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

In the Spirit

Bryan F. Black, Director
Leanne Elmer Herrmann, Accompanist

In conjunction with Arts & Ideas at Oglethorpe University

Saturday, May 1, 2004
Conant Center for the Arts
Oglethorpe University
Atlanta, Georgia

Shaker Songs (1997) arr. Kevin Siegfried (b. 1969)

1. Peace: Enfield, New Hampshire, ca. 1851.
2. Love is Little: South Union, Kentucky, ca. 1834.
3. Heavenly Display: New Lebanon, New York, 1838.
4. Lay Me Low: Addah Z. Potter, New Lebanon, New York, ca. 1838.
5. Benediction: Brother Ephraim Frost, Whitewater, Ohio, 1872.

Jesu meine freude, BWV 227 (1723) Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Movements 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11: hymn by Johann Frank, 1650.
Movements 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10: text from Romans 8:1-2, 9-11.

Eckhart Richter, 'cello
Mr. Richter's performance tonight was sponsored by generous donations from members of the Guild.

1. Jesu meine freude
2. Es ist nun nichts
3. Unter deinen Schirmen
4. Denn das Gesetz des Geistes
5. Trotz dem alten Drachen
6. Ihr aber seid nicht fleishlich
7. Weg mit allen Schätzen
8. So aber Christus in euch ist
9. Gute Nacht, o Wesen
10. So nun der Geist des
11. Weicht, ihr Trauergeister

-- Intermission --

Symphony of Psalms (1930, rev. 1948) Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971)

1. Exaudi orationem meam, Domine: Psalm 38:13-14.
2. Expectans expectavi Dominum: Psalm 39:2-4.
3. Alleluia, laudate Dominum: Psalm 150. (assisted by Bob Amar)

Program Notes

by Michaelene Gorney

"In the Spirit" most certainly applies to the Shakers, who allowed singing, dancing, shaking, running and leaping as a part of their worship to express the joy of faith and victory over flesh and the devil. The Shakers were founded by Ann Lee (1736-1784), a factory worker who, guided by divine visions and signs, came to America in 1774 to spread her gospel in the New World. Believing that Christ had come again, in the person of Mother Ann and "in all in whom the Christ consciousness awakens," Shakers strived to live "in the kingdom come" and sought perfection in all things. Between 1837 and 1847, most Shaker songs were "gift" songs received by mediums from the spirit world, songs in unknown tongues, and "vision" songs accompanied by ecstatic whirling and stomping.¹ O glory to God for this heavenly display.

"I Will Bow and Be Simple" is found in The Gift to be Simple: Songs, Dances and Rituals of the American Shakers, published by Edward D. Andrews in 1940. Andrews credits the writing down of this "gift song," a "bowing song" from New Lebanon, New Hampshire, to Mary Hazard in 1847. The song as heard here is arranged by musician and teacher Maureen Montgomery, who founded several early music ensembles and who often includes Shaker music in her concerts.² The simplicity and utility of Shaker tunes is respectfully preserved in arrangements by Kevin Siegfried (b. 1969), in 2003 an Adjunct Faculty member of the New England Conservatory of Music, a Harvard University Teaching Fellow, and resident composer of St. John's Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.³ The text and tune of "Peace" are from the song "Peace to Zion," from Enfield, New Hampshire, c. 1851; the text and tune of "Love is Little" are from a song of the same name from South Union, Kentucky, 1834; the text and tune of "Heavenly Display" are from a song of the same name from New Lebanon, New York, 1838; the text and tune of "Lay Me Low" are adapted from a song of the same name by Addah Z. Potter, New Lebanon, New York, c. 1838; and the text and tune of "Benediction" are adapted from the song "Slow March" by Brother Ephraim Frost, Whitewater, Ohio, 1872.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) enjoyed an uneventful but successful and satisfying career similar to that of other musical functionaries of his time in Lutheran Germany. He served as an organist at Arnstadt, as a court organist at Mühlhausen, and as music director at the court of a Prince of Cöthen. His last position was as Cantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, an important position in the Lutheran world. Respected though he was, Bach was not the first choice for this position; it was first offered to Georg Philip Telemann, who decided against moving from Hamburg for what he considered an insufficient pay raise, then to Christoph Graupner, who was unsuccessful in getting released from another position. Bach's musical work, usually dictated by the requirements of his position, was bound to be significant in Leipzig, where the position each year required fifty-eight cantatas, a Passion for Good Friday, Magnificats for three festivals, a cantata for the installation of the City Council (which had hired him), and occasional music, such as wedding cantatas and funeral motets for which the Cantor received additional fees.⁴

The motet of Bach's time was a composition for chorus, generally in a contrapuntal style (characterized by melodic independence of parts), without obligatory instrumental parts, and with a Biblical or chorale text. Those sung in Leipzig tended to be short, used as introductions to services, and were not required to be newly written. Bach's six motets, written in the 1720s, were, in contrast, original, lengthy, complex, and probably written for particular occasions.⁵ Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227, perhaps the earliest of the six, may have been written for the funeral service of the wife of the Leipzig postmaster on July 18, 1723. Of the six motets, this is the longest and the most complex.⁶ And, while Bach may have used existing chorale texts in some of the others (Komm, Jesu, Komm!, Fürchte dich nicht, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf), only Jesu, meine Freude is based on the associated chorale tune. This tune serves as a cantus firmus of sorts, a function that, in much earlier motets, would have been filled with a plainsong melody.

The unassuming melody of Jesu, meine Freude known by its English titles as "Jesus, priceless Treasure" or "Jesus, all my Gladness," was published in 1653 by Johann Crüger (1598-1662) in his Praxis Pietatis Melica (The Tuneful Practice of Piety). An organist, composer, musicologist and pedagogue, Crüger wrote several melodies for the hymns of his friend Paul Gerhardt, a leading writer of 17th century German religious poetry⁷ whose terse language and mystic fervor rivaled that of Martin Luther⁸. The author of the text of Jesu, meine Freude was Johann Franck (1618-1677), recognized by Catherine Winkworth as second in hymn-writing only to Gerhardt, and whose "leading thought is the union of the soul with the Redeemer."⁹ Bach couples Franck's warm, intimate text, which speaks to Christ as the Bridegroom of the Soul, with passages from Chapter Eight of St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans. The selected Biblical verses offer much sterner stuff than Franck's poetry, speaking as they do of the weakness of the mortal body, spiritual death due to sins of the flesh, and the resulting condemnation. In setting words so disparate in tone, Bach accomplishes what Walter E Buszin calls "a perfect fusion," something that he claims can only be accomplished in music.¹⁰

Jesu meine Freude is a perfectly balanced work, pyramidal in the formal structure of its eleven movements. Movements 1 and 11 are presentations of chorale tune and text. Movements 2 and 10, both free settings of text from Romans. Movements 3 through 5 and 7 through 10 offer two sets of the same types of movements: a chorale, a trio, and a free setting of a chorale text. At the center is a joyous fugue, a musical technique perfected in the Baroque and one which requires a great degree of skill. In the fugue, a musical motive, or subject, is stated by the voices in turn at different pitch levels. After the initial statements, the theme is developed through variation and imitation (perhaps faster, slower, backward, or inverted), then stated again toward the end. Whether or not Bach's motets were accompanied by instruments is not known; however, it was common practice in his time for voices to be supported by a basso continuo. In this practice, a performer on the clavier, organ, or lute – the continuo - played the bass notes as written and filled in with unwritten chords. Reinforcement of the continuo was often provided by a sustaining instrument, perhaps a bass gamba (a fretted string instrument), violoncello, or bassoon.

Through his masterful settings of over 200 chorales, Bach lifted a functional musical form to a level of artistry. In doing so, he codified Baroque practices of harmonization and counterpoint while stretching them to their limits with harmonic progressions that, despite their sometimes dissonant sound, adhere strictly to the discipline of the Baroque - a discipline which in no way negates the heartfelt sincerity of music written by Bach, as always, "to the glory of God." Dennoch bleibst du auch im Leide, Jesu, meine Freude.

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971) was born in Oranienbaum, a Russian city on the Gulf of Finland. He originally studied law (as his father wished) but also pursued an interest in composition as a student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the Russian Five who was noted for his skills as an orchestrator. A performance of Stravinsky's Fireworks gained the attention of Sergei Diaghalev, who then commissioned from him three works for the Russian ballet: The Firebird, Petroushka, and The Rite of Spring. These works, with stunning orchestrations, earthy propellant rhythms, and disturbing, primitive, harmonies, established Stravinsky as an important 20th Century musical force. With the outbreak of World War I, Stravinsky’s family moved to Switzerland but, finding this too isolated here from the centers of musical activity, the composer moved to Paris in 1920. France was not receptive to Stravinsky’s talents, however, even going so far as to humiliate him by rejecting his application to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, this after he had become a French citizen. The 1930 commission of the Symphony of Psalms by Sergey Koussevitzky led to others from the United States, and to this country he emigrated in 1939. Here, he basked in the attention of celebrities and intellectuals and toured as a conductor, often with his son Soulima as pianist. Though not one to seek out the company of other composers – his closest friend was conductor Robert Craft, who influenced the composer and chronicled his genius - Stravinsky continuously studied others’ works, emulating them by incorporating new techniques, such as the twelve-tone method of Schönberg, into his own.

The dedication of Symphony of Psalms reads: "This symphony composed to the glory of GOD is dedicated to the 'Boston Symphony Orchestra' on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary." This is a "symphony" not in the structural and harmonic sense of the traditional four movements, but in the sense that it brings together instruments and voices on an "equal footing, neither of them outweighing the other," to create the desired sound. Said Stravinsky, "It is not a symphony in which I have included Psalms to be sung. On the contrary, it is the singing of the Psalms that I am symphonizing." Like most of his works, it was written for a particular purpose and place for specific resources. Yet there is little doubt that the faith expressed is personal and authentic, as Stravinsky had become a communicant of the Orthodox Church in 1926.¹¹

The Symphony of Psalms is heard here in the 1948 revision, the reduction for voice and piano by Soulima Stravinsky. Its three parts are to be performed without a break and Stravinsky specified that the Psalm texts taken from the Vulgate¹² should be sung in Latin. Movement I, composed "in a state of religious and musical ebullience,"¹³ opens with a striking e minor chord, which very concisely marks transitions from section to section, and a series of instrumental arpeggios. A theme first stated in the piano is passed to the altos, who enter with a prayerful lamentation ("Exaudi orationem meam Domine") accompanied by a four-note ostinato of minor thirds. Movement II takes the form of a double fugue. Its first subject, stated by the piano, is derived from the four-note ostinato of Movement I, transformed through octave displacement; its second is heralded by a falling fourth on the words "Expectans expectavi Dominum". This homage to the Baroque was later felt by Stravinsky to be "too obvious, too regular, and too long,” a self-assessment not surprising considering the composer's preference for economy of musical means.¹⁴ Movement II ends with a hushed transition ("et sperabunt in Domino") to Movement III, accompanied by a soft re-iteration of the first fugue subject in the piano. At the beginning of Movement III, the awesome and reverent "Alleluia" provides an emotional thread that continues through the words "Laudate Dominum in sanctis eius, laudate eum in firmamento virtutibus eius." Having up to this point established significant harmonic tension between E and C, on these words Stravinsky provides welcome relief by dwelling on a simple C major chord. The rhythmically propellant section that follows increases in momentum with whirlwind triplets in the piano, the latter inspired "by a vision of Elijah's chariot climbing the Heavens."¹⁵ The devout frenzy is briefly interrupted by a reiteration of the "Alleluia" and later by more solemn statements of praise. Ending the work is yet another sublime "Alleluia" and an unambiguous coming-to-rest on C Major. Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum.

References

¹ I Will Bow and Be Simple, Shaker Song arr. Marlene Montgomery, Revels, Inc., Thorpe Music Publishing Company, 1994.
² Ibid.
³ Sound Currents 2, http://www.soundcurrents.org/index.html
⁴ A History of Western Music, Donald Jay Grout, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,, New York, New York, 1960
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ "Bach's Six Motets" by Peter Holman, 1960, liner notes to Bach: The Six Motets, Hyperion Records Ltd., London, England, 1960
⁷ The Cyber Hymnal, dedicated to the Glory of God, established 1996, http://www.cyberhymnal.org
⁸ Music in the Baroque Era, Manfred K. Bukhofzer, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, 1947
⁹ "Christian Signers of Germany" by Catherine Winkworth, from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org/w/winkworth/singers/htm/albinus.htm
¹⁰ Jesus, my great pleasure (Jesu, meine freude) by Johann Sebastian Bach, C. F. Peters Corporation, New York, New York, 1958, Foreward by Walter E. Buszin
¹¹ Symphony of Psalms, http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~tan/Stravinsky/sop.html, site built and maintained by Victor Huang
¹² A biblical translation into Latin, the "common language," from the Hebrew and Aramaic by Jerome between 382 and 405
¹³ Georgia State University Symphonic Wind Ensemble and University Singers, "Hymns and Praises for Winds and Voices," Program Notes
¹⁴ Ibid.
¹⁵ Ibid.