Laurier Wind Orchestra "Church and State" Program Notes November 22, 2024

Nov. 7, 2024

Slava!

Leonard Bernstein, famed American conductor and composer of the iconic West Side Story, described Slava! as “A Political Overture”, written to celebrate conductor Mstislav Rostropovich’s first season with the National Symphony Orchestra in 1977. “Slava” was his nickname among his friends, but also means “Glory” and makes an appearance as a statement of the “Slava Chorus” from Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in the final section. The two main themes were originally from Bernstein’s musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with a vaudevillian fanfare, “Grand old Party”, contrasting with the dancing “Rehearse!” theme. In the original presentation, a pre-recorded tape of political speech excerpts was played in the middle of the work.

Riften Wed

Julie Giroux writes works for symphony orchestra (including chorus), chamber ensembles, wind ensembles, soloists, brass and woodwind quintets and many other serious and commercial formats. Much of her early work was composing and orchestrating for film and television, including soundtrack scores for White Men Can't Jump and the 1985 miniseries North and South. She has also arranged music for Reba McIntyre, Madonna and Michael Jackson. Ms. Giroux is a three-time Emmy Award nominee and in 1992 won an Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music Direction.

About Riften Wed, she writes in the score:

Riften is a city in Skyrim located in the expansive world of Elder Scrolls, the fifth installment of an action role-playing video game saga developed by Bethesda Game Studios. Skyrim is an open world game that by any video game standard is geographically massive and more closely related to an online mmorpg (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) than to its console and pc competition. In Skyrim, if so desired, your spouse can and will fight beside you. They will die for you or with you. For most of them, that death is permanent. You cannot remarry (not without cheating anyway). What was is over and there will be no other. Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I found the whole situation intriguing and heart wrenching, especially if related or injected into real world circumstances. Skyrim weddings are happening in the middle of a world full of violence, disease, war and death, something Earth is all too familiar with.

“Riften Wed” is the music for loves and unions, past and present such as this. A love, a wedding, a lifetime shared by two people in the middle of a storm that threatens to tear them apart. Where “‘til death do us part” is not only a reality, it’s a given. Where love is a gift worthy of all the joy and pain it demands. One life, one love, one ending. This music is for those that are truly “Riften Wed.”

Cathedral Music

The Renaissance period in music (c.1430-1600) saw the creation of some of the most beautiful music ever written - chiefly vocal church music, and has been transcribed for band by Kenneth Singleton. The era was characterized by polyphony, with each voice being independent and of equal importance and imitative counterpoint, where one voice performs a melody and the other voices imitate it. The two selections in Cathedral Music exhibit these imitative sections, but also homophonic sections, where all the voices move together.

Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585) served as composer and musician for the English royal family and monarchs Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and finally Elizabeth I. If Ye Love Me is one of his best examples of an early 4-voice anthem, used in the newly founded Church of England (Anglican) services.

Jacob Handl (1550-1591) studies and worked in Vienna and other Czech and Austrian cities, moving to Prague around 1586 where he published his Opus Musicum, multi-volume books of motets for 4-24 voices. Regnum Mundi (Kingdom of the World) is found in the fourth book of these works for the Roman Catholic liturgy.

Listen to the Lambs

Robert Nathaniel Dett was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario and worked as a composer, conductor and pianist in the United States and Canada. Dett was the first African-American to complete a five-year music program at Oberlin Conservatory, and became an important advocate for the preservation and promotion of black music. He was among the first black composers during the early years of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

Originally scored for 8-part chorus of unaccompanied voices, Listen to the Lambs is his most well-known spiritual setting, and included in the Oxford Book of Spirituals. Arranged for wind band by Marie Douglas, she speaks in the program notes about how as a young black composer she had no knowledge of works by composers of African descent, and that this representation of traditional music is designed to contribute to the growing conversation surrounding the needs for diverse and inclusive programming.

Hymn to St. Teresa

A native of Valley City, North Dakota, Jocelyn Hagen a prominent composer of choral and multimedia compositions, with a few works being developed for the wind ensemble. Hagen holds degrees from St. Olaf College, and the University of Minnesota. In 2013 Hagen released an EP entitled MASHUP, in which she performs Debussy’s “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum” while singing Ed Sheeran’s “The A Team.” She is also one half of the band Nation, an a cappella duo with composer/performer Timothy Takach, and together they perform and serve as clinicians for choirs from all over the world.

In the score notes Hagen writes, “St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was a prominent Spanish mystic, Roman Catholic Saint, Carmelite nun, and author. The English translation of her poem “Where All Are Welcome” served as inspiration for me when composing amass. Its message is timeless, and truly embodies my personal beliefs. Hymn to St. Teresa is a reimagining of the “Sanctus” and “Benedictus” from amass. It seemed fitting to honor her, and the original inspiration for amass, in this new piece.” The text that is used for this movement is the translation of St. Teresa’s prayer, published in Daniel Ladinsky’s book, Love Poems from God in 2002.

Where All Are Welcome
Why this great war between the countries – the countries – inside of us?
What are all these insane borders we protect?
What are all these different names for the same church of love
we kneel in together? For it is true, together we live; and only
at that shrine where all are welcome will God sing
loud enough to be heard.
~St. Teresa of Avila

Cathedrals

Kathryn Salfelder is an American composer, conductor and pianist, based in the Boston area. She combines late-Medieval and Renaissance polyphony with more modern 21st-century techniques. Her music has been performed in over three-hundred concerts at the nation’s leading universities and conservatories. Salfelder maintains a private teaching studio, and has previously served on faculties at MIT in Massachusetts and the New England Conservatory.

Cathedrals is a modern take on Giovanni Gabrieli’s Canzon Primi Toni from the Sacrae Symphoniae of 1597. It was originally written for St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. The canzon is transcribed for two brass choirs, each comprised of two trumpets and two trombones. The choirs were stationed in balconies on opposite sides of the church. It begins with a theme based on a characteristic long–short–short rhythmic pattern announced by the first choir, is repeated by the second choir, and is tossed back and forth in imitation before arriving at a cadence.

Salfelder’s version is an adventure in ‘neo-renaissance’ music, in its unconventional seating arrangement, antiphonal qualities, 16th century counterpoint, and canonic textures. Its form is structured on the golden ratio (1: .618), which is commonly found not only in nature and art, but also in the motets and masses of Renaissance composers such as Palestrina and Lassus. This work is a combination of the old and the new, by combining the mystery and allure of Gabrieli’s spatial music with the rich color palette, modal harmonies, and textures of woodwinds and percussion.

The Promise of Living

One of the most influential composers of the American style of classical music, Aaron Copland was born of Lithuanian-Jewish descent in Brooklyn, New York. He began his study of composition at age 15 with Rubin Goldmark, who had previously taught George Gershwin, and continued his study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, France, before returning to America to compose for Hollywood, ballet, and the concert hall.

The Promise of Living is one of the most performed numbers from Copland’s only full-length opera, The Tender Land. He extracted the best pieces from the opera into an instrumental suite, which received far better reviews than the opera. The Promise of Living is largely based on the folk song Zion’s Walls, showing off Copland’s ability for directness and lyricism. The piece contextually frames three generations of Midwestern farmers and their hired hands singing a hymn of gratitude for life, the land, and the harvest.

Courtly Airs and Dances

Composer Ron Nelson earned all his academic degrees through his studies at the Eastman School of Music. A native of Illinois, he continued his musical explorations through a Fullbright scholarship to Paris, France, where he studied at the Paris Conservatoire. He returned to the US to take a teaching post at Brown University, remaining there for his entire career. While he wrote for a variety of ensembles, his works for wind ensemble have captured the most attention, winning numerous awards and accolades.

In his Courtly Airs and Dances, Nelson drew on the variety of dances and formal musical styles from the Renaissance period in the 1500s. While each movement reflects a different song or dance from a different location, Nelson preserves some features of the historical writing, such as using like-instrument “choirs” or contrasting into smaller mixed-instrument chamber “consorts”, he infuses a more modern sense of harmony and fully utilizing the power of volume from the modern instruments.