The DeKalb Choral Guild
P.O. Box 1931
Decatur, GA
30031-1931
678-318-1362
info@DekalbChoralGuild.org

Cantus Firmus - A Firm Foundation

Bryan F. Black, Director
Leanne Elmer Herrmann, Accompanist

November 6, 2004, 8 PM
Oak Grove United Methodist Church
1722 Oak Grove Road
Decatur, Georgia

November 21, 2004, 3:30 PM
Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery
2625 Highway 212 SW
Conyers, Georgia

Cantus in harmonia (Hymn to St. Cecilia) (1999), arr. Dr. Mack Wilberg (b. 1955)
Text adapted from Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day by Alexander Pope (1688-1745)
Melody based on the medieval secular tune "Olim in Armonia."
Ellery Trafford, percussion

Ave Maria (1985) by Franz Biebl (1906-2001)
Ben Bailey and Stephen Hall, cantors

Buccinate in neomenia tuba by Giovanni Croce (c. 1560-1609)
From Prompuarii sacros harmonicos sive motettos, Strasbourg, 1612. Text: Psalm 81:3.

Deutshe Messe [German Mass] D 872 (1826-7) by Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Text by Johann Philipp Neumann (1774-1849)

Parce Domine [Spare Us, Lord] (1998) by Felix Nowowieski (1877-1953)
Text by Arno Herolaska

Ubi Caritas from Quatre Motets sur des Thèmes Grégoriens (1960) by Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986)
Gregorian Chant

Adoro te devote [Jesus, I Adore Thee] (1991), arr. Stephen Caraccilio
Benedictine Plainsong, 13th century. Text by Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274)

Jesus Christ, The Apple Tree (1989) by Colin Mawby (b. 1936)
Plainsong Vexilla Regis (569) by Venantius Fortunatus (530-609). Text by an anonymous author, from the Collection of Joshua Smith, New Hampshire, 1784.
Victoria Lawson, soprano

— Intermission —

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.

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (1963), African-American spiritual, arr. Alice Parker (b. 1925) & Robert Shaw (1916-1999)
Polly Nelms-Hickman, soprano

Shout On (1967), arr. Alice Parker (b. 1925)
Hymn text (1774) attr. to Samuel Medley (1738-1799), tune by F. C. Wood (1850)
John Scott, baritone

Sigalagala [Let there be ululation!] (1996), arr. S.A. Otieno
Traditional Luo (Kenyan) Spiritual
Bob Amar and Terese Rabbitt, soloists; Ellery Trafford, percussion

Anthem of Peace (1990), arr. Dr. Mack Wilberg (b. 1955)
Based on "The Power of Song", Estonian folk song, and "We Shall Walk Together in the Valley of Peace", American spiritual

Program Notes

by Michaelene Gorney

The breathtaking beauty of Latin, the sublimity of Gregorian chant, the earth-shaking conviction of folk music, all inspirations to composers both ancient and modern. These opening concerts of the DeKalb Choral Guild's 27^th Anniversary Season celebrate plainsong, or Gregorian chant, as the foundation of Western music and music drawn from a diversified bedrock of folk traditions – Shaker, German, English, African, and African-American.

Opening our concert is the ritualistic Cantus in Harmonia by Mack Wilberg (b. 1955), Associate Conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and conductor of the Temple Square Chorale. Subtitled "to St. Cecilia," this work is not only a tribute to Cecilia, the patron saint of music, but a laudation to music itself, Cecilia's craft.¹ The tune heard in Cantus in Harmonia is based on "Olim in armonia," found in Secular Medieval Latin Song: An Anthology, edited by medieval scholar Bryan Gillingham. To this tune Wilberg adapts a joy-inspiring text from the "Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day" by Alexander Pope (1688-1744), poet of the Enlightenment.² Pope wonders at the ability of music to inspire joy, exaltation, healing, sleep, and, in its martial mode, the call to arms.³ "Cantus in harmonia, cantus in concordia."

Franz Biebl (1906-2001), an influential German composer and assistant professor of choral music at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, had his career interrupted by World War II, when he was drafted into the German army, captured by Americans in Italy, and imprisoned near Battle Creek, Michigan, as a prisoner of war. There Biebl was treated well and was allowed to arrange concerts with a choir, soloists, and a chamber orchestra. After the War, he held positions as organist, choirmaster, and teacher in Austria and Germany and became founding director of the Department of Choral Music at the Bavarian State Radio Broadcasting Company. During his retirement, Beibl produced recordings with many choirs, several from the United States, arranged European folk songs and African-American spirituals, and composed and directed into his 90's.⁴

The inspiration for the Ave Maria is revealed in a conversation recorded by Wilbur Skeels: "Beibl told me that when he was organist/choirmaster and teacher in the Fürstenfeldbruck parish near Munich he had in his church choir a fireman. It was common for companies, factories, police and fire departments, etc. to sponsor an employees' choir, which often would participate in choral competitions and festivals with other similar choirs. This fireman asked Biebl to please compose something for his fireman's choir for such an occasion." The result was the Ave Maria, introduced to the United States by a visiting choir and recorded by Chanticleer in 1994. The text of the Ave Maria is from the Roman Catholic Angelus, a liturgy recited morning, noon, and evening. It consists of three versicles based on the Gospel, each followed by the "Hail, Mary," or "Ave, Maria."⁵ "Sancta Maria…ora pro nobis…."

Buccinate in neomenia tuba by Giovanni da Croce (c. 1557-1609) represents the polychoral style as performed in Venice at the Cathedral of Saint Mark, a bastion of high church tradition in the 16^th century. The list of choirmasters at Saint Mark's was a virtual "Who's Who" of renowned conductors and singers, all of them composers as well. Among them were: the Gabrielis, Andrea and Giovanni; Gioseffo Zarlino, a theorist and the first to give documented prominence to the "major"-sounding Ionian mode; and Croce, one of Zarlino's students, who became choirmaster at Saint Mark's in 1603. Characteristics of the Venetian style to be heard in Buccinate are the cori spezzati (divided choir), antiphonal singing, and the joining of choirs for a massed ending.⁶ ⁷ "Buccinate in neomenia tuba in insigni die solemnitatis vestrae."

Franz Schubert (1797-1828), born to a schoolmaster in Vienna, grew up immersed in music-making, but was never formally trained. Educated to follow in his father's footsteps, Schubert instead devoted himself to composition and became literally the starving artist: ill, destitute, and unknown. "His pitifully short life," writes Donald Jay Grout, "illustrates the tragedy of genius overwhelmed by the petty necessities and annoyances of everyday existence." Yet in this short life, Schubert managed to write nine symphonies, 22 piano sonatas, several short piano pieces, 35 chamber compositions, six Masses, 17 operatic works, and over 600 Lieder, 144 of these in the year before he died.⁸ Would that lives twice as long could claim half his accomplishment!

During the nineteenth century, there arose within the Roman Catholic Church the "Cecilian" movement – named after St. Cecilia – which attempted to revive the a cappella style of the 16^th Century (à la Croce et alia) and to restore Gregorian chant in its original form.⁹ While vernacular translations of the Mass were forbidden at this time, hymns and devotional poetry which enhanced liturgical texts were deemed appropriate, thus section titles such as "Zum Gloria," "Zum Credo," "Zum Sanctus," and so forth. The Deutsche Messe, ("German Mass") by Schubert, D872, was composed in 1826 to texts of Johann Phillip Neumann, a Professor of Physics at the Vienna Polytechnical Institute, and was intended to be sung by students there. Such series of "Mass Songs" were referred to as "folk Masses" because they were sung in a native language.¹⁰ Written only two years before the composer's untimely death, the Deutsche Messe, though simple in form, is hardly simplistic; rather, it is a mature work as well-crafted as Schubert's lieder "Wem künd' ich mein Entzücken, wenn freudig pocht mein Herz?"

The memory of Feliks Nowowieski (1877-1946), Polish composer, conductor and organist, is well-respected in his native country, as evidenced by the institutions that bear this name, among them the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, the State Philharmonic Orchestra in Olsztyn, and the Museum in Barczewo. Known as the "Chopin of the organ," Nowowieski wrote nine organ symphonies. Although these are considered to be his magnum opus, this student of Max Bruch, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Ottorino Respighi also composed for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensemble, opera, ballet, and solo voice.

"Parce Domine," for a cappella chorus, is taken from Nowowieski's oratorio Kreuzauffindung (The Finding of the Cross), Op. 35. According to notes accompanying the music, this 1905 oratorio "tells of the decline and ruin of Jerusalem and its people who pursue earthly delights and vain hopes. Parce Domine, sung by a group of pilgrims, begs God for his forgiveness." Based on a penitential Latin hymn sung during Advent, the piece begins as the sopranos sing the original chant melody within the context of a measured 4/4 rhythm. The composer then abandons the original Dorian mode, and later the hymn tune itself, transforming them into a Romanticized plea for forgiveness and mercy.¹¹ "Parce populo tuo!

Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986), born in Louviers, France, became a chorister and student at Rouen Cathedral at the age of 10. There he studied piano, organ, and theory, and developed a love for Gregorian Chant and its modal harmonies which became essential to his music. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire with Charles Tournemire, Louis Vierne, and Paul Dukas, he became known as a teacher, a skilled organist, a virtuoso improviser, and a composer of organ and choral music, the latter despite the fact that he wrote a total of only fourteen compositions. These compositions, without exception, were inspired by plainsong. So important, in fact, was the Gregorian tradition to both of the Duruflé's, Maurice and Marie-Madeleine Duruflé-Chevalier, that they considered the 1962 Vatican II reforms a disaster which undermined the source of their musical inspiration.¹² Each of the Quatre Motets sur des Thèmes Grégoriens, Op. 10, of which Ubi caritas is one, begins with, and is unified by, its original chant melody, set with Duruflé's own unique style of harmonization. Ubi cartitas is a hymn sung during the ceremonial Washing of the Feet on Holy Thursday and, intimately connected as it is with the Eucharist, it is often sung during the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.¹³ "Ubi caritas et amor Deus ibi est…"

Stephen Caracciolo, on the faculty of Denison University in Ohio, holds degrees from Capital University and Westminster Choir College, founded the BelCanto Singers in Columbus, Ohio in 1994, and has performed choral masterworks with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Julliard School Orchestra, and the American Symphony under the batons of Robert Shaw, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Kurt Masur, and James Levine. He composes for the BelCanto Singers Choral Series with Roger Dean Publishing and is active as a clinician for educational, ecclesiastical, and professional organizations.¹⁴

Adoro te Devote, a devotional hymn which celebrates the Eucharist, was written by St. Thomas Aquinas around 1260. Though it officially forms no part of an Office or Mass, it is commonly found in hymnbooks and prayer books and has seen at least 16 translations into English verse.¹⁵ Caracciolo's arrangement preserves the original hymn tune as he passes it from one voice part to another, enhancing it with slightly altered re-iterations of the text and reverential harmonic background in the supporting voices. "Visu sim beatus…."

Colin Mawby (b. 1936) is a widely known choral conductor and composer whose works include masses, song cycles, choral settings, and children's operas. He has conducted the London Mozart Players, the Wren Orchestra, Pro Cantione Antiqua, the Belgian Radio Choir and the BBC Singers, was Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral, London, Choral Director at Radio Telefís Éireann (RTE), and the artistic director of Ireland's National Chamber Choir. He has received numerous commissions from prominent churches and arts organizations, and his awards include Top Honors in the 2002 Waging Peace Through Singing competition. Mawby's music is published and recorded under several labels, among them the Gregorian Institute of America, the Royal School of Church Music, the Oregon Catholic Press, Warner Classics, Teldec, Hyperion, Black Box, EMI and Kevin Mayhew. "My music is approachable," Mawby says. "I make great use of sonority and have been much influenced by plainchant. I value the spiritual element in music and have a healthy contempt for musical fashion."¹⁶

In Jesus Christ The Apple Tree, Mawby sets an anonymous text from a collection called Divine Hymns or Spiritual Songs, compiled by Joseph Smith, New Hampshire, in 1784. This is one of a number of carol texts with sources in folk literature, this one collected in the United States but perhaps with English origins. In a series of carols often referred to as the "Cherry Tree Carols," and "The Apple Tree" may be considered one of these, folk collector Ian Bradley theorizes that fruit carrying seed serves as a symbol of "the divine authentication of human fertility." Bradley also draws a relationship between the eating of fruit in the Garden of Eden and the eating of fruit by Mary whose son would erase Adam and Eve's original transgression.¹⁷ Vexilla Regis Prodeunt, the plainsong on which Mawby's tune is based, was written by Venantius Fortunatus and first sung in a procession honoring a relic of the True Cross in 569. Today it is sung as part of Vespers from the Saturday before Passion Sunday to Maundy Thursday and on feasts of the Holy Cross.¹⁸ "This fruit doth make my soul to thrive…"

The simplicity and utility of Shaker tunes is respectfully preserved in arrangements by Kevin Siegfried, 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.¹⁹ 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, 1872.²⁰ The Shakers, with settlements in Pleasant Hill and South Union, Kentucky, share a connection with Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery in Conyers, Georgia, in that it was monks from Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky who traveled to this state to found a new monastic home. Director Bryan F. Black writes: "It is interesting to note that the Shaker community called Pleasant Hill near Harrodsburg) and the Trappist community called Gethsemani (near Bardstown) are separated by only an hour's drive but there is no record of interaction between the two when they were both active despite striking similarities. In the 1960s – decades after Pleasant Hill had closed its "covenant" – a monk from Gethsemani, Thomas Merton, made numerous trips to Pleasant Hill which resulted in a photographic essay, several articles in support of its preservation and talks about Shaker spirituality given to the novice monks under his care. Merton savored the common ground between the communities and did much to renew interest in the Shaker legacy both spiritually and culturally. Quoting from a 1964 introduction written by him, ‘The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.'"²¹ "Peace, peace, sweet peace."

The next two selections on our concert feature the superb arrangements of Alice Parker (b. 1925) and Robert Shaw (1916-1999). Robert Shaw may be more widely known as the esteemed choral and orchestral conductor who led the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for 31 years. Alice Parker, who collaborated with Shaw on arrangements which are standards in the choral literature, is an American composer and conductor born in Boston and living in New York. Her works include operas, cantatas, song cycles, works for chorus and orchestra (two of which were commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra), chamber music, and settings of sacred and secular melodies. As a conductor and teacher, she travels extensively, performing her own works, as well as masterworks, throughout the country.

"Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," a spiritual arranged by Parker and Shaw together, opens with a precarious harmony, subtly reflecting the instability and deep loneliness that must have been the lot of slaves torn from diverse homes on an immense continent, herded together with others who, though they may have been of similar color, did not necessarily speak the same language. Such is the universal appeal of this spiritual that it has been also been arranged or recorded by such diverse musicians as composer Henry Thacker Burleigh, Paul Robeson, Odetta, Ledbelly, and Richie Havens, whose rendition was a highlight of the concert film, Woodstock. Framed by despair as it is, within this blues-like meditation lies a glimpse of hope: "like a eagle in de air, spread my wings an' fly…."

Certainty replaces uncertainty in "Shout On," a tune from the shape-note tradition as collected in B.F. White's Sacred Harp under the tune name of ANTIOCH, with a text attributed to Samuel Medley about 1774 and the tune to F.C. Wood, 1850.²² Footnotes in older editions of the Sacred Harp had this to say about Mr. Wood: "U. G. Wood composed the music to the above tune. We can not say anything definite about him, except B. F. Wilson in leading this tune in the various musical gatherings in Georgia, stated that Mr. Wood, whom he knew intimately, was a good man, fine singer and director of music, and that he was killed by a falling tree or limb." In Parker's arrangement, calls to faith are affirmed by joyous responses and a jubilant chorus acclaims progress toward freedom in a steady march bolstered by praiseful shouting. "Shout on, pray on, we're gaining ground…"

Sigalagala, arranged by S. A Otieno, is a spiritual sung in Luo, a language of the Nyanza Province of Kenya that is also spoken in Tanzania. Featured in the last stanza of Sigalagala is the vocal practice of ululation, described by Albert Alan Owen as "a kind of vocal howling and wailing, used to simulate and stimulate great emotion," in this case, joy and jubilation at the coming of Jesus. Owen notes that this characteristic of African music, in the form of non-specific pitches, is essential to 20^th century blues, as are the call-and-response patterns, repetition, and the layering of voices and rhythm instruments.²³ Arranger S. A. Otieno, who, according to Earthsongs music publisher, died a few years ago, was a member of the Muungano National Choir of Kenya formed in1979 and directed by Boniface Mganga. "Let there be ululation!"

Anthem of Peace pays homage to two different folk traditions in yet another of Mack Wilberg's laudations to the craft and power of music. The work opens with an invitation in the form of a compelling melody based on "The Power of Song," an Estonian folk song which speaks to the ability of music to move and inspire both nature and man. This tune, with its evocations of bell-ringing and celebratory dance, is paired with the stateliness of "We Shall Walk Together in the Valley of Peace," another American spiritual. Thus Anthem of Peace becomes a joyous recessional, drawing us together to sing, dance, play, and rejoice, moved as we are by the jubilant melodies and rhythms of music. "…hand in hand together," "voice so clear and strong…"

Harmonia et Concordia

Notes:

¹ The Academy of St. Cecilia, "Some Thoughts on St. Cecilia" by Graham Hawkes, www.academyofsaintcecilia.com/thoughtsASC.htm

² Cantus in Harmonia (to St. Cecilia) by Mack Wilberg, Oxford University Press, 1993

³ Penn State Hazleton, English Department, Dr. Kathleen Nolton Kemmerer's Page, www.hn.psu.edu/Faculty/KKemmerer/ poets/pope/default.htm

⁴ Cantus Quercus Press, Franz Xaver Biebl (1906-2001), http://www.cantusquercus.com/biebl.htm

⁵ ibid.

⁶ Music in the Renaissance by Gustave Reese, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1959

⁷ A History of Western Music by Donald Jay Grout, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973

⁸ ibid.

⁹ ibid.

¹⁰ The Church of Saint Benedict, Broken, Arrow, Oklahoma, "A Word about the German Mass" by Richard Proulx, Cathedral of the Holy Name, January, 1985, revised, September, 1989, http://www.saintben.com/GERMMASS.html

¹¹ Organ Historical Society Catalog http://shop.store.yahoo.com/ohscatalog/felnowcomors.html; International Directory of Performing Arts Collections and Institutions http://www.theatrelibrary.org/sibmas/idpac/europe/plb002.html#1; Polish organists and composers website, http://www.culture.pl/en/culture/muzyka/artykuly/wy_fm_organy_archikatedry_2003; The Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz website, . www.ceebd.co.uk/ceeed/un/po/po076.htm; Feliks Nowowiejski State Philharmonic Orchestra website, http://www.pavese.com/Borkowski.html

¹² The Musical Times Publications, Ltd., Est. 1844, Winter, 2000, http://www.musicaltimes.co.uk/archive/0004/durufle.html

¹⁴ Denison University, Department of Music, http://www.denison.edu/music/StephenCaracciolo.html

¹⁶ The Contemporary Music Center Ireland, Irish Composers, Colin Mawby, http://www.cmc.ie/composers/composer.cfm?composerID=84

¹⁷ The Hymns and Carols of Christmas, http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/Notes_On_Carols/cherry_tree_carol-notes.html

¹⁹ Sound Currents 2, Co-sponsored by the Washington Composers Forum and the Seattle Composers Alliance, http://www.soundcurrents.org/index.html

²⁰ Shaker Songs, arr. Kevin Siegfried, published by earthsongs, Corvalis, Oregon, 1997

²¹ For further information on Pleasant Hill and Gethsamani, Kentucky, please see "Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill," http://www.shakervillageky.org, and "The Abbey of Gethsemani," http://www.monks.org

²² Spectrum Music, Choral Room Spring 2002, www.spectrum-music.com/CRSpring2002.html