©1998-2008
The DeKalb Choral Guild, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

A New Creation

Mary Evelyn Root, Director
Leanne Elmer Herrmann, Accompanist

Saturday, May 16, 1998
Rock Springs Presbyterian Church
1824 Piedmont Road NE
Atlanta, Georgia

This is My Song from Finlandia by Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

A New Creation by René Clausen (b. 1953)

1. Prologue
2. All Flesh is Grass
3. O Be Joyful
4. The Call
5. Lament
6. Agnus Dei
7. I am the Bread of Life
8. A New Creation
9. The Greatest of These is Love
10. Hymn (Set Me As a Seal)
11. The Spirit Helps Us
12. Praise the Lord

Soloists

Miffanwy Mistretta, soprano
Malie Umbach, alto
Barry Geesey, tenor
Kevin Spears, bass

Orchestra

Anna Sparks-Hedman and Constant Yu, violin I
Amman Jetha and Tina Caterino, violin II
Andy Sand, viola
Sean O’Connor, 'cello
Kevin O’Connor, bass
Betsy Williams and Susan Stenstrom, flute
Ben Buchanan, oboe
Mark Biering, bassoon
Calista Moser, harp
Leanne Elmer Hermann, organ
Lisa Angert Morris, timpani

Program Notes

by Michaelene Gorney

"This Is My Song" is a harmonization of the well-known melody from the orchestral tone poem, Finlandia by Jean Sibelius. It has been adopted by The DeKalb Choral Guild as its theme for the 1997-98 season.

Rene Clausen is the conductor of The Concordia Choir, Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, and artistic director of the Concordia College Christmas Concerts broadcast on public television and radio. He is well-known as a composer and clinician, having written over 45 commissioned works and having conducted choral/orchestral performances, choral festivals, and workshops in over 35 states. The Dale Warland Singers recorded a new Creation in 1990, the composer conducting, and a Carnegie Hall concert in 1996 highlighted Clausen's compositions.

In A New Creation, Clausen continues in the tradition of a long line of composers, including J.S. Bach, in his writing of a cantata, literally "to sing," a work intended for concert performance and modeled on operatic forms. It employs sections of recitative (words sung in a narrative style) and aria (a song for one or more voices), chorus, and orchestra. Cantatas are most often based on religious texts, though not of such epic proportions as the texts of oratorios, such as Handel's Messiah.

Clausen's cantata uses both English and Latin texts taken from the Bible, the Roman Catholic Mass, and a hymn by George Herbert. In this work, sometimes reminiscent harmonically of Aaron Copland and stylistically of Gian-Carlo Menotti, the accompaniment always reflects the spirit of the text. An example of this is Movement 5, which speaks to a meagerness of spirit depicted by both solo voice and solo instruments. Indeed, some texts are rendered with such tenderness and passion (Movements 4 and 9) that they could just as well be speaking of earthly love as of spiritual love.

Clausen has this to say about his work: "A New Creation is a piece of church music, not of any particular sect, synod, or denomination; however, the piece does express a Christian point of view. That the piece is written in praise of God, however, whoever he and/or she might be, and in whatever form that God takes for each individual, seems to me to be essential to the understanding of the work. On the other hand, it is not intended to be evangelistic or religiously pedagogical.

"The various movements are attempts to characterize, through music, various aspects of the human/God, God/human relationship. Awe and wonder, unworthiness and doubt, mercy and forgiveness, love, joy, and peace, are all wrapped together in this piece, as indeed these elements are wrapped together in our daily lives. The thematic and artistic credo of this work, which serves both as the title overall and of the central movement - A New Creation - is representative of the composer's belief that the unwrapping of all these elements in the progression of our lives -- sometimes with joy, sometimes with pain -- is worth the effort." May 2, 1989