A Farewell to Arms: a World War I Centennial Concert
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A FAREWELL TO ARMS: A WORLD WAR I CENTENNIAL CONCERT Sunday, November 11, 2018 4:30 p.m. National Presbyterian Church Washington D.C. Gretchen Kuhrmann, Guest Conductor CONCERT PROGRAM Program Notes 3 Europe and the Centenary Commemorations 8 Historical Notes 11 THE CITY CHOIR OF WASHINGTON Text and Translations 16 Meet The Artists 25 Robert Shafer, Artistic Director and Conductor War Poems 30 Gretchen Kuhrmann, Guest Conductor The City Choir of Washington 33 Rachel Binger, Assistant Conductor Photo Notes 36 Donors & Supporters 37 Katelyn G. Aungst, Soprano | Robert Petillo, Tenor | James Shaffran, Baritone | Todd Fickley, Organ Upcoming Concerts 41 The City Choir of Washington Chamber Orchestra Gretchen Kuhrmann’s appearance as Guest Conductor has been underwritten by a generous donation from Marty and Barbara Ilacqua. CONCERT PROGRAM THE CITY CHOIR OF WASHINGTON Robert Shafer, Artistic Director and Conductor Gretchen Kuhrmann, Guest Conductor Rachel Binger, Assistant Conductor Katelyn G. Aungst, Soprano | Robert Petillo, Tenor | James Shaffran, Baritone | Todd Fickley, Organ The City Choir of Washington Chamber Orchestra Gretchen Kuhrmann’s appearance as Guest Conductor has been underwritten by a generous donation from Marty and Barbara Ilacqua. PRESENTATION OF GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THE NATIONAL COLORS John Ireland (1879-1962) & THE NATIONAL ANTHEM INTERMISSION IN TERRA PAX Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) DONA NOBIS PACEM Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) A FAREWELL TO ARMS Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) JERUSALEM Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918) A question and answer session will take place immediately following the performance. Please also explore the exhibition of World War I artifacts on view in the parlor. These artifacts are generously on loan from the personal collection of Michael Bigelow, Command Historian for the Army Intelligence and Security Command. 1 2 PROGRAM NOTES by Emily Hantman Tsai Planning for The City Choir of Washington’s first lay down his life for his friends.” Then the drums “and on earth peace, good will toward men.” We England tour this past summer, Maestro Shafer of war: Ralph Vaughan Williams, although in can only hope that the divine peace will overcome ruminated on the impact of English composers and his forties, enlisted as a private in the ambulance our human impulse to war and destruction. choral tradition on his own musical development: corps. His great cantata, Dona Nobis Pacem, was “As a young student musician in the early sixties, I written in 1936, although the fourth movement, In Terra Pax (1954) was enormously impressed by the great tradition of “Dirge for Two Veterans,” was composed as Finzi’s In Terra Pax is set to text taken from “Noel: choral singing at King’s College, Cambridge... a stand-alone piece in 1914. Texts taken from Christmas Eve, 1913,” a poem by Robert Bridges I had a transforming musical experience in the Walt Whitman (a volunteer nurse during the (an English Poet Laureate and member of Britain’s spring of 1964, at the age of 18, when I heard one American Civil War) and John Bright, a British War Propaganda Office during the Great War). of the first American performances of Britten’s parliamentarian known for his opposition to the Finzi composed the work after being inspired by a War Requiem at Washington National Cathedral, Crimean War, show the human face and horror New Year’s Eve visit to Chosen Hill, Gloucester- conducted by Paul Callaway…Inspired by my of war. Gerald Finzi, only 13 years old when war shire: coming out into the clear frosty midnight, early exposure to the great British choral tradition, broke out, experienced terrible personal loss, since he “heard bells ringing across Gloucestershire I have regularly performed so many British works, his three brothers and his music teacher were from beside the Severn to the hill villages of the from Handel oratorios to the mystical masterpieces killed in the war. Throughout his career he would Cotswolds.” That last Christmas before the Great of Sir John Tavener.” return to the memory of war and its ravages. In A War conjures up tremendous feelings of ambiv- Farewell To Arms, he evokes Ernest Hemingway’s alence: a time of lost innocence and hope; the When the opportunity came for TCCW to per- great novel of World War I; the song’s subject, remembrance that politicians and citizens alike form a concert in remembrance of the Armistice’s taken from two 16th-17th century poems, is an believed in August 1914 that a war would “clear Centennial, Shafer was immediately drawn to the elderly warrior who has laid down the tools of war. the air” and the boys would be home by Christmas; idea of a program by British composers who were the ghosts of the Christmas Truce on the Western alive during World War I, all of whom were direct- But both In Terra Pax and Dona Nobis Pacem invoke Front in December 1914. It is interesting that Finzi ly involved and intensely impacted by the war. the idea of a divine rather than man-made peace: leaves out the stanza of the poem that begins: the “Carthaginian Peace,” as John Maynard “Now blessed be the tow’rs/that crown England Our program examines war and peace. There is Keynes called the harsh terms decided upon during so fair”; perhaps he felt enough damage had been the man-made peacefulness of an idyllic pastoral the Treaty of Versailles, held within it the seeds of done by overweening national pride. Yet the piece England—and what must be done to keep and another world war, a fact that must have been in- is hopeful: whatever man may have wrought, the return to it. Sir Hubert Parry brings William creasingly clear to Vaughan Williams in the tense angels promise: “And on earth peace.” Blake’s words to life: “I will not cease from mental 1930s, and in hindsight to Finzi in 1954. In Terra fight; Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till Pax ends with the promise of the angel: “and on A Farewell to Arms (1945) we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and earth peace, good will toward men.” Vaughan Wil- Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) was one of the finest pleasant land.” John Ireland draws on the text: liams’ cantata begins with a plea: “Give us peace composers of English verse in his generation. “Greater Love hath no man than this, that a man (Dona nobis pacem)” and ends with the same promise: He wrote the second part of A Farewell to Arms in 3 PROGRAM NOTES the 1920s, still fresh from the terrible losses of the war. Ireland’s motet Greater Love Hath No Man was Although Finzi was too young to fight himself, three of commissioned in 1912. It was immediately popular with his brothers and his music teacher all perished in the war. cathedrals and church choirs; after 1914, with its theme He chose text by the seventeenth-century poet George of noble self-sacrifice it tapped into a larger national Peele, describing an aging warrior whose “helmet shall mood and soon became an unofficial anthem of the war. make a hive for bees” and who has turned from battle In the post-war years, it is often sung in services that to prayer. The song was premiered in 1936 (the same commemorate the victims of war. year as Vaughan Williams’ Dona nobis pacem), but Finzi, a tremendous reader of English literature, during World War II discovered a second poem which begins with identical imagery: “The helmet now an hive for bees becomes.” This seventeenth-century poem by Ralph by Brian Bartoldus Knevet captured Finzi’s imagination with its evocative description of weapons turned to farm implements Dona Nobis Pacem (1936) and final description of the soldier himself fading into When Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) composed obscurity. Toward the end of the war or just after, Finzi Dona nobis pacem in 1936, he was no stranger to its subject began reworking his original song. As described by matter. At age 42, he had enlisted in what was then known Joseph Stevenson: “The first movement is in the style as “the war to end all wars.” Two decades later, growing of a recitative while the verses of the aria are flowing European tensions threatened to render this title obsolete. and noble in expression, with a sad nostalgia, while the Hitler’s recent march into the Rhineland hung like a orchestral bass line, with a light but steady tread, clearly specter over the cantata’s composition and premiere. In suggests the slow advance of time.” crafting his libretto, Vaughan Williams looked to sacred and secular sources, most notably the Civil War poetry Greater Love Hath No Man (1912) of Walt Whitman. Whitman, who served as a volunteer John Ireland (1879-1962) emerged as a celebrated nurse during the war, details the suffering he witnessed composer towards the end of World War I when his in an honest and forthright manner. Dona nobis pacem was Violin Sonata No.2 in A minor brought him overnight fame. novel in its day for its frank discussion of the horrors of From then until his death in 1962 he led an outwardly battle, devoid of political or nationalist explanation. It uneventful life combining composition, composition stands among the first definitively anti-war choral works, teaching at the Royal College (where his pupils included part of a body of repertoire that would expand throughout Benjamin Britten and E. J. Moeran), and his position as the 20th century. While its message is not strictly pacifist, organist and choirmaster at St. Luke’s Church, Chelsea, Dona nobis pacem reminds listeners of the grave costs of in London (biographical information courtesy of the total warfare, cautioning all who would engage in this John Ireland Trust).