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PROGRAM NOTES
Winter Concert—December 6-7, 2008
(Saturday 7:00 p.m., and Sunday 3:00 p.m., at St. Saviour's Church)
Today’s program includes many settings of Christmas carols—familiar and not-so-familiar—from a variety of traditions. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols (1912) reflects his passion for English folk song, incorporating several carols in a rich symphonic setting. Vaughan Williams was one of the first collectors of folk song, traveling throughout the British Isles to transcribe the songs of the people at a time when printed music was rapidly replacing the oral tradition.
Samuel Barber’s “Twelfth Night” takes us on a journey with the Magi, beginning on the darkest of all nights, to the “final mile still left when all have reached their tether’s end,” where we finally discover the Child, waiting to be born again.
Barber’s opera Vanessa is based on a libretto by his friend and frequent collaborator, Gian Carlo Menotti. The title character has lived as a recluse for twenty years, mourning a faithless lover. In “Must the winter come so soon,” her niece and companion, Erika, laments the coming of winter to their grand but isolated estate.
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “Heaven Haven (A Nun Takes the Veil)” was written in honor of a group of novices who were lost at sea while on a pilgrimage to take their final vows. Hopkins (1844-1889), who was a Jesuit priest, envisions one of these young women as she meditates on the fulfillment of her desire to find safety in heaven’s harbor.
“Sure on This Shining Night” is one of the “Descriptions of Elysium” from James Agee’s Permit Me Voyage, published in 1934 when he was a journalist for Fortune magazine. In this poem “the late year lies down the North,” and even those who are “this side the ground” are made whole under the wondrous stars of a summer night.
“E la don don, Verges Marěa” and “Dadme albricias, híjos d’Eva” are carols in the true and original sense of the word—songs in the vernacular that share a sacred story with the common folk. Michael Praetorius, who wrote “En natus est Emanuel,” was the son and grandson of Lutheran theologians. Most of his nearly 1,000 vocal works are based on Protestant hymn tunes and the Latin liturgy. Vaclav Nelhybel’s “Estampie natalis” has a distinctly Medieval sound, even though it was written in the 20th century. Several verses of the Gregorian chant “Puer natus in Bethlehem” are set to the rough, irregular dance rhythms of the estampie.
Paul Ayres was born in London, studied music at Oxford University, and now works freelance as a composer and arranger, choral conductor and musical director, organist and accompanist. His compositions usually involve words—solo songs, choral pieces, music for theatre productions—and he is particularly interested in working with pre-existing music, including arrangements of folk songs and hymns.
Two of today’s selections are settings of the words of Shakespeare. “So hallow’d and so gracious is the time” is taken from the opening scene of Hamlet. As the night guards at Elsinore confer fearfully, a ghost suddenly appears, but vanishes almost immediately when “the cock crows.” Marcellus tells the others that on the night of Christ’s birth, “so hallow’d and so gracious is the time” that the cock crows all night long, and evil spirits have no power.
“Icicles” is one of a pair of songs at the conclusion of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Like the winter landscapes that were popularized by Flemish painters of the time, “Icicles” depicts a number of vivid (and sometimes comic) scenes unfolding at once among the townsfolk on a bitter cold day. Ayres’ music is appropriately jagged, icy, and sharp!
