I VIII. I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove 'Were you happy?' - 'Yes: - 'And are you still as me deaf and blind; happy?' - 'Yes. And you?'· But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such - 'Then, more klsses!' - 'Did I stop them, when a a heavy mindl million seemed so few?' Hark the dominant's persistence till it must be II. answered to! Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings. IX. What, they lived once thus at Venice where the So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they merchants were the kings, praised you, I dare sayl Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used 'Brave Galuppil that was music! good alike at to wed the sea with rings? grave and gayl I can always leave off talking when I hear a I. master play!', Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by ... what you call X. ...Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due they kept the carnival: time, one by one, I was never out of England - it's as if I saw it Some with lives that came to nothing, some all. with deeds as well undone, Death stepped tacitly and took them where IV. they never see the sun. Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May? XI. Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning But when I sit down to reason, think to take. my ever to mid-day, stand nor swerve, When they made up fresh adventures for the While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from morrow, do you say? natura's close reserve, In you come with your cold music till I creep V. throe every nerve. Was a lady such 8 lady, cheeks so round and lips so red, - XII. On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell- Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where flower on its bed, a house was burned: O'er the breast's superb abundance where a 'Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice man might base his head? spent what Venice earned. The soul, doubtless, is immortal - where a soul can be discerned. XIII. from a consortium of American choruses, 'Yours for instance: you know physics, Argento thought lIitld be nice to do a matching something of geology, Browning piece, II especially since held recently Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise . been elected an honorary member of The in their degree; Browning Society. Thus, IIA Toccata of Butterflies may dread extinction, - youlll not Galuppi's. II die, it cannot bel In the Land of Wu XIV In the land of Wu the m-ulberry leaves are lAs for Venice and her people, merely born to green, bloom and drop, And thrice the silkworms have gone to sleep. Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth In East Luh, where my family stays, and folly were the crop: I wonder who is sowing those 'fields of ours. What of soul was left, I wonder, when the I cannot be back in time for the spring doings. kissing had to stop? Yet I can help nothing, traveling on the river. XV. The south wind, blowing, wafts my homesick 'Dust and asnes!' So you creak it, and I want spirit the heart to scold. An-d carries it up to the front of our familiar Dear dead women, with such hair, too - what's tavern. become of all the gold There I see a peach-tree on the east side of the Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel house, chilly and grown old. With- thick leaves and branches waving in the blue mist. It is the tree I pla-nted before my parting three First, this interesting title. Baldassaro Galuppi . years ago. (1706-85) was one of the early masters of The peach-tree has grown now as tall as the comic opera. Had Galuppi never lived, Mozart tavern-roof, would not have had the wonder models for his While I have wandered about w-ithout own comic operas like "The Marriage of Figaro" returning. and IICosi fan tutte. II Galuppi also composed keyboard sonatas, one of which inspired Robert Ping-yang, my pretty daughter, I see you stand -- Browning (1812-89) to write this poem, lines By the peach-tree, and pluck a flowering that Argento set in 1990 for mixed chamber branch. chorus, string quartet and harpsichord. (Why You pluck the flowers, but I am not there - Browning re-named Galuppils sonata a toccata How may your tears flow like a stream of is unknown.) water! My little son, Pe-chin, grown up to your sister's Argento: "This is a wonderful poem. Basically shoulders, it's a reflection by a 19th century figure, You come out with her under the peach-tree; Browning, on the 18th century, using the music But who is there to pat you on the back? of Galuppi and the setting of Venice as a reference. Itls a nice meditation on mortality. When I think of these things my senses fail, The fun, the entertainment of old Venice', used And a sharp pain cuts my heart every day.
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