Friday, June 2, 2017 • 9:00 p.m ​

Thomas Patrick

Hughes

Senior Recital

DePaul Recital Hall 804 West Belden Avenue • Chicago

Friday, June 2, 2017 • 9:00 p.m. ​ DePaul Recital Hall

Thomas Patrick Hughes, baritone Senior Recital Esther Rayo, soprano Mary Katherine vom Lehn, mezzo-soprano Daniel Alexander O’Hearn, tenor Luciano Laurentiu, piano

PROGRAM

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Vier Ernste Gesänge, Op. 121 (1896) Denn es gehet dem Menschen Ich wandte mich O tod, wie bitter bist du Wenn ich mich Menschen

Luciano Laurentiu, piano

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) Lydia, Op. 4 (1870) Clair de Lune, Op. 46 (1887)

Luciano Laurentiu, piano

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Le Nozze di Figaro (1786) ​ “Hai gia vinta la causa!”

Luciano Laurentiu, piano

Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017 Program

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) Spanisches Liederspiel, Op. 74 ​ V. Es ist verrathen IX. Ich bin geliebt

Luciano Laurentiu, piano Esther Rayo, soprano Mary Katherine vom Lehn, mezzo-soprano Daniel Alexander O’Hearn, tenor

Intermission

Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017 Program

John Dowland (1563-1626) Come Again, Sweet Love Doth Now Invite (1597) Henry Purcell (1659-1695) The Faerie Queene (1692) ​ ​ ​ “Now, winter comes slowly” W.S. Gwynn Williams (1896-1978) My Little Welsh Home (1950) Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) The Sky Above The Roof (1908) Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) Let Us Garlands Bring, Op. 18 (1942) No. V It was a Lover and his Lass Arr. Granville Bantock (1868-1946) Ar hyd y nos (1784) Arr. Helen Hopekirk (1856-1945) By Yon Bonnie Banks (1841) Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), arranger Folksong Arrangements, Volume 5 (1951) V. Ca’ the yowes Roger Quilter (1877-1953) Five Shakespeare Songs, Op. 23, No. 4 Take, O take those lips away John Bull (1562-1628) National & Royal Anthem: God Save the Queen (1619) Thomas Arne (1710-1778) Rule, Britannia! (1740)

Luciano Laurentiu, piano

Thomas Patrick Hughes is from the studio of Elizabeth Byrne. This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of the degree Bachelor of Music.

As a courtesy to those around you, please silence all cell phones and other electronic devices. Flash photography is not permitted. Thank you.

Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017

PROGRAM NOTES Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Vier Ernste Gesänge, Op. 121 (1896) Duration: 18 minutes Johannes Brahms referred to the Vier ernste Gesänge, for low voice and piano, as a present he made for himself for his birthday. He completed the cycle on 7 May, 1896, for his sixty-third, and last, birthday. Brahms began the pieces after Clara Schumann (his lifelong friend and widow of Robert Schumann) suffered a stroke on 26 March. Although she managed to write a brief note to Brahms on his birthday, she never recovered and died on the th 20 ​ of May. Brahms played and sang these at a gathering of friends after ​ her burial. Passages of the Vier ernste Gesänge are reminiscent of the Symphony No. 4. He dedicated the cycle to his friend, Max Klinger. During 1897 and 1898, the Vier ernste Gesänge were often presented in memory of Brahms and were sung in this fashion throughout Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Holland.

Brahms pulled the text of the Vier ernste Gesänge from Biblical sources, two from the book of Ecclesiastes, one from Corinthians I and one from the book of Ecclesiasticus in the Apocrypha (non-canonised doctrine within the Christian faith). The texts of the first three songs deal with death, the transience of life and the oppression. The text of the fourth song is taken from the Apocrypha and is focused on faith, hope, charity, and love.

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) Lydia, Op. 4 (1870) & Clair de Lune, Op. 46 (1887) Duration: 5 minutes Faure is widely regarded as one of the masters of French Art song, or Melodie. In 1922, Maurice Ravel wrote that Faure had even saved French Music from the dominance of German Lieder. Two years later the critic ​ Samuel Langford wrote of Fauré, "More surely almost than any writer in the world he commanded the faculty to create a song all of a piece, and with a sustained intensity of mood which made it like a single thought". Faure’s Op. 4 and Op. 46 display his mastery of Melodie during his Early and Middle periods respectively. Although his earlier works are seen as simple, it is in that simplicity that we see the genius that was Faure when it came to setting text.

Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017 Program Notes

Faure has long been criticized for sullying his otherwise esteemed body of art songs with settings of poems by inferior authors. His settings of Verlaine, for example, are among his most beloved. But other poems, such as that used in Lydia, the second song for voice and piano from Faure Op. ​ ​ 2, are regarded more coolly in academic circles. This, of course, unfairly projects modern tastes onto fin de siècle culture, and at any rate fails to address the innovations and seminal stylistic characteristics that this early song exhibits. The text, taken from Leconte de Lisle, plays on the ageless European literary conceit of using "death" or "dying" as a euphemism for the erotic. The poet hardly casts the image as a metaphor, describing a "death" imposed by the physical beauty of the beloved. Faure, on the other ​ ​ hand, paces the dramatic curve of the song, with its hushed repeated chords and chromatic chord progressions growing more intense as the singer's melody arches ever higher. The song, of course, reaches its zenith at the moment of death: "Oh Lydia, return my life to me/That I might die, die forever." Faure’s biographers and others, recognizing the composer's ​ ​ penchant for self-borrowing, have traced the vocal melody of Lydia, with its stepwise ascents and descents and subsequent scalar figure that together chart an underlying upward incline, through nearly four decades of Faure’s oeuvre: first in "La lune blanche" from La bonne chanson (1893), then Act III of Prométhée (1900), and finally, the Kyrie from Messe basse (1906). Scholar Carlo Caballero, for example, traces Faure’s frequent use of the sharped-fourth scale degree or (appropriately enough) Lydian mode to this early song. These borrowings beg no particular cross-readings or intertextual connections, but, intentionally explicit or not, rather point up the general stylistic consistency one finds throughout Faure’s work, ​ ​ beginning with these early songs.

Clair de lune represents Faure’s first excursion into the ideal landscape to which he would return several times as a supreme master of the Melodie -- notably, in the Mélodies de Venise, Op. 58 (1891), La Bonne Chanson, Op. 61 (1892-1894), and the fantastic divertissement Masques et bergamasques, Op. 112 (1919), in which Clair de lune would find its predestined place. By contrast, Debussy’s second, more successful setting of Clair de lune, from his first collection of Fêtes galantes (1891), perhaps protests too much in sensuous striving to evoke a realm which Faure calls up persuasively in a subtle, deceptively simple fait accompli.

Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017 Program Notes

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Le Nozze di Figaro (1786) Duration: 5 minutes When it comes to musical geniuses, no name comes to mind before that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Born into a musical family, he started showing savant-like prowess at the age of five when he was already composing, playing keyboard and violin, and performing for European royalty. As Mozart aged, his compositions became more sophisticated; his Opera’s more scandalous and intellectually challenging. Much like the Age of Enlightenment that was going on around him, Mozart began questioning the aristocracy. The perfect example is in his Opera, Le Nozze di Figaro. Based on the play La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro written by Pierre Beaumarchais, the play's denunciation of aristocratic privilege has been characterised as foreshadowing the French Revolution. The revolutionary leader Georges Danton said that the play "killed off the nobility"; in exile, ​ ​ Napoleon Bonaparte called it "the Revolution already put into action."

The second story within the Trilogy, Le Nozze di Figaro picks up three ​ years following the end of The Barber of Seville as Figaro is engaged to Susanna; both characters are among the Count's staff in his dwelling. In the three years since Figaro helped forge the marriage of the Count and Rosina, the Count has already grown bored with his marriage and is taking notice of Suzanna. The Count looks to re-engage the act of primae noctis (the first night, in which he would consummate the marriage with the bride-to-be prior to Figaro's honeymoon). In Hai gia vinta la causa, the Count overhears Susanna and Figaro saying “We have won our case” and determines that he will not be undermined.

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) Spanisches Liederspiel, Op. 74 Duration: 6 minutes Schumann often experimented with new forms of music drama, such as his Scenes from Goethe's Faust, WoO 3, the choral ballads that resemble oratorios or even mini-operas, declamations such as Schön Hedwig, and his secular oratorio Paradise and the Peri. In this work, one of his earliest such experiments, he wrote a liederspiel -- a combination of song cycle (Liederkreis) and singspiel -- in which the poems are organized to create a Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017 Program Notes semblance of a plot (Schumann also added titles to some of them to further this) and the different singers take on roles. Whereas traditional nineteenth century liederspiels were bourgeois entertainments, inserting simple songs ​ ​ into dramatic works and plays, Schumann's effort eliminates all elements of scenery, action, and dialogue, and so for all practical purposes amounts to a song cycle. However, Schumann's Spanisches Liederspiel maintains distinctly dramatic elements, using solos and duets for the exposition of the main characters, and part songs as choruses.

The texts for Op. 74 were compiled by Emanuel Geibel and are mostly adaptations of anonymous Spanish poems. However, two of them, "Intermezzo" and "Liebesgram" are taken from the writings of Gil Vicente and ​ ​ ​ ​ Christobal de Castillejo, respectively. Schumann predicted that these songs would be among his most successful, but while they were well received, they never caught on as he had hoped. Nonetheless, they are full of melodic invention, and their Spanish elements, such as bolero rhythms, give them a lively charm. All of the songs exhibit Schumann's trademark lyricism and his acute sense of poetic mood.

While Schumann was disappointed with its reception, he nonetheless followed something of the same pattern with his Minnespiel (Opus 101) to Ruckert texts, and with his Spanische Liebeslieder (Op. 138, also with texts by Geibel).

John Dowland (1563-1626) Come Again, Sweet Love Doth Now Invite (1597) Duration: 2 minutes John Dowland was the lutenist of his day. Born in England, he served as the ambassador to the French Court from 1580 – 1584. However, this post proved a challenge to his return home since, during his stay in France, he had converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1594, the position for Court Lutenist became vacant in Elizabeth I’s court but his application was denied…he attributed this failure to his religion. Four years later, he went into the service of Christian IV of Denmark who loved Dowland’s music. He was dismissed from his post in 1606 but was able to secure a post as on of King James I’s lutenist in 1612. Although his date of death is unknown, , his last payment comes from the court on January 20 1626. ​ ​ Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017 Program Notes

"Come Again, sweet love doth now invite" is a song by John Dowland. The lyrics are anonymous. The song is bittersweet, typical of Dowland who cultivated a melancholy style. It was included in Dowland's First Booke of ​ Songes or Ayres, which appeared in 1597. The piece is often performed as a ​ lute song by soloist and lute, but, like other songs in the First Booke, it is ​ ​ printed in a format that can also be performed as a madrigal by a small vocal group. While some consider this song to be melancholic, it may in fact serve as a double-entendre for the “La petite mort” (or, otherwise, “the little death”…much like Faure’s Lydia). ​ ​ Henry Purcell (1659-1695) The Faerie Queene (1692) Duration: 2 minutes Henry Purcell is greatly considered the greatest English composer to come ​ from the British Isles: until Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams or Benjamin Britten, no other composer approached the same level of fame. Although incorporating Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, Purcell's legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque Music through Opera, Theatre, and Sacred works. Purcell’s Fairy-Queen is a ​ ​ Masque, or semi-Opera, adapted from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer ​ Night’s Dream. Composed in 1692 (three years before the composer’s death), ​ th the opera disappeared and was lost until the early 20 ​ century. It has since ​ become one of his masterpieces.

W.S. Gwynn Williams (1896-1978) My Little Welsh Home (1950) Duration: 3 minutes William Stanley Gwynn Williams was a musician and composer, also lecturer, author, editor and broadcaster on the history of British and in particular Welsh music. His song My Little Welsh Home was written as a tribute to his childhood home in the town of Llangollen, Wales which is located off of the River Dee on the edge of the Berwyn Mountains.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) The Sky Above The Roof (1908) Duration: 2 minutes After Henry Purcell, Ralph (raif) Vaughan Williams is considered the greatest English composer until Benjamin Britten. His works include ​ Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017 Program Notes operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over nearly fifty years. Known for his Song Cycles such as the Songs of Travel and On Wenlock Edge, he set over 80 poems to music for voice and piano. In The ​ Sky Above the Roof, he set Paul Verlaine’s poem to music. In the poem, ​ Verlaine writes about his view and experience from his prison cell.

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) Let Us Garlands Bring, Op. 18 (1942) Duration: 2 minutes Although Finzi was neither a singer nor a pianist of much accomplishment, he remains best known for the songs and choral music that form the bulk of his work. He amassed a distinguished library and his love for English literature led naturally to text settings. The son of a wealthy shipbroker who died when he was eight, Finzi studied music privately. He had the help of prominent musicians such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and founded a sort of community orchestra, with which he supported younger performers and composers and revived largely forgotten 18th-century English music.

Thomas Hardy was particularly important to Finzi, but he did set Shakespeare regularly. Let Us Garlands Bring gathers five songs that he composed between 1929 and 1942, when he dedicated the set to

Vaughan Williams on the older composer’s 70th birthday. Finzi organized his five songs into a coherent group, contrasting deeply reflective elegies with bright love songs. Vaughan Williams thought the central “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,” with its solemnly cresting vocal line, steady piano tread, and hushed benediction, one of the loveliest songs ever written. There are deliberately antique touches that reference the Elizabethan period of the texts, but the harmonic bumps and the natural declamation are Finzi’s own.

It was a Lover and his Lass comes from the Shakespearean play As You Like It. ​ ​ ​ The song, sung by a page, serves as a prelude to the wedding ceremony. It ​ praises springtime and is intended to announce the rebirth of nature and the theme of moral regeneration in human life. Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017 Program Notes

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), arranger Folksong Arrangements, Volume 5 (1951) Duration: 4 minutes When it comes to 20th century English composers, Benjamin Britten is regarded as the most famous. The son of a dentist, he showed talent for music at a young age and later went to study at the Royal College of Music where he studied privately with composer Frank Bridge. Unlike the composer of the day, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge had no interest in arrangements of folk melodies and instilled this into his pupil. It was Britten’s relationship with English Tenor and life-long partner Peter Pears that inspired Britten to adopt this style of composition.

Written in his Volume 5 of Folksong Arrangements from the British Isle’s, Britten arranged the famous Scottish tune Ca’ the Yowes with a flare that can ​ ​ only be described as Britten-esque. The poem, written by Robert “Rabbie” Burns (the national poet of Scotland) in Burn’s native tongue of Scots, tells of unrequited love. The melody translates to “Call the sheep to the hills, call them where the heather grows, call them where them where the stream rows my dear.” The last verse ends with “I can die but cannot part, my dear”. In this, the speaker declares that not even death can end the love that he has for his desired. However, the poet never tells us how this song ends although Britten certainly gives us his opinion in the way he sets the last refrain.

Roger Quilter (1877-1953) Five Shakespeare Songs, Op. 23, No. 4 Duration: 1 minute Roger Quilter is a composer of English Art songs, where he composed more than one hundred in total. Born into a non-musical family, he studied at Eton College before moving to Frankfurt, Germany to study composition with Iwan Knorr for five years. Like Benjamin Britten, Quilter was homosexual and dealt with the pressures that society imposed upon him. This led to a break down and deteriorated his mental health.

His song, Take O take those lips away is from William Shakespeare’s Measure ​ ​ ​ for Measure, one of his “problem plays”. In the song, Mariana is suggesting ​ ​ that Angelo take his lips away, since he used them to break promises, and to take

Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017 Program Notes his eyes as well, because they also lie. She asks that he return her kisses to her - a double meaning, of course, in that it means, on the one hand, that she wishes she'd not kissed him in the first place and, on the other, that she'd like to kiss him again.

John Bull (1562-1628) National & Royal Anthem: God Save the Queen (1619) Duration: 1 minute "God Save the Queen" is the national anthem of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Like many aspects of British constitutional life, its official status derives from custom and use, not from Royal Proclamation or Act of Parliament. In general only one or two verses are sung, but on rare occasions three. The variation in the UK of the lyrics to "God Save the Queen" is the oldest amongst those currently used, and forms the basis on which all other versions used throughout the Commonwealth are formed; though, again, the words have varied throughout these years. England has no official national anthem of its own; "God Save the Queen" is treated as the English national anthem when England is represented at sporting events (though there are some exceptions to this rule, such as cricket where Jerusalem is used). There is a movement to establish an English national anthem, with Blake and Parry's "Jerusalem" and Elgar's "Land of Hope and Glory" among the top contenders. Scotland has its own national song and Wales has its own national anthem for political and national events and for use at international football, rugby union and other sports in which those nations compete independently. On all occasions Wales' national anthem is "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" (Land of my Fathers). Scotland has no single anthem; "Scotland the Brave" was traditionally used until the 1990s, when "Flower of Scotland" was adopted. In Northern Ireland, "God Save the Queen" is still used as the official anthem. The phrase "God Save the King" is much older than the song, appearing, for instance, several times in the King James Bible. A text based on the 1st Book of Kings Chapter 1: verses 38–40, "...And all the people rejoic'd, and said: God save the King! Long live the King! May the King live for ever, Amen", has been sung at every coronation since that of King Edgar in 973.

Thomas Patrick Hughes • June 2, 2017 Program Notes

Thomas Arne (1710-1778) Rule, Britannia! (1740) Duration: 4 minutes "Rule, Britannia!" is a British patriotic song, originating from the poem "Rule, Britannia" by James Thomson and set to music by Thomas Arne in 1740. Considered the unofficial Anthem of Great Britain, the This British national air was originally included in Alfred, a masque about Alfred the ​ ​ Great co-written by Thomson and David Mallet and first performed at Cliveden, country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales (the eldest son of George II and father of the future George III, as well as the great-grandfather of Queen Victoria), on 1 August 1740, to commemorate the accession of George II and the third birthday of the Princess Augusta.

Notes by Thomas Patrick Hughes.

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