PROGRAM NOTES
Hold On! | traditional spiritual arr. Stacey V. Gibbs (b. 1962)
The Negro spirituals hold an important place in choral repertoire, not simply for their excellence as a musical style, but for their significant history of origination. In the midst of the evil of slavery and oppression, the enslaved people sang songs of poignant hope for liberation. Hold On! is one of these songs—a work song to be sung during the toilsome labor, which serves as a communal expression of lament, as well as inspiration for perseverance and hope amidst the injustice. The speaker urges brothers and sisters who want to get to heaven to keep their hand on the gospel plow and don’t look back.
Stacey V. Gibbs—a renowned composer, arranger, and clinician specializing in this style—arranges the spiritual using two contrasting units of the ensemble. As the tenors and basses play a supportive roll with a backdrop of syncopated rhythmic textures, the sopranos and altos express the melodic and textual material in gospel-like, homophonic, three-part harmony. In addition to the contrapuntal texture, Gibbs embellishes the spiritual with modern blues notes and jazz harmonies, making the piece a sophisticated yet authentic and compelling rendition of the original spiritual.
Mille regretz | Josquin des Prez (c. 1450-1521)
Among the greatest composers of the Renaissance era was Josquin des Prez, a prolific Franco-Flemish composer for both the church as well as the popular scene. In the fashion of a true renaissance man, Josquin could compose for any light-hearted or somber genre of the day, including sacred mass and motet, Italian madrigal and frottola, and French chanson. He was famous during his lifetime—considerably less so, however, than Obrecht—but for decades after his death, his fame only grew. Prominent figures praised his work, including Martin Luther, exclaiming in a table talk 1538, “Josquin is the master of the notes, which must do as he wishes, while other composers must follow what the notes dictate.” Luther went on to request that Josquin’s music be performed at his deathbed.
Mille regretz is one of Josquin’s late chansons in four voices. Though in this case abandoning his characteristic use of canons, the texture is based on imitation. The thematic melodic motive makes use of the rising and falling of a half-step interval, as heard in the opening measures in the bass line, unmistakably emoting passionate longing to enhance the text, “A thousand regrets at deserting you.” As is typical of his style, Josquin often employs either two or three voices at a time, which would overlap with an answering phrase of a different combination of two or three voices. He reserves the simultaneous use of all four voice parts for climactic moments, as in “J’ay si grand dueil…” [“I feel such great sadness…”] which he abruptly abandons to two voices as he continues “…et paine doloreuse” [“and painful distress”]. Josquin repeats the final line of text—“brief mes jours définer” [“soon my days are dwindling”]—several times in strict homophony, as if it were a fading echo.
Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150 | Johann Sebastion Bach (1685-1750)
Before the refined and celebrated cantatas of J. S. Bach’s days at Thomaskirche in Leipzig (1723-1750), Bach most likely began composing his sacred cantatas in 1707 at his position in Mühlhausen or possibly at his former position in Arnstadt. In this same year, Bach married his first wife, Maria Barbara (b 20 Oct 1684), who soon gave birth to their first child, Catharina Dorothea Bach (1708 – 1774). Although the purpose and performances of the composition are unknown, Cantata no. 150 is among the earliest known cantatas that Bach composed in around 1708. Due to its unrefined nature in comparison to the Leipzig cantatas, the authorship of this cantata was uncertain for many years. However, Bach scholar Hans-Joachim Schulze confirmed its authenticity in an essay from 2010. Schulze discovered a hidden acrostic dedication using the first letters of the lines in the freely written poetry of movements 3, 5, and 7, spelling Doctor Conrad Meckbach, who was a member of the city council in Mühlhausen who proposed to elect Bach for the position of organist at the Divi Blasii church (Hofmann, Forward to BWV 150, Carus Verlag).
The libretto of Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich is derived from Psalm 25, verses 1, 2, 5, and 15, intermingled with original poetry, the authorship of which is unknown. In his cantata on the theme of longing, Bach opens the Sinfonia with the same melodic expression of longing as Josquin in Mille regretz: a rising and falling half step in the first violin. The pervasive theme of the cantata is an upward leap followed by descending stepwise chromatic seconds as heard in the opening choral lines of the second movement, which express weariness and struggle through the text, “After you, O Lord, is my longing.” In the 16 measures before this first text is sung, this chromatic theme appears 6 times in the violins and continuo. Simultaneously, Bach introduces a shorter, diatonic version of the theme (an upward leap of a perfect fourth followed by a descending scale) in eighth notes. This material is a clear melodic quote from the chorale “Herzlich tut mich verlangen” [“I do very sincerely desire”] by Hans Leo Hassler, which audiences would have recognized at the time. In the opening section of the second movement, the descending chromatic theme appears 14 times in various voices before an abrupt quickening of tempo with the words “Ich hoffe auf dich” [“I hope in you”]. The chromatic theme returns in an embellished melismatic form in the final sprint to close the movement.
The third movement features imitative melodies between the continuo, violins, and soprano soloist. As with much of the cantata, the listener senses a conflict of emotions, in this case between contentment in God amidst the raging of the world. The soloist asserts that even if misfortune were to befall God’s faithful servant, God’s righteousness is undiminished. The following choral movement begins with contrast—an ascending melody that dovetails though all four sections, starting from the basses up to the sopranos, and continuing to the violins— as the subject pleads for God’s truth to guide and teach. The section ends in brisk melismas expressing the urgency of waiting on God’s answer with the text “täglich harre ich dein” [“every day I wait on you”].
The fifth movement, a trio with alto, tenor, and bass soloists and continuo, effectively paints the tension in the text. The fierce blowing of the wind (cello) and the howling of the world (“widerbellet”) do nothing to interrupt the security in God’s word (the steady bassoon, and the pleasant homophonic phrases in the voices). In the sixth movement translated “My eyes look always toward the Lord”, Bach repeats the text “stets zu dem Herrn” [“always toward the Lord”] in various harmonies to place this statement in different circumstances as if to say, “Whether in stability, in silence, in questioning, or in disappointment, my eyes look always toward the Lord.” The initial theme of descending chromatic seconds returns in the closing section, “For he will pull my foot out of the net.”
The seventh and final movement depicts a reversal even though circumstances remain unchanged. Whereas most of the piece up to this point has themes melodic descent, this movement is founded on a a persistent upward progression in the continuo. This repeating four bar figure is interrupted by one descending series just before the first iteration of the last line of text, “Christus, der uns steht zur Seiten, hilft mir täglich sieghaft streiten” [“Christ, who stands at our side, helps me daily to victoriously struggle”]. The name “Christus” is sung only twice, and both times in haunting duets, first by the sopranos and altos, then by the tenors and basses. This invokes Bach’s understanding of Christ’s compassion as one who enters inter human suffering as one who sacrificed his life, accepting a brutal death to atone for the sins of all humankind. The final word of the cantata “streiten” translates to “fight” or “struggle,” which could suggest that the victory is in faithfully engaging our daily struggle and not in overcoming it through a miraculous change of circumstances.
Be Like the Bird | Abbie Betinis (b. 1980)
Composer Abbie Betinis writes music called "inventive, richly melodic" (The New York Times) and “joyful… shattering, incandescent” (Boston Globe). A two-time McKnight Artist Fellow, and listed in NPR Music's 100 Composers Under Forty, she was recently named Musical America’s Artist of the Month, with a feature article lauding her “contrapuntal vitality” and “her ability to use her talents to effect social change.” She has written over 80 commissioned pieces for world-class organizations, including the American Choral Directors Association, Cantus, Chorus Pro Musica, Dale Warland Singers, The Schubert Club, St. Olaf Choir, and Zeitgeist. She lives in Minnesota, where she is adjunct professor of composition at Concordia University-St Paul and co-founding executive director of Justice Choir. (*from composer’s personal website: https://www.abbiebetinis.com/biography.html)
Be Like the Bird is composed in a brilliantly simplistic five-part round. Listeners will hear the melody sung once as a solo, then in two subsequent combinations—first as a three part round, then in a five-part round, which effectively highlight different dissonances.
A Sto Cemo | Bosnian folk song arr. Moira Smiley (b. 1976)
As a composer, Moira Smiley is known worldwide for choral arrangements like Bring Me Little Water, Silvy and originals, Stand in That River and How Can I Cry. She’s in demand as a commissioned composer, writing multi-movement pieces like Time In Our Voices and In The Desert With You for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Vonnegut Requiem: Light Perpetual for Voces Novae, Loud My Soul for Ad Astra Festival and Headwaters for The Myrna Loy Theater. The European premiere of Time In Our Voices was performed by the voices and mobile phones of Ars Nova Copenhagen under the direction of Paul Hillier. In 2018-2019 Moira released the album and choral songbook, Unzip The Horizon as companion to her The Voice Is A Traveler solo show. She continues composing and improvising in collaboration with artists in film, video game production, theater and dance, and her work can be heard on feature film soundtracks, BBC & PBS television programs, NPR, and on more than 70 commercial albums. Upcoming premieres and current projects include Greta Sails for youth choir, Utopias for voices and strings, and a re-telling of Ovid’s tale of Narcissus for mobile phones and voices. (*from composer’s personal website: https://moirasmiley.com/?page_id=121234)
Smiley’s arrangement of A Sto Cemo, a popular Sevdah or urban folk song from Bosnia, maintains the folky quality of the song, adding simple harmonies to the melody along with cello accompaniment. The folk song features dramatic vocal expressions with rubato phrasing and ornamentation. It appears in simple verse-chorus form to tell the story of one who longs for her lover to “take me or kill me, and don’t let another love me!”
The Lady and Her Castle | Townsend Losey (b. 1990)
This piece is about my Aunt Kathy. In real life, she was a cheerful, positive, and sweet lady, and I think all the sadness in this song comes from my own projections. But still, I knew that her heart was heavy with sadness from the sudden loss of her husband many years ago. I knew she still missed him every day. I always felt that her heart was beautiful, and that if everything lovely and sweet about her life could have just come back, I would want it that way.
Though I wrote the music in the summer of 2020, I used text from one of my journal entries in 2015. Life was very different then. I lived at my Aunt Kathy's house in Arcadia, California, which became known as Aunt Kathy's Castle because of its sheer size and beauty. The yard was always lush and vibrant, and it had many visitors—birds, deer, coyotes, bobcats, bears... It was a lovely place to be, and I'll never stop being grateful for the time I had there.
My life was sad at that time. I had lots of pretty things, and I was in a pretty place, but I felt very alone. I would watch Aunt Kathy peering out over the steps down to the pool and beyond across the field and out into the trees. I knew she felt the same thing I did. She missed someone, and she wished they would fill that space again. I had been in love with Gabrielle for some time, now. We had shared many transcendent moments, but she had not decided to love me, and at that point, I was not sure that she ever would.
But one thing I knew. I loved her. And I had Aunt Kathy, my sweet and lovely friend who sat next to me, feeling her own deep and beautiful longings. And the place where we sat, alone together, was full of luscious life—a present declaration of hope that we had either forgotten or not yet known.
I composed the music for this piece in the summer of 2020, just months before Aunt Kathy’s death on Thanksgiving of that year. She is remembered as a beacon of gentleness and kindness by everyone who knew her.
He Walks Along Alone | Townsend Losey
This is one of my earliest compositions, first composed in 2012 for double choir and soloists. Since then, it has undergone a number of versions. More recently, I reorchestrated the piece for choir, soloists, winds and strings, as a movement of a larger work entitled Reckless Remembering. I wanted this work to shed some light on my experience with depression, which has been a part of me in some form or another for most of the years I can remember. Though it can be a challenging, heavy, or even dangerous thing, it is also beautiful. It often results in depth of understanding, greater compassion for others, and a more wholesome sense of identity—if managed healthfully and carefully, of course—though it often takes long seasons of trials, doubt, sadness, and patience to get there. He Walks Along Alone highlights the feeling of loneliness I could not seem to escape as a child, though all my life I have been surrounded by a large and supportive family, as well as loving friends! I have never truly been alone, but feelings—especially in long seasons of depression—can convince us otherwise.
That Lucky Old Sun | Beasely Smith (1901-1968) and Townsend Losey
When we were young, my brothers and sisters reluctantly enjoyed the mornings when our father would wake us up with singing. Sometimes it was “Reveille” or “It’s A Good Day” by Peggy Lee, but more often it was “That Lucky Old Sun”, the pop song from the 1970’s with by Beasley Smith with lyrics by Haven Gillespie, made popular by iconic performers including Frankie Lane, Louis Armstrong, and many others. Oddly enough, I had never heard a recording of the song until I was in my twenties, but I knew it well, in a very sleepy way.
In this composition, I adapted the text and the melody to capture that moment of being woken up by my dad, affectionately known by family as “Pop” or “Dr. Losey” by all of my acquaintances. When he first heard the piece, he both laughed and cried, telling me that he wasn’t sure I captured the original escapist intention of the piece, but somehow made it much more reverent.
I do love this text for its expression of longing—even in fullness. The author has a reliable job to show up to each day, along with a wife to quarrel with and kids to toil for. What is full life if not this? And in this season of my own life, this is something that resonates with me. No matter what season of life we are in, we are made to long—for expression, for connection, for affirmation, for deliverance, for peace, and for rest. I do believe that these are things to lean in to, and to cry out in our longing, for it draws us deeper into the relationships that matter most, and it can drive us to create beauty out of longing.