Program
Notes Archive
Shining
Night
This program was performed on Dec. 3,
4 & 11,
2011
Sure
on this shining night
I weep for wonder
wand’ring
far alone
Of shadows on the stars.
These
beautiful lines from ‘Sure on this shining night,’ by
poet James Agee, are one short section of a longer poem
entitled “Description of Elysium,” from his
book Permit Me Voyage, published in 1934. They serve
as inspiration for my inaugural concert with Cantemus,
a wonderfully expressive and welcoming group of singers.
It is an honor to work with this fine chamber chorus.
Bright
snow, star-filled nights, crisp winds…nature reserves
some of her most tender and intimate moments for the
winter. The season of long nights and blackened skies
takes center stage with Shining Night, Cantemus’ December
concert, a musical musing on a season that shivers with
quiet joy.
Agee’s
poetry serves as a frame for the concert, beginning with
Samuel Barber’s melodious and haunting setting
of the text. A fine baritone himself, Barber’s
love of poetry and his intimate knowledge and appreciation
of the human voice informed all of his vocal writing. “Sure
on this Shining Night” is one of the composer’s
finest Romantic settings, a relatively early work [1938]
pointing to the compositional mastery that is to come.
The perfect marriage of melody and text, the piece presents
a depth of hushed acceptance and an appreciation for
a life that will not last forever.
Morten
Lauridsen’s setting of the same text bookends our
concert. Lauridsen’s version is in the warm key
of D-flat, exquisitely conveying the sense of fullness
and rapture that infuses the text, even in the face of
inevitable change and loss. The repetition of lines and
phrases builds on the repetition of sounds in the poem – note
Agee’s use of “sure,” “shining,” and “shadows” or “weep,” “wonder” and “wand’ring,” an
expressive alliteration that calls us into the sheer
beauty of the verse.
At
the heart of the concert are two larger choral works:
Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit pour
Noël (Midnight Mass for Christmas) and Byron Adams’ Trois
Illuminations (Three Illuminations). Charpentier’s
output of sacred music was prodigious, with approximately
thirty-five oratorios, eleven settings of the Mass, over
two hundred motets and the well-known Te Deum. Charpentier
was particularly drawn to writing Christmas music, producing
instrumental carols, Latin oratorios on Christmas themes,
French pastorales and a Christmas mass – the charming
Messe de Minuit pour Noël. This piece dates from
the early 1690’s (although it was not published
until 1962) and was probably composed for the great Jesuit
church of St. Louis in Paris, where Charpentier held
the high post of “maître de musique.”
The
use of popular carols in church music had long been an
accepted practice. In England carols were more often
sung than played, but in France noëls figured prominently
in the substantial French organ repertoire. The liturgy
of Midnight Mass permitted the singing and playing of
these Christmas folksongs, and Charpentier’s idea
of basing a whole mass on these songs was completely
original. Altogether there are eleven noëls, most
of which are dance-like in character, reflecting the
carol’s secular origins. In addition to the carol
melodies that he adapted to fit various parts of the
mass text, Charpentier also composed new material, seamlessly
blending the old and the new into a charming whole.
“Trois
Illuminations,” writes Byron Adams, “represents
my ongoing fascination with the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud
(1854-1891), an intellectually and sexually precocious
schoolboy who wrote a dazzling and original body of verse
by the age of twenty.” Rimbaud, a volatile boy-poet,
wrote the body of his poetry in a space of less than
five years. His highly suggestive, subtle work has been
identified as an early example of free verse because
of the rhythmic experiments in his prose poems, Illuminations
(1886). Adams, living, teaching and composing in California,
is a marvelous composer, and I have had the great fortune
of working with him in the past. In these three verses,
Adams gives us an impressionistic musical landscape,
marked by lilting rhythms and lush harmonies.
To
round out our program, I have added three stirring movements
from Sir Edward Elgar’s Light of Life, along with
a few surprises from P.D.Q. Bach and Tom Lehrer. What
a pleasure it is to bring this repertoire to life with
such a warm and dedicated chorus. Shining Night represents
a night of firsts for us together. Please stop by and
introduce yourself to me at the conclusion of the concert.
I look forward to sharing this music with you and meeting
you soon.
— Jane
Ring Frank, Music Director
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