My longest professional tenure is as Choirmaster at Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, PA. I have been a professional/staff musician there continuously since the fall of 1985.
I started there as the bass singer in the professional choir—which, back then, was accompanied by organ, and sang Friday evenings, Saturday mornings, Festivals, and, of course, the High Holy Days—truly substantial musical work in those days!
Over the years, the congregation’s taste, priorities, and finances changed, and so did the role of the professional choir: first, Friday nights were eliminated; later, congregants who were to celebrate a bar or bat mitzvah were given the option to have or not have the professional choir & organ in the service, and an increasing number of bar & bat mitzvah families began opting not to have choir & organ in those Saturday morning services; until, finally, the professional choir was relegated to only appearing on Rosh Hashanah (the New Year; in the evening and the two daytime services) and Yom Kippur (the evening—Kol Nidrei—and the entire day, which normally lasts from 9 AM to c. 7–7:30 PM, during which the choir & organist get a total of maybe 2–2.5 hours off for Torah readings and sermon) plus the very occasional Saturday morning service if someone was willing to sponsor a choir & organ service.
I had the privilege of working for Cantor Charles Davidson from my hiring in 1985 until 2004 when he retired. Almost everything I know about Jewish liturgical music I learned from him—to the point of having subbed for him for 6 weeks at one point! His thorough codification of Shabbat, Festival, and High Holy Day service music (which I call “The Davidson System” for integration of a choir into Jewish services and about which I would like to write at greater length at some point) was what made it possible for the professional choir and organist to follow most everything that went on in services without a prayer book—unlike many choir situations, including some in which I have taken part over the years, when all that the choir singers were given were individual extracted voice parts to the liturgical pieces, just like instrumentalists; and wherein the service was run a cappella and the cantor did not have perfect pitch!
Hazzan Howard Glantz, one of Cantor Davidson’s many, many students from Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, arrived in 2004. His arrival coincided with a huge revision of the prayerbook for the High Holy Days—and no particular recognition by the rest of the synagogue leadership of what that meant for the High Holy Day choir & organist.
In a normal synagogue situation, the rabbi simply tells the cantor what they want done/done differently in a service, and the cantor has sufficient background and experience to make it happen. Not so when a choir & organ (or even just a choir) is involved—everything has to be codified and written out. So: preparation for the 2004 High Holy Days was about as frantic as you could possibly imagine. Both my wife, Pam Hitchcock, & I worked day and night on the newly required liturgical music from proofs of the new prayer book and recordings by Hazzan Glantz of new congregational melodies to be introduced along with the newly expanded liturgy—and more than once pulling close-to-all-nighters to get everything ready, including one on Kol Nidrei!
Over the succeeding years, more and more of the High Holy Days liturgy was codified, modified, corrected, and, finally, over the past three summers, fully engraved and indexed until, for the 2018 season, the upgraded choir books for the High Holy Days were finally completed—15 years later!
This past May, Hazzan Glantz was honored for his first 15 years of service to Congregation Adath Jeshurun. Now: within the past 10 years or so, Hazzan Glantz founded a men’s choir from the congregation and asked me to be their music director. Hazzan & I worked up music for the conclusion of the Saturday morning Torah service and also for the Musaf—the so-called “additional”—service specifically for Shabbat and Festivals. The men’s choir did not participate in services for a few years (the new rabbi at that time didn’t like their participation), but they were called upon this past May to reprise their liturgical role in that service.
Which, finally, brings me to my newest original piece.
One spot in services where choral participation is almost always appropriate is at the conclusion of the Amidah—sometimes referred to as the “standing prayer”—all or the 2nd half of which of which is recited privately by the congregation. It is customary to bring that private prayer time to a close with a quiet setting of one of the concluding texts of this prayer, which may be a choir piece or which may be a congregational melody. One of these texts is Psalm 19:14: “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock [or strength] and my Redeemer.”
Since the men’s choir hadn’t sung for a while, we didn’t have anything for that point in the service that would go together in the one rehearsal and warmup that we were allotted for this service (more on that below). So: the week prior to the rehearsal, I wrote a simple a cappella setting for TBB of the above words as a tribute to Hazzan Glantz. As we rehearsed it, he was sufficiently happy wth what heard that he recorded our rehearsal run-through of the piece—which is now the first and only recording I have of it!
This is not my first setting of this text. My first setting dates all the way back to June, 1973 after my freshman year at Temple University, about which I wrote in my inaugural blog post which you may read here. That setting of May the Words is now published by Musicspoke.com; and you may see & hear that piece via the Musicspoke link above.
Nor is this my first setting of this text for the Adath Jeshurun men’s choir. I wrote a more extended setting for them in Hebrew in 2011 (followed by the Oseh shalom text—“May the One who makes peace in the heavens make peace for us, for all Israel and all who inhabit the earth. Amen.”) which we sang in services & elsewhere a number of times—but we’d have needed more than one rehearsal to put it back together. I do hope to get a good recording of it and get it published at some point.
The new piece uses material similar to the 1973 setting, but is much more concise and, again, designed to go together quickly.
You may listen to this new piece here—enjoy!
Saturday, July 6, 2019
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
A New Facebook Page for my Musical Activities; and: Two Harry Warren Songs, Arranged for Barbershop Performing Forces (Updated July 4, 2019)
I’m not even going to look at the date of my last post here until I actually post this—it would be worse than embarrassing. (I just did…embarrassing!!)
Explaining the lapse will be time- and bandwidth-consuming, so: if you really want to know where I’ve been in the interim, feel free to ask me elsewhere or in the comments section below, and I’ll try to fill in the gaps for you.
Two sets of circumstances have converged into a very good reason for picking up where I left off right now.
First, I have just launched a new Facebook Page:
Robert A.M. Ross Music is to be a clearinghouse page where I shall work to keep everyone interested abreast of what I’m up to as a composer, arranger, editor, etc.…if you’ve been following me to any extent, you know to some extent the breadth of my musical activity. And, I would think this sort of social media presence will be a little easier to maintain than this outlet has been.
I’m planning to make this page a repository of links to things I’ve done for the past few years so that everything is available in one centralized location. This will include past blog posts, links to Soundcloud.com recordings, the occasional stray YouTube video, and links to the few extant places where my music has been published and is still available. So, please visit and like the page! I will be sending out “Like” invitations via Facebook; maybe via Twitter, and, eventually, perhaps via Instagram (which I joined only recently & for which I am still in the learning phase).
Update: Yesterday (7/3/19), I created the page, calling it Ralamar Music. However, I received some swift and sage branding advice since putting the page up (that was fast, no?). I am changing the name of the page to Robert A.M. Ross Music as stated above. First: apparently I have to get past my reluctance to use my name as a brand. Second: I have to take Ralamar Music down and start all over with Robert A.M. Ross Music because for some arcane and algorithmic reason, Facebook won’t let me simply change the name of the existing page. So: please stay tuned and look for the new page (and new invites) later today.
Second: I have placed two arrangements with SMP Press, the relatively new publishing arm of sheetmusicplus.com, who, among many other things, holds copyright permissions on hundreds of pop tunes and “standards”—hence: if you are an arranger with a version of a tune for which they hold copyright permissions but never got direct permission to arrange, you can place it with SMP Press (as long as the 1st page prominently contains the sometimes-lengthy copyright notice in full exactly as they have worded it).
This is exactly what I did with two Barbershop Quartet arrangements that I wrote in 1998 for a professional Barbershop quartet named the Synchromatix with whom I sang Tenor (which is really countertenor under any other circumstances, contrary to what the Buffalo Bills sounded like in the movie version of The Music Man—the Barbershop sound paradigm has changed significantly since then).
The two arrangements—That’s Amore and Chattanooga Choo-Choo—were written for the Synchromatix for an outdoor wedding in Philadelphia. I remember absolutely nothing about the event, where it was, why (the groom, I think) wanted these two selections, or even why I was asked to write these arrangements. Nonetheless, this all happened, and now the arrangements are commercially available.
Here’s further background on That’s Amore…
…and on Chattanooga Choo-Choo.
I find it interesting that both of these were originally songs written for movies. Even more interesting is that Glenn Miller’s original recording of Chattanooga Choo-Choo was the 1st Gold Record winner ever, the 78 having sold c. 1.2 million copies.
The listings for both of these pieces include instrumental renditions (thank you, Finale®️ sound-files!) as well as score samplers. So: if you conduct or sing with a men’s choir or Barbershop group of any sort, please look these over and spread the word!
And: if any of the above links don’t work properly, please tell me yesterday so I can fix the problem!
And, once again: please visit and like Robert A.M. Ross Music!
Explaining the lapse will be time- and bandwidth-consuming, so: if you really want to know where I’ve been in the interim, feel free to ask me elsewhere or in the comments section below, and I’ll try to fill in the gaps for you.
Two sets of circumstances have converged into a very good reason for picking up where I left off right now.
First, I have just launched a new Facebook Page:
Robert A.M. Ross Music is to be a clearinghouse page where I shall work to keep everyone interested abreast of what I’m up to as a composer, arranger, editor, etc.…if you’ve been following me to any extent, you know to some extent the breadth of my musical activity. And, I would think this sort of social media presence will be a little easier to maintain than this outlet has been.
I’m planning to make this page a repository of links to things I’ve done for the past few years so that everything is available in one centralized location. This will include past blog posts, links to Soundcloud.com recordings, the occasional stray YouTube video, and links to the few extant places where my music has been published and is still available. So, please visit and like the page! I will be sending out “Like” invitations via Facebook; maybe via Twitter, and, eventually, perhaps via Instagram (which I joined only recently & for which I am still in the learning phase).
Update: Yesterday (7/3/19), I created the page, calling it Ralamar Music. However, I received some swift and sage branding advice since putting the page up (that was fast, no?). I am changing the name of the page to Robert A.M. Ross Music as stated above. First: apparently I have to get past my reluctance to use my name as a brand. Second: I have to take Ralamar Music down and start all over with Robert A.M. Ross Music because for some arcane and algorithmic reason, Facebook won’t let me simply change the name of the existing page. So: please stay tuned and look for the new page (and new invites) later today.
Second: I have placed two arrangements with SMP Press, the relatively new publishing arm of sheetmusicplus.com, who, among many other things, holds copyright permissions on hundreds of pop tunes and “standards”—hence: if you are an arranger with a version of a tune for which they hold copyright permissions but never got direct permission to arrange, you can place it with SMP Press (as long as the 1st page prominently contains the sometimes-lengthy copyright notice in full exactly as they have worded it).
This is exactly what I did with two Barbershop Quartet arrangements that I wrote in 1998 for a professional Barbershop quartet named the Synchromatix with whom I sang Tenor (which is really countertenor under any other circumstances, contrary to what the Buffalo Bills sounded like in the movie version of The Music Man—the Barbershop sound paradigm has changed significantly since then).
The two arrangements—That’s Amore and Chattanooga Choo-Choo—were written for the Synchromatix for an outdoor wedding in Philadelphia. I remember absolutely nothing about the event, where it was, why (the groom, I think) wanted these two selections, or even why I was asked to write these arrangements. Nonetheless, this all happened, and now the arrangements are commercially available.
Here’s further background on That’s Amore…
…and on Chattanooga Choo-Choo.
I find it interesting that both of these were originally songs written for movies. Even more interesting is that Glenn Miller’s original recording of Chattanooga Choo-Choo was the 1st Gold Record winner ever, the 78 having sold c. 1.2 million copies.
The listings for both of these pieces include instrumental renditions (thank you, Finale®️ sound-files!) as well as score samplers. So: if you conduct or sing with a men’s choir or Barbershop group of any sort, please look these over and spread the word!
And: if any of the above links don’t work properly, please tell me yesterday so I can fix the problem!
And, once again: please visit and like Robert A.M. Ross Music!
Monday, July 10, 2017
A Recent Large-Scale Work: Sing For The Morning’s Joy (2015)
As I write this in July, 2017, it was around now in the summer of 2015 that I was contacted by an old friend & colleague whom I had met as an intern at the Adirondack Festival of American Music back in the mid- to late-90s (one aspect of the forthcoming post about the late Gregg Smith—stay tuned!) who is now Director of Music at University United Church of Christ in Seattle, WA.
Heidi Wyllis Blythe had commissioned a few small-scale arrangements from me before then (mostly on a fast-turnaround basis; one of my favorite working situations), but this one was a little bigger: she asked me for an original hymn tune on a text by one of her parishioners, which was to then be set for brass, choir, and organ for congregational singing. It sounded like a good offer, and one that wouldn’t be too labor-intensive.
Problem number 1 occurred when I received the text to be set: it was both non-metrical and in free verse. One can certainly construct an anthem on this basis, but not a traditional congregational hymn tune designed to accommodate multiple stanzas.
I let Heidi know what the problem was. The author turned out to be unwilling to write something metrical (let alone with a rhyme scheme), so we started casting about for an alternative text. In situations like this (all the time, really…), I prefer that the commissioner choose the text to be set. So: Heidi sent me a few possibilities; none of which rang true for us.
The last text she sent (almost with a shrug, it seemed), did the trick: Hymn to St. Cecilia by Ursula Wood Vaughan-Williams. As soon as we agreed that this was the text we’d use, we then worked out the rest of the commission conditions:
The project, by then, had turned into an anthem, so I was going to have to charge more. (No problem, as it turned out!)
Not just an anthem: a big anthem—the instrumentation went from SATB choir, brass, organ, & congregation up to SATB choir with occasional divisi, organ, & orchestra (& a not quite standard instrumentation at that: 1-1-1-1 1-2-1-1 org timpani, bells, strings [2-2-2-2-1])
It was to be premiered October 25, 2015 (we were talking in July, 2015 at that point), meaning—
The choir parts were going to have to be available and pretty much set in stone by the beginning of September so that their choir would have the largest possible window in which to get it learned, with orchestral materials to follow ASAP—strings first, then everything else.
To make a long story short (for now), it all happened as planned.
In terms of planning the musical content, I knew immediately that the piece had to have a congregational refrain, using the first two lines of the poem: “Sing for the morning’s joy, Cecilia, sing/In words of youth and praises of the spring.” I also made an experiment out of this piece in terms of using 6-measure phrases as often as possible instead of the more customary 4-measure phrase. How successful that was, ultimately, is for others to decide (so: listen and write me and tell me what you think!), but that was hardly a primary concern in this piece’s creation.
The primary concern, of course was not only getting the choir parts completed, but also making sure I could be absolutely committed to them as they were by September of 2015! Composers always have changes of mind and heart when composing a piece—the bigger the piece, the more changes of mind and heart. That, therefore, proved to be a significant challenge.
On the other hand, the choir’s challenge was to learn said parts with no surrounding musical context. Their scores consisted only of their parts with multi-measure rests in between—no interludes, no sources for entry pitches, and no keyboard reduction of their own parts, let alone of the accompaniment—it was still being written as they were learning it!
Another month of furiously paced work went into the full score and orchestral materials—strings first, as requested (so that they could hold sectional rehearsals before dress rehearsing with the entire ensemble), followed by the organ part, woodwinds & brass, and, finally, percussion. All this on top of teaching college full-time and, at that time, chairing the college’s music department, plus the regular musical demands of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with my two synagogue choirs that September, mind you…
As I shortened the story previously: it all happened as planned, including the October 25th premiere. It was a thrill to read posts about its premiere on Facebook that evening, including the number of people who found themselves “earwormed” by the refrain—it doesn’t get much better than that!
There were a few additional surprises in this story:
It was only very late in the process that I found out that the occasion for which this work was commissioned turned out to be the 125th anniversary of University United Church of Christ in Seattle and the rededication of their newly refurbished sanctuary and organ—so it was a good thing the score included a substantive organ part.
The biggest surprise, though, was when my commissioning fee arrived in the mail—for double the agreed-upon amount! I immediately e-’d Heidi both thanking her profusely and asking how this came to be. She told me that once they saw what they were getting from me in this piece, she and the choir decided that it was worth more than the agreed-upon fee; and that they raised the additional amount in a matter of hours…How often does that happen?! I shall be eternally grateful!
The recording arrived via e-mail a few days later—what a superb performance! You may listen to it here.
Having heard the piece objectively:
There should be a larger string section when and if it is performed again
The timpani & bell parts should be included (technical/logistical problems wound up precluding their use that time)
The wind & brass parts should, perhaps, be rescored to a more conventional grouping
If I’m going to be completely honest, I need to figure out a reduced instrumentation version (or three) for this to be heard elsewhere and more often.
St. Cecilia’s feast day is November 22 every year. If you direct a choir & this piece intrigues you, tell me what sort of reduced instrumentation would work for you! (Or if the scoring as it stands works for you, that’s OK, too…)
Saturday, June 10, 2017
One Work, Two Works, or Three?Of Nature and Humility (2004; rev. 2006, 2008, 2011)
Psalm 131 (2006)
Nature (2006)
As much as I love polychoral music from any era, only twice have I actually arranged or composed for multiple choirs.
The arrangement, done some years back, was of Lesley Hopwood Meyer’s Hymn On The Nativity (Of My Savior) from 2003, on a text by Ben Jonson. Each verse of the carol ended on a half cadence, making the melody sound incomplete. The solution: Choir 1 sang a harmonized version of the tune as originally written, then Choir 2, coming in on the following verse, took up the melody in that new key, causing it to end on the original tonic. You may listen to it here. (I shall devote a post later this year to the Christmas-card carols of Lesley Hopwood Meyer and my experience arranging over a dozen of them for various choral combinations.)
The one time I composed for double chorus was within a wholly different set of circumstances. In the summer of 2004, I attended a summer workshop for composers of choral music at Lehigh University in upstate Pennsylvania sponsored by the Princeton Singers and their director, Steven Sametz and by Oxford University Press. It was there that I met some new composer colleagues (Stacey Garrop, Valerie Showers Crescenz, Reg Unterseher, and Paul Carey, among others) and spent the week listening to new music/works-in-progress and trading ideas and philosophies in the most stimulating environment imaginable. (I’m also happy to report that a connection was made with what was, at that time, OUP’s US operation. 3 arrangements of mine were published by them—and are still in print!)
When one goes to a workshop such as this, I’ve found it’s always a good idea to have an idea in mind of what one is going to compose before arriving; knowing, of course, that a completely different idea might arise. The idea for the work I’d write up there came from the discovery of a poem by Henry David Thoreau entitled Nature. In reading it over, what immediately came to mind was parallels with Psalm 131 (“Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty” in its most familiar translation; and whose best-known setting is in Hebrew by Leonard Bernstein as the third movement of his Chichester Psalms, a watershed work in my own musical development). So: the plan for the new piece would be to somehow juxtapose both texts.
The original plan was for the psalm to be sung in Hebrew by a soprano soloist, which would be answered by Thoreau’s poem. When speaking of this at dinner the first evening of the workshop, someone (& I don’t remember who!) suggested that each line in Hebrew be followed by a sung English translation—that way the piece would be much easier to follow. Following this excellent suggestion is how the piece turned into one for double chorus.
The music for the psalm begins with decidedly modern-sounding musical vocabulary, but evolves gradually into a more gentle harmonic language. The music for Thoreau’s sonnet, by contrast, is consistently more pastoral-sounding (once again, Randall Thompson’s music was my sound model), except for a knotty fugato on the words “Than be the king of men elsewhere/And most sovereign slave of care.” The two choirs converge at one point toward the end of the piece (“Wait, Israel, upon the Lord”), and they finish together juxtaposing Thoreau’s final wish for communion with Nature with the last line of the Hebrew psalm: “Some still work give me to do/Only be it near to you./Mei-atah v’ad olam (‘From now and forever more’).” (The line above is not, in fact, how Thoreau’s poem concludes—I did a little bit of rearranging of Thoreau’s lines in order to maintain parallel correspondence between the two texts.)
The initial composing of this piece went very quickly—I had it ready to be read by the Princeton Singers within about 24 hours of starting it. They did a magnificent job reading the piece down!
Part of the week’s agenda, aside from reading down composer’s new pieces as they were completed (or as enough of a work-in-progress was completed to make a read-down possible), was to program the first half of the concert that would conclude the week. (The 2nd half of the concert was Healey Willan’s Mass—freshly published by OUP at that time, I think—conducted by Nicholas Cleobury). The judgement of Dr. Sametz and the composer-scholar in residence for the week, Dr. Zhou Long, was that my piece (at that time titled …to be humble…to be free…) didn’t hang together, and therefore was not to be included in the public concert performance.
Well, looking back at that original version from ’04, they were right—disappointing as it was not to have made the final cut. I set about revising the piece after I got home and, early in 2006, came up with a new version of the piece entitled Of Nature and Humility. It was revised slightly in 2008, and again, a little more substantially, in 2011 to fix a note value/time signature proportion issue in the Thoreau music.
But the idea that the piece “didn’t hang together” still bothered me. So, in addition to the revisions on this piece, I also separated the music for each choir into two separate pieces: Psalm 131 for soprano solo with chorus, and Nature for chorus with a short solo for tenor.
On a concert of American Poets/American Composers in the spring of 2006 with my former professional choir, Voces Novae et Antiquae, I programmed the music for the two choirs as separate pieces to open the first half: Psalm 131 followed by Nature; then ended the first half of the concert with Of Nature and Humility. We also encouraged our audiences to give us written feedback about these pieces: did they like the separate works better than the combined piece, or vice versa?
The results were pretty much evenly split: some enjoyed the juxtaposition of texts and musical styles; others preferred them separated.
So now, my dear readers, I pose the same question to you: Do you think the juxtaposition of the texts and music in Of Nature and Humility works? Or do you think the two texts work better as the separate pieces Psalm 131 and Nature?
Listen, enjoy, and, please: talk to me!
The arrangement, done some years back, was of Lesley Hopwood Meyer’s Hymn On The Nativity (Of My Savior) from 2003, on a text by Ben Jonson. Each verse of the carol ended on a half cadence, making the melody sound incomplete. The solution: Choir 1 sang a harmonized version of the tune as originally written, then Choir 2, coming in on the following verse, took up the melody in that new key, causing it to end on the original tonic. You may listen to it here. (I shall devote a post later this year to the Christmas-card carols of Lesley Hopwood Meyer and my experience arranging over a dozen of them for various choral combinations.)
The one time I composed for double chorus was within a wholly different set of circumstances. In the summer of 2004, I attended a summer workshop for composers of choral music at Lehigh University in upstate Pennsylvania sponsored by the Princeton Singers and their director, Steven Sametz and by Oxford University Press. It was there that I met some new composer colleagues (Stacey Garrop, Valerie Showers Crescenz, Reg Unterseher, and Paul Carey, among others) and spent the week listening to new music/works-in-progress and trading ideas and philosophies in the most stimulating environment imaginable. (I’m also happy to report that a connection was made with what was, at that time, OUP’s US operation. 3 arrangements of mine were published by them—and are still in print!)
When one goes to a workshop such as this, I’ve found it’s always a good idea to have an idea in mind of what one is going to compose before arriving; knowing, of course, that a completely different idea might arise. The idea for the work I’d write up there came from the discovery of a poem by Henry David Thoreau entitled Nature. In reading it over, what immediately came to mind was parallels with Psalm 131 (“Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty” in its most familiar translation; and whose best-known setting is in Hebrew by Leonard Bernstein as the third movement of his Chichester Psalms, a watershed work in my own musical development). So: the plan for the new piece would be to somehow juxtapose both texts.
The original plan was for the psalm to be sung in Hebrew by a soprano soloist, which would be answered by Thoreau’s poem. When speaking of this at dinner the first evening of the workshop, someone (& I don’t remember who!) suggested that each line in Hebrew be followed by a sung English translation—that way the piece would be much easier to follow. Following this excellent suggestion is how the piece turned into one for double chorus.
The music for the psalm begins with decidedly modern-sounding musical vocabulary, but evolves gradually into a more gentle harmonic language. The music for Thoreau’s sonnet, by contrast, is consistently more pastoral-sounding (once again, Randall Thompson’s music was my sound model), except for a knotty fugato on the words “Than be the king of men elsewhere/And most sovereign slave of care.” The two choirs converge at one point toward the end of the piece (“Wait, Israel, upon the Lord”), and they finish together juxtaposing Thoreau’s final wish for communion with Nature with the last line of the Hebrew psalm: “Some still work give me to do/Only be it near to you./Mei-atah v’ad olam (‘From now and forever more’).” (The line above is not, in fact, how Thoreau’s poem concludes—I did a little bit of rearranging of Thoreau’s lines in order to maintain parallel correspondence between the two texts.)
The initial composing of this piece went very quickly—I had it ready to be read by the Princeton Singers within about 24 hours of starting it. They did a magnificent job reading the piece down!
Part of the week’s agenda, aside from reading down composer’s new pieces as they were completed (or as enough of a work-in-progress was completed to make a read-down possible), was to program the first half of the concert that would conclude the week. (The 2nd half of the concert was Healey Willan’s Mass—freshly published by OUP at that time, I think—conducted by Nicholas Cleobury). The judgement of Dr. Sametz and the composer-scholar in residence for the week, Dr. Zhou Long, was that my piece (at that time titled …to be humble…to be free…) didn’t hang together, and therefore was not to be included in the public concert performance.
Well, looking back at that original version from ’04, they were right—disappointing as it was not to have made the final cut. I set about revising the piece after I got home and, early in 2006, came up with a new version of the piece entitled Of Nature and Humility. It was revised slightly in 2008, and again, a little more substantially, in 2011 to fix a note value/time signature proportion issue in the Thoreau music.
But the idea that the piece “didn’t hang together” still bothered me. So, in addition to the revisions on this piece, I also separated the music for each choir into two separate pieces: Psalm 131 for soprano solo with chorus, and Nature for chorus with a short solo for tenor.
On a concert of American Poets/American Composers in the spring of 2006 with my former professional choir, Voces Novae et Antiquae, I programmed the music for the two choirs as separate pieces to open the first half: Psalm 131 followed by Nature; then ended the first half of the concert with Of Nature and Humility. We also encouraged our audiences to give us written feedback about these pieces: did they like the separate works better than the combined piece, or vice versa?
The results were pretty much evenly split: some enjoyed the juxtaposition of texts and musical styles; others preferred them separated.
So now, my dear readers, I pose the same question to you: Do you think the juxtaposition of the texts and music in Of Nature and Humility works? Or do you think the two texts work better as the separate pieces Psalm 131 and Nature?
Listen, enjoy, and, please: talk to me!
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
My Mistress’ Eyes (1971; rev. 1998; 2012–13):The Longish Journey of an Early Work
I have finally come to be able to quote artist/author Austin Kleon here, from his first book Steal Like An Artist (New York, Workman Publishing, 2012):
“Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.
“…Copying is about reverse engineering. It’s like a mechanic taking apart a car to see how it works.
“The human hand is incapable of making a perfect copy.” (Kleon, op. cit., pp. 33–34)
The second piece that I count in my composition catalog is a choral setting of Shakespeare’s well-known Sonnet 130: My Mistress’ Eyes, for SATB a cappella written in 1971 between my junior & senior years in high school.
I refer to it as my “Randall Thompson” period in my development as a composer—consisting solely of that piece—at that time, I must have counted Randall Thompson as my favorite modern composer for chorus. I also had a “Paul Hindemith” period (one piece), a “Leonard Bernstein” period (one cantata-length piece; withdrawn unless I can figure out a way to repurpose some or all of it), and a “Wilson Coker” period (an art song; also withdrawn conditionally per above). Almost all the rest of my auto-didactic learning to compose came from arranging rather than composing thereafter, so there were no more “composer periods.”
My Mistress’ Eyes is one of my more frequently performed pieces—it’s probably as accessible and relatively simple as anything I’ve ever written. One of the biggest problems I had with it, though, was, for a very long time, dissatisfaction with the ending. While the majority of the piece is in F major, the coda takes an unexpected turn to D major, ending the piece in a completely different place from where it started—just as the sonnet itself does. But the last measure or two never seemed quite right for a very long time.
Fast-forward to 1998. There was an e-mail list back then called CHORALIST, which was a wonderful cyber-place where choral music professionals and amateurs could connect with each other, and with composers as well—conductors would ask for repertoire suggestions based on, say, a certain theme for a program, and there would be many replies from other conductors recommending existing pieces, as well as composers who might have something relevant to offer.
One such call for recommendations was for settings of Shakespeare texts from Rita Varonen, conductor of a college choir in Jyvåskylå, Finland. At the time, I had available My Mistress’ Eyes and a much larger cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra on songs and scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (written in 1982, performed once, and which is in dire need of a second performance…). Small-scale was what was asked for, so I put the piece into Finale notation software with a little bit of editing, and sent off a .pdf.
A number of months went by, so I decided to follow up in the spring of 1999 to see if anything had happened with the piece. Rita wrote back: “Oh, didn’t we tell you? We performed it; it went wonderfully, & we would like to record it!” [I stopped to pick my jaw up from off the floor…]
I immediately wrote back saying yes, absolutely! She also asked if I would be OK with dedicating the piece to her college choir, Chamber Choir Cantinovum. I immediately agreed to that as well, and sent an updated score.
A larger number of months then went by, so I decided to follow up to see if anything had happened with the recording. Rita wrote back: “Oh, didn’t we tell you we recorded it? Didn’t we send you copies?” [Again, I stopped to pick my jaw up from off the floor…]
Copies of the CD, Commissioned by Cantinovum, arrived in October of 2000; revealing a lineup in which I was the sole American among otherwise Finnish composers on the album. And what a great album it was! Here is Cantinovum’s recording of My Mistress’ Eyes in its 1998 incarnation.
This led shortly thereafter to Rita and Cantinovum commissioning me to write Psalm 51 for their “Easter” (actually Good Friday) concert where it was premiered in March, 2002, and about which I have written previously.
Fast-forward again to the fall of 2012 and my choir at Community College of Philadelphia. By that semester, we had built up sufficient numbers and musical expertise that I thought they could handle My Mistress’ Eyes. I did some more extensive revisions of the piece, mostly via varying time signatures more than the original version to better reflect word stresses, and finally figuring out what to do in the ending of the piece.
In November, 2012, a video was recorded of the revised-but-yet-uncorrected version, which featured improvised interpretive dance by the young daughter of one of my sopranos. See it here, and enjoy!
In preparing those fall programs, I discovered that I had a line of the text down incorrectly for almost 40 years! The line in question reads: “And in some perfumes is there more delight/Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks;” whereas my version, since 1971, read: “And in some perfumes is there more delight/Than in the breath from which my mistress reeks.” How’d I miss that all those years?
The only thing left to do was program it again the following semester (something I don’t normally like to do) and make certain it was recorded correctly. The corrected version was sung in concert in April, 2013—you may listen here.
“Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.
“…Copying is about reverse engineering. It’s like a mechanic taking apart a car to see how it works.
“The human hand is incapable of making a perfect copy.” (Kleon, op. cit., pp. 33–34)
The second piece that I count in my composition catalog is a choral setting of Shakespeare’s well-known Sonnet 130: My Mistress’ Eyes, for SATB a cappella written in 1971 between my junior & senior years in high school.
I refer to it as my “Randall Thompson” period in my development as a composer—consisting solely of that piece—at that time, I must have counted Randall Thompson as my favorite modern composer for chorus. I also had a “Paul Hindemith” period (one piece), a “Leonard Bernstein” period (one cantata-length piece; withdrawn unless I can figure out a way to repurpose some or all of it), and a “Wilson Coker” period (an art song; also withdrawn conditionally per above). Almost all the rest of my auto-didactic learning to compose came from arranging rather than composing thereafter, so there were no more “composer periods.”
My Mistress’ Eyes is one of my more frequently performed pieces—it’s probably as accessible and relatively simple as anything I’ve ever written. One of the biggest problems I had with it, though, was, for a very long time, dissatisfaction with the ending. While the majority of the piece is in F major, the coda takes an unexpected turn to D major, ending the piece in a completely different place from where it started—just as the sonnet itself does. But the last measure or two never seemed quite right for a very long time.
Fast-forward to 1998. There was an e-mail list back then called CHORALIST, which was a wonderful cyber-place where choral music professionals and amateurs could connect with each other, and with composers as well—conductors would ask for repertoire suggestions based on, say, a certain theme for a program, and there would be many replies from other conductors recommending existing pieces, as well as composers who might have something relevant to offer.
One such call for recommendations was for settings of Shakespeare texts from Rita Varonen, conductor of a college choir in Jyvåskylå, Finland. At the time, I had available My Mistress’ Eyes and a much larger cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra on songs and scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (written in 1982, performed once, and which is in dire need of a second performance…). Small-scale was what was asked for, so I put the piece into Finale notation software with a little bit of editing, and sent off a .pdf.
A number of months went by, so I decided to follow up in the spring of 1999 to see if anything had happened with the piece. Rita wrote back: “Oh, didn’t we tell you? We performed it; it went wonderfully, & we would like to record it!” [I stopped to pick my jaw up from off the floor…]
I immediately wrote back saying yes, absolutely! She also asked if I would be OK with dedicating the piece to her college choir, Chamber Choir Cantinovum. I immediately agreed to that as well, and sent an updated score.
A larger number of months then went by, so I decided to follow up to see if anything had happened with the recording. Rita wrote back: “Oh, didn’t we tell you we recorded it? Didn’t we send you copies?” [Again, I stopped to pick my jaw up from off the floor…]
Copies of the CD, Commissioned by Cantinovum, arrived in October of 2000; revealing a lineup in which I was the sole American among otherwise Finnish composers on the album. And what a great album it was! Here is Cantinovum’s recording of My Mistress’ Eyes in its 1998 incarnation.
This led shortly thereafter to Rita and Cantinovum commissioning me to write Psalm 51 for their “Easter” (actually Good Friday) concert where it was premiered in March, 2002, and about which I have written previously.
Fast-forward again to the fall of 2012 and my choir at Community College of Philadelphia. By that semester, we had built up sufficient numbers and musical expertise that I thought they could handle My Mistress’ Eyes. I did some more extensive revisions of the piece, mostly via varying time signatures more than the original version to better reflect word stresses, and finally figuring out what to do in the ending of the piece.
In November, 2012, a video was recorded of the revised-but-yet-uncorrected version, which featured improvised interpretive dance by the young daughter of one of my sopranos. See it here, and enjoy!
In preparing those fall programs, I discovered that I had a line of the text down incorrectly for almost 40 years! The line in question reads: “And in some perfumes is there more delight/Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks;” whereas my version, since 1971, read: “And in some perfumes is there more delight/Than in the breath from which my mistress reeks.” How’d I miss that all those years?
The only thing left to do was program it again the following semester (something I don’t normally like to do) and make certain it was recorded correctly. The corrected version was sung in concert in April, 2013—you may listen here.
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
An Antiphon from Hildegard:Antiphon for the Holy Spirit (1989)
I must begin by echoing my opening from January 1 of this year: I’m still here! I still have neither abandoned this project nor you! So much for that idea of posting every two weeks or so, though...
As it turned out: that online notation fundamentals course I mentioned I was designing back then did get finished and did, indeed, run as a 10-week course (compressed from its original 15-week design).
And that, dear readers, accounts for a large portion of the reason why I haven’t been here—the workload for a course such as this is nothing short of staggering! (I was, indeed, warned about that.)
This summer, two 7-week versions of it should be running, with the first having now gotten underway. So: I thought I’d better post something now, while opportunity presents itself.
It was in the mid-to-late 1980s when I first ran across Hildegard von Bingen and her 44 Symphoniae—her own musical settings of her own devotional lyrics in Latin. Both her words and music are extraordinary. Whenever I hear one of Hildegard’s works, it always gives me the impression of her striving to create a music that, in her day, did not yet exist. (That, eventually, would become polyphony, of course.) But compared with Gregorian Chant (as I do in my classes when covering Medieval music), the differences between Hildegard’s and the Gregorian versions of monody still amaze and delight.
Before I had encountered her music, though, I had picked up a volume of Hildegard’s Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum in translation and with commentary by Barbara Newman (the link is for the 2nd edition), and had become familiar with a number of Hildegard’s texts that way. In the spring of 1989, I wrote a choral piece for Pentecost for the choir of Central Baptist Church of Wayne, PA; and Hildegard’s De Spiritu Sancto was my choice for text.
Like May the Words of which I wrote previously, Antiphon for the Holy Spirit is also designed to be reminiscent of early music: it is written in a (partly) neo-Renaissance contrapuntal style, complete with word-painting in a few spots, but using an unmistakably 20th century harmonic vocabulary. The notes on Soundcloud.com include the Latin text and a translation. Enjoy!
As it turned out: that online notation fundamentals course I mentioned I was designing back then did get finished and did, indeed, run as a 10-week course (compressed from its original 15-week design).
And that, dear readers, accounts for a large portion of the reason why I haven’t been here—the workload for a course such as this is nothing short of staggering! (I was, indeed, warned about that.)
This summer, two 7-week versions of it should be running, with the first having now gotten underway. So: I thought I’d better post something now, while opportunity presents itself.
It was in the mid-to-late 1980s when I first ran across Hildegard von Bingen and her 44 Symphoniae—her own musical settings of her own devotional lyrics in Latin. Both her words and music are extraordinary. Whenever I hear one of Hildegard’s works, it always gives me the impression of her striving to create a music that, in her day, did not yet exist. (That, eventually, would become polyphony, of course.) But compared with Gregorian Chant (as I do in my classes when covering Medieval music), the differences between Hildegard’s and the Gregorian versions of monody still amaze and delight.
Before I had encountered her music, though, I had picked up a volume of Hildegard’s Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum in translation and with commentary by Barbara Newman (the link is for the 2nd edition), and had become familiar with a number of Hildegard’s texts that way. In the spring of 1989, I wrote a choral piece for Pentecost for the choir of Central Baptist Church of Wayne, PA; and Hildegard’s De Spiritu Sancto was my choice for text.
Like May the Words of which I wrote previously, Antiphon for the Holy Spirit is also designed to be reminiscent of early music: it is written in a (partly) neo-Renaissance contrapuntal style, complete with word-painting in a few spots, but using an unmistakably 20th century harmonic vocabulary. The notes on Soundcloud.com include the Latin text and a translation. Enjoy!
Sunday, January 1, 2017
And God’s Name Shall Be One (2001):For A New Year
Before I begin:
I’m still here! I have neither abandoned this project nor you!
Because Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur 2016 were probably as late on the secular calendar as they can ever be (just like Election Day this year), much of September into October was taken up with services, preparation for same, and then, afterwards, getting caught up on everything that had to be postponed because of them. (Full disclosure: I conduct two synagogue choirs—one based in Pennsylvania; the other in NJ. In PA I conduct the choir in all the services; in NJ, as of now, I only prepare the choir for appearances on S’lichot [the spiritual “warmup” to the High Holy Days the Saturday night prior to Rosh Hashanah] and on Kol Nidrei [the evening service for Yom Kippur]). And when the Holy Days fall within visual range of midterms at school as they did this year—well, enough said...
All that, combined with work on a commission of a different sort since mid-October—design of an online course in fundamentals of music notation which, I hope, may yet go live in some form for this spring—and I’ve been incommunicado until now.
In many ways, at least the lecture-writing portion of that process has proven to be as satisfying as composing—but then there’s all the detailia one must be certain is covered—not nearly so satisfying. There remains some of that yet to be completed, which I hope won’t take long.
So; briefly: something for the turn of another year: And God’s Name Shall Be One was written at the turn of the current century in January, 2001. The text (in English) draws from the 2nd half of the concluding prayer for all Jewish services (the Aleinu)—a prayer for world unity and tolerance, and comes from the first prayer book I knew when I was a child. It’s scored for SATB choir and may be accompanied by piano alone, rhythm section (piano, bass, kit, and opt. guitar), or chamber orchestra with rhythm section. This recording is of the version with rhythm section.
While it would be easy to say that a prayer such as this takes on even greater urgency in times like these, the fact is that it always has had urgency for one reason or another, because that for which we pray here remains so maddeningly elusive.
Here’s to putting the message out.
UPDATE: And God’s Name Shall Be One has just been published by MusicSpoke.com!
UPDATE: And God’s Name Shall Be One has just been published by MusicSpoke.com!
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Remembering Gail B. Poch (1936–2016)
Only three weeks after learning of the passing of Robert Page (of whom I wrote back in August), it was even more shocking to learn of the passing of Gail B. Poch on August 31. That makes three important figures from the choral world—the third was Gregg Smith (1931–2016) in July, about whom I shall write in the coming weeks—leaving us this summer.
Gail was my introduction to the power and potential of choral music well performed. He conducted my very first Pennsylvania Music Educators Association District Chorus at Marple-Newtown High School in January, 1970.
That program included my first exposures as a performer to the music of Jan Sweelinck, J.S. Bach (though in a decidedly inauthentic form), Benjamin Britten, Franz Schubert, Houston Bright, Joseph Canteloube, Ernest Bloch, and Leonard Bernstein; much of which, strangely, I have not had opportunity to perform in any capacity since then. As it turned out, this event also marked the first time I had ever had the opportunity to sing any Jewish choral music of substance—in addition to the Bloch “Silent Devotion & Response (Yih’yu l'ratzon)” from his Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), we also performed Gail’s own arrangement (or, possibly, his edition or adaptation; I was never certain which it was) of the Israeli (?) folk melody Ki mi tziyon. (Bernstein’s French Choruses from “The Lark” didn’t fit that category, of course.)
I went home after the Saturday night concert with a head swimming with sounds I’d never heard or imagined previously. It was at that point that I began collecting scores—of choral festival music at first, but then branching out from there into music by composers whose names I recognized, or pieces that simply looked interesting.
(I also went home that Saturday night having acquired my first serious girlfriend—I a sophomore and she a senior from a neighboring high school—but that story will have to wait for my memoirs...)
And I went home that Saturday night thinking about college (and Temple University) seriously for the first time.
As an undergraduate at Temple, I had two conducting classes taught by Gail, which were wonderfully run. I remember how he managed to teach us the pieces we all were to conduct without doing a single drop of conducting himself.
Aside from those classes, I had little interaction with him other than a staged and choreographed production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Unicorn, The Gorgon, and the Manticore which he conducted and in which I sang; and also when he served as the narrator for a recording by Temple's Concert Choir of Karl Korte’s oratorio Pale is This Good Prince, both in my freshman year at Temple. (!) He was also my examiner for passing advanced Aural Theory by exam.
When I returned for grad school in 1981, Robert Page had moved on to Pittsburgh and been replaced by Alan Harler, but Gail was still very much on the faculty and very involved with the graduate choral conducting program. I had the good fortune to take a modern choral literature course with him and also to be coached privately by him on my second graduate conducting recital. Additionally, he was my supervisor for my graduate assistantship in conducting the second year of my degree program.
At that time, he had begun working on a conducting textbook based on a system of movement analysis and choreographic notation by Rudolf von Labann; our job was to apply what he was working out in actual conducting pedagogy. His pedagogical research and development was collected and finally turned into book form—The Conductor’s Gesture—by his student James Jordan, which is published by, and still available from, GIA Publications.
Gail always lived in the shadow of whoever had the title of Director of Choral Activities at Temple. I think he was, ultimately, seriously under-appreciated and under-acknowledged in his time there. To hear Temple graduates speak of him and their first encounters with him—invariably through high school choral festivals such as the one I described above—it’s clear that Gail was one of the College of Music’s secret weapons for recruitment. That, in itself, is a proud legacy!
I’m certain that veterans of the Reading (PA) Choral Society can tell different, but equally loving stories of working with him. We all miss you terribly; but we can say, confidently, that your memory is for blessing. And thank you—for opening so many young lives and ears to the power and joy of great choral music!
Finally, for those interested: my own performances of the abovementioned Sweelinck and Bloch pieces; from many years later, based on what I learned from Gail’s leadership.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
Yet More on That Thin, Erasable Line:Song of Exile (1988)
In my post from August 27, I said that arranging work has led me to wonder, at times: if a piece prominently quotes or utilizes something preëxisting, is that piece an arrangement or an original composition that happens to use pre-existing material?
I wrote previously about my Rhapsody on Anglo-American Ballad Tunes falling into this category. Here, I offer another piece that poses the same question:
Song of Exile (1988) uses the spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” as its focal point, each of whose three verses prompt different reactions from the choir. The first two are drawn from Psalm 137 (“By the waters of Babylon…” and “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”); the third is drawn from Isaiah 32 (coupled with a half-verse from Psalm 31), designed to be a verse of consolation—except that the first verse of the spiritual returns over it, unchanged from the beginning. The piece ends with a Phrygian half-cadence, leaving things unresolved.
Song of Exile was originally written for the choir of Central Baptist Church, Wayne, PA, but has been performed since then thanks to the late Peter Hopkins, former director of music at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, VA. My first encounter with the Isaiah text dates all the way back to high school and the music of Emma Lou Diemer—specifically, her For Ye Shall Go Out With Joy, a work from the 1960s which contained sounds and a cappella writing that was a watershed experience in terms of my musical thinking.
Back when Peter was in Philadelphia at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (3rd & Pine Streets, Old City), he once asked me about repertoire around Psalm 137. I suggested Salamone Rossi’s Al naharot bavel (in Hebrew; and, thus far, the only complete setting of Psalm 137 as far as I know, which pulls no punches at the end!), William Billings’ Lamentation over Boston, (a paraphrase of Psalm 137; likely by Billings himself), and Song of Exile.
He chose Song of Exile, presenting it not only in Philadelphia, but also in Reading, PA with the Reading Choral Society, and again during a week-long residency by the St. Peter’s choir at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, UK, in August, 2010 (I was privileged to have been there for that residency). The recording comes from the Evensong sung there on August 27, 2010, where it was sung as the anthem for that service.
Song of Exile is now published by MusicSpoke.com.
I wrote previously about my Rhapsody on Anglo-American Ballad Tunes falling into this category. Here, I offer another piece that poses the same question:
Song of Exile (1988) uses the spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” as its focal point, each of whose three verses prompt different reactions from the choir. The first two are drawn from Psalm 137 (“By the waters of Babylon…” and “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”); the third is drawn from Isaiah 32 (coupled with a half-verse from Psalm 31), designed to be a verse of consolation—except that the first verse of the spiritual returns over it, unchanged from the beginning. The piece ends with a Phrygian half-cadence, leaving things unresolved.
Song of Exile was originally written for the choir of Central Baptist Church, Wayne, PA, but has been performed since then thanks to the late Peter Hopkins, former director of music at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, VA. My first encounter with the Isaiah text dates all the way back to high school and the music of Emma Lou Diemer—specifically, her For Ye Shall Go Out With Joy, a work from the 1960s which contained sounds and a cappella writing that was a watershed experience in terms of my musical thinking.
Back when Peter was in Philadelphia at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (3rd & Pine Streets, Old City), he once asked me about repertoire around Psalm 137. I suggested Salamone Rossi’s Al naharot bavel (in Hebrew; and, thus far, the only complete setting of Psalm 137 as far as I know, which pulls no punches at the end!), William Billings’ Lamentation over Boston, (a paraphrase of Psalm 137; likely by Billings himself), and Song of Exile.
He chose Song of Exile, presenting it not only in Philadelphia, but also in Reading, PA with the Reading Choral Society, and again during a week-long residency by the St. Peter’s choir at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, UK, in August, 2010 (I was privileged to have been there for that residency). The recording comes from the Evensong sung there on August 27, 2010, where it was sung as the anthem for that service.
Song of Exile is now published by MusicSpoke.com.
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Psalm 51 (2000–2001)A Psalm for Another Day Living in Infamy
It was 15 years ago.
It was a Tuesday morning—a bright and beautiful late-summer morning.
I had had plans to get caught up on a bunch of work that day.
Then the news came in about the World Trade Center towers.
And then the Pentagon.
And then a 4th plane crashing in Central Pennsylvania.
Everything ground to a halt. To work seemed like sacrilege.
The last time we had seen anything of this magnitude was back on November 22, 1963.
The single-article issue of Time magazine appeared within the week following, showing us more of the horrors we hadn’t seen on television. The worst for me was the pictures of people jumping from the towers before the towers collapsed.
As it would turn out, the horrors we witnessed that day wound up providing at least a portion of the necessary focus, if subconsciously, for a commissioned work in the weeks and months that followed.
I’ll save the story of how that commission came about for another, more appropriate time. For now:
It was my first commission from anyone outside America: Rita Varonen, director of Chamber Choir Cantinovum based at the Jyväskylä Polytechnik Institut, Jyväskylä, Finland, commissioned my setting of Psalm 51 in Hebrew for SATB div. choir and 11 solo strings (or string orchestra).
I wrote the following program notes for the premiere, which took place on March 29 (Good Friday), 2002 (with additional notes/asides appearing here):
“As both a composer and conductor of music for choruses, my favorite sacred literature has always been the psalms, probably because they are, ultimately, the lyric poetry of the Bible. I have worked with many of the psalms over the years as both a church and synagogue musician, and it is always of interest to me how the same psalm text can have such different connotations for Jews and for Christians. Such a text is Psalm 51, being presented, perhaps for the 1st time in a long time (if ever), in both a Christian and Jewish context in the same program.
“While in the Christian church this psalm is central to the Good Friday liturgy, only 3 verses of this psalm are used in the entire Jewish liturgy, and only as isolated verses in other contexts—Psalm 51, in its entirety, never appears in Jewish liturgy.
“In setting this text musically, I was struck by how much of an ‘emotional roller-coaster’ this Psalm is: King David, in his remorse over his affair with Bathsheba (mentioned in the 1st two verses of the psalm in the Hebrew text—which, to my knowledge, has never been treated by any Christian setting) is by turns sorrowful, penitential, pleading, guilt-ridden, hopeful, and even off-topic. (Some hold that the final two verses were added later on by a different author.) So, while, for example, Gregorio Allegri’s setting (heard on the same program) simply uses two different musical formulas along with Gregorian psalm tones for his entire setting (hence why the young Mozart was able to write it down after hearing it only once—aside from the final phrase, the entire sequence of musical material is repeated five times), I felt obligated to reflect the ever-changing mood of the text in my setting.
The work is, ultimately, a suite of miniatures: atonal passages alternate with simple, tonal passages, often in stark contrast to each other in successive verses. I made use of one specific Jewish prayer mode, the s’licha (penitential) mode/melody, introduced at the beginning by the tenors and basses in canon, and which also occurs in its most direct form in the verse Al tashlicheini mil’fanecha (“Cast me not away from Your presence.”) Also appearing as the setting for the final verse of Psalm 51 proper is the melody for a litany of pleas for help and deliverance drawn which occurs in both the S’lichot service (a pre-High Holy Days service held either at midnight or at dawn that is a penitential “warm-up” for that season) and the Kol Nidrei service for Yom Kippur.
“Another unifying element consists of the single, loud pizzicato notes that appear in unexpected places—musical ‘pangs of conscience’ (which also are designed to assist the choir in a number of their entrances!).
“One other element that may be of interest in this setting is that, because the psalm ends rather inconclusively (at least from a musico-dramatic standpoint), it seemed to me that something needed to follow the final verses, and, unlike Christian composers, I could not simply add a Gloria Patri as an ending! However, I discovered through some research that there are three verses from elsewhere in the psalms that are to be read when one concludes a reading of the entire book of Psalms. They are: Psalm 14:7 (“Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When the LORD brings back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.”); Psalm 37:39 (“But the salvation of the righteous is from the LORD; He is their strength in time of trouble.”); and 40 (“And the LORD helps them, and delivers them; He delivers them from the wicked, and saves them, because they have taken refuge in Him.”) These three verses represented exactly the kind of concluding text that I felt the piece needed, and, therefore, constitute the extended conclusion of the work.
“Finally, as I look back over the creation of this work, I know that I had no specific, conscious thoughts about the events of September 11, 2001 during the actual compositional process. Yet, in retrospect, I am certain that those horrific events and their aftermath must have colored my thinking—ultimately, how could they not? Therefore, whatever else its content may reflect, this work also stands as my own small and entirely personal response as a human being and an artist to those horrors.
“I wish to thank Pamela Hitchcock for her invaluable and essential assistance with the Hebrew text, providing interlinear Hebrew-English translations for me, and providing pronunciation models for Chamber Choir Cantinovum; Juha and Elana Hollo for providing interlinear Hebrew-Finnish translations from the Hebrew-English text, and, finally, Rita Varonen and Chamber Choir Cantinovum for asking me to write this work, and for being fearless and willing to present its world premiere this evening.”
While Psalm 51 has yet to be performed here in the US, it was heard—or, more accurately, broadcast—here on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. It was selected to be aired during a 24-hour live broadcast entitled WE REMEMBER SEPTEMBER 11 on WPRB 103 FM (Princeton, New Jersey) at around 4 PM on Sunday, September 11, 2011, hosted by Marvin Rosen (who hosted for the full 24 hours straight!).
I wrote the following abbreviated notes on the piece for a press release for the broadcast:
“The work, which may be the first-ever setting of the complete text of Psalm 51 in Hebrew, was commissioned by Rita Varonen and the Chamber Choir Cantinovum of the Jyväskylä Polytechnik Institut (Jyväskylä, Finland) and premiered there under Rita Varonen's direction March 29 (Good Friday), 2002. It was subsequently performed there on September 15, 2002 for a 9/11 memorial service. (Rita told me that that performance was better than the premiere; but, alas, that performance wasn’t recorded.) The broadcast will be of a recording of the world premiere performance.
“Although the work was not written specifically in response to 9/11, that disaster's aftermath and effects on the US and the world significantly affected the composition of the work. Psalm 51 is, perhaps, one of the most anguished pleas for forgiveness and mercy in all the Bible, and the focus in relation to 9/11 is one of introspection, as in: How did my action or inaction contribute to this catastrophic event? How might I, as an individual, have acted differently before it happened? And how might I act differently to help prevent something like this from happening again?”
My initial statement in the abbreviated notes still astounds me. Surely I’m not the first person to have set the entire psalm to music in Hebrew; let alone with the extra three verses added...
But that’s not the most important question. Not at all.
Those other questions remain open. It all has to do with how we choose to relate to the rest of the world, as individuals and as a larger society.
Lest anyone misread the second paragraph of my amplified notes: I have no illusion that I bear any responsibility for what happened, nor that anything I, alone, could have done would have made any difference.
But humanity, collectively, seems to have a great deal of difficulty looking past surface details to address the root causes of what happens in this world—in many, many areas, not merely social or political. Should we ever learn, collectively, to address those root causes (for both good and bad things that happen), I believe this shall be the ultimate source of human redemption.
It was a Tuesday morning—a bright and beautiful late-summer morning.
I had had plans to get caught up on a bunch of work that day.
Then the news came in about the World Trade Center towers.
And then the Pentagon.
And then a 4th plane crashing in Central Pennsylvania.
Everything ground to a halt. To work seemed like sacrilege.
The last time we had seen anything of this magnitude was back on November 22, 1963.
The single-article issue of Time magazine appeared within the week following, showing us more of the horrors we hadn’t seen on television. The worst for me was the pictures of people jumping from the towers before the towers collapsed.
As it would turn out, the horrors we witnessed that day wound up providing at least a portion of the necessary focus, if subconsciously, for a commissioned work in the weeks and months that followed.
I’ll save the story of how that commission came about for another, more appropriate time. For now:
It was my first commission from anyone outside America: Rita Varonen, director of Chamber Choir Cantinovum based at the Jyväskylä Polytechnik Institut, Jyväskylä, Finland, commissioned my setting of Psalm 51 in Hebrew for SATB div. choir and 11 solo strings (or string orchestra).
I wrote the following program notes for the premiere, which took place on March 29 (Good Friday), 2002 (with additional notes/asides appearing here):
“As both a composer and conductor of music for choruses, my favorite sacred literature has always been the psalms, probably because they are, ultimately, the lyric poetry of the Bible. I have worked with many of the psalms over the years as both a church and synagogue musician, and it is always of interest to me how the same psalm text can have such different connotations for Jews and for Christians. Such a text is Psalm 51, being presented, perhaps for the 1st time in a long time (if ever), in both a Christian and Jewish context in the same program.
“While in the Christian church this psalm is central to the Good Friday liturgy, only 3 verses of this psalm are used in the entire Jewish liturgy, and only as isolated verses in other contexts—Psalm 51, in its entirety, never appears in Jewish liturgy.
“In setting this text musically, I was struck by how much of an ‘emotional roller-coaster’ this Psalm is: King David, in his remorse over his affair with Bathsheba (mentioned in the 1st two verses of the psalm in the Hebrew text—which, to my knowledge, has never been treated by any Christian setting) is by turns sorrowful, penitential, pleading, guilt-ridden, hopeful, and even off-topic. (Some hold that the final two verses were added later on by a different author.) So, while, for example, Gregorio Allegri’s setting (heard on the same program) simply uses two different musical formulas along with Gregorian psalm tones for his entire setting (hence why the young Mozart was able to write it down after hearing it only once—aside from the final phrase, the entire sequence of musical material is repeated five times), I felt obligated to reflect the ever-changing mood of the text in my setting.
The work is, ultimately, a suite of miniatures: atonal passages alternate with simple, tonal passages, often in stark contrast to each other in successive verses. I made use of one specific Jewish prayer mode, the s’licha (penitential) mode/melody, introduced at the beginning by the tenors and basses in canon, and which also occurs in its most direct form in the verse Al tashlicheini mil’fanecha (“Cast me not away from Your presence.”) Also appearing as the setting for the final verse of Psalm 51 proper is the melody for a litany of pleas for help and deliverance drawn which occurs in both the S’lichot service (a pre-High Holy Days service held either at midnight or at dawn that is a penitential “warm-up” for that season) and the Kol Nidrei service for Yom Kippur.
“Another unifying element consists of the single, loud pizzicato notes that appear in unexpected places—musical ‘pangs of conscience’ (which also are designed to assist the choir in a number of their entrances!).
“One other element that may be of interest in this setting is that, because the psalm ends rather inconclusively (at least from a musico-dramatic standpoint), it seemed to me that something needed to follow the final verses, and, unlike Christian composers, I could not simply add a Gloria Patri as an ending! However, I discovered through some research that there are three verses from elsewhere in the psalms that are to be read when one concludes a reading of the entire book of Psalms. They are: Psalm 14:7 (“Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When the LORD brings back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.”); Psalm 37:39 (“But the salvation of the righteous is from the LORD; He is their strength in time of trouble.”); and 40 (“And the LORD helps them, and delivers them; He delivers them from the wicked, and saves them, because they have taken refuge in Him.”) These three verses represented exactly the kind of concluding text that I felt the piece needed, and, therefore, constitute the extended conclusion of the work.
“Finally, as I look back over the creation of this work, I know that I had no specific, conscious thoughts about the events of September 11, 2001 during the actual compositional process. Yet, in retrospect, I am certain that those horrific events and their aftermath must have colored my thinking—ultimately, how could they not? Therefore, whatever else its content may reflect, this work also stands as my own small and entirely personal response as a human being and an artist to those horrors.
“I wish to thank Pamela Hitchcock for her invaluable and essential assistance with the Hebrew text, providing interlinear Hebrew-English translations for me, and providing pronunciation models for Chamber Choir Cantinovum; Juha and Elana Hollo for providing interlinear Hebrew-Finnish translations from the Hebrew-English text, and, finally, Rita Varonen and Chamber Choir Cantinovum for asking me to write this work, and for being fearless and willing to present its world premiere this evening.”
While Psalm 51 has yet to be performed here in the US, it was heard—or, more accurately, broadcast—here on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. It was selected to be aired during a 24-hour live broadcast entitled WE REMEMBER SEPTEMBER 11 on WPRB 103 FM (Princeton, New Jersey) at around 4 PM on Sunday, September 11, 2011, hosted by Marvin Rosen (who hosted for the full 24 hours straight!).
I wrote the following abbreviated notes on the piece for a press release for the broadcast:
“The work, which may be the first-ever setting of the complete text of Psalm 51 in Hebrew, was commissioned by Rita Varonen and the Chamber Choir Cantinovum of the Jyväskylä Polytechnik Institut (Jyväskylä, Finland) and premiered there under Rita Varonen's direction March 29 (Good Friday), 2002. It was subsequently performed there on September 15, 2002 for a 9/11 memorial service. (Rita told me that that performance was better than the premiere; but, alas, that performance wasn’t recorded.) The broadcast will be of a recording of the world premiere performance.
“Although the work was not written specifically in response to 9/11, that disaster's aftermath and effects on the US and the world significantly affected the composition of the work. Psalm 51 is, perhaps, one of the most anguished pleas for forgiveness and mercy in all the Bible, and the focus in relation to 9/11 is one of introspection, as in: How did my action or inaction contribute to this catastrophic event? How might I, as an individual, have acted differently before it happened? And how might I act differently to help prevent something like this from happening again?”
My initial statement in the abbreviated notes still astounds me. Surely I’m not the first person to have set the entire psalm to music in Hebrew; let alone with the extra three verses added...
But that’s not the most important question. Not at all.
Those other questions remain open. It all has to do with how we choose to relate to the rest of the world, as individuals and as a larger society.
Lest anyone misread the second paragraph of my amplified notes: I have no illusion that I bear any responsibility for what happened, nor that anything I, alone, could have done would have made any difference.
But humanity, collectively, seems to have a great deal of difficulty looking past surface details to address the root causes of what happens in this world—in many, many areas, not merely social or political. Should we ever learn, collectively, to address those root causes (for both good and bad things that happen), I believe this shall be the ultimate source of human redemption.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
A Thin, Erasable Line: Part 2 Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair (1991; rev. 2014)
The word “arranging,” as it applies to music, is abused far too often.
It drives me crazy the way certain brands of press about new music describe a new piece, often for chorus, as “a new arrangement” of [fill in the title of the text]; say, Psalm 150.
This is symptomatic of so many things that it could produce a book-length manuscript. Not the least of these is the notion that no one can possibly be writing new, classically-based music today because, well, aren't those composers all dead now?
Never mind that this is a truly classic (as it were) case of Orwell's double-think: no one would ever question that a new movie has a brand new (= newly composed) symphonic score by John Williams, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, or any number of other living composers—but, somehow, if it's something close to home or not out of Hollywood or not on a program by your city's symphony orchestra, etc., etc., it can't possibly be new or original.
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This post’s offering is, indeed, an arrangement—the genuine article; and one of which I’m proud.
I mentioned last time that one of the works that influenced my Rhapsody on Anglo-American Ballad Tunes was another rhapsody, for oboe and strings, by Wayne Barlow entitled The Winter's Passed. It, too, falls into the ambiguous category about which I wrote last time: it quotes two different Anglo-American folk songs at length, but the setting and harmonic language is wholly original.
One of the two folk songs is easily identifiable as “Wayfaring Stranger”—but that one is the “B” theme. The other, the “A” theme, is more pervasive, sounding both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
Back when I worked for Theodore Presser Company in the days when they ran a retail store, I ran across Folk Songs of the Americas (ed. A.L. Lloyd et al) published by Novello (London, UK; out of print; but I’ve seen copies for sale on eBay) some time in 1991. It contained many songs I’d never heard of, but one title I recognized was “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” I turned to it expecting to see some variation of the familiar melody associated with John Jacob Niles, but: lo and behold, here was the tune that Barlow used in The Winter's Passed!
According to Wikipedia:
“These words are set to two distinct melodies: one of which is traditional, and the other was written by the Kentucky folk singer and composer John Jacob Niles. (Emphasis mine.) Niles recalled that his father thought the traditional melody was ‘downright terrible,’ so he wrote ‘a new tune, ending it in a nice modal manner.’”
This confirms something I’d suspected for a long time. I have no idea why Niles’ father disliked the traditional tune so, unless he was thinking of a different one altogether...
Needless to say, the arranger-half of me got right to work on it, since, to my knowledge, it had never been set chorally (and, as far as I can tell, still hasn’t). I completed a setting for soprano solo, mixed chorus and celtic harp (or keyboard) that summer.
It took until 2014 for it to be premiered, after some substantial revision and refinement. Here it is, sung by the Vocal Ensemble of Community College of Philadelphia under my direction, accompanied by H.L. Smith, II, with soprano soloist Shanice Manley.
It drives me crazy the way certain brands of press about new music describe a new piece, often for chorus, as “a new arrangement” of [fill in the title of the text]; say, Psalm 150.
This is symptomatic of so many things that it could produce a book-length manuscript. Not the least of these is the notion that no one can possibly be writing new, classically-based music today because, well, aren't those composers all dead now?
Never mind that this is a truly classic (as it were) case of Orwell's double-think: no one would ever question that a new movie has a brand new (= newly composed) symphonic score by John Williams, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, or any number of other living composers—but, somehow, if it's something close to home or not out of Hollywood or not on a program by your city's symphony orchestra, etc., etc., it can't possibly be new or original.
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This post’s offering is, indeed, an arrangement—the genuine article; and one of which I’m proud.
I mentioned last time that one of the works that influenced my Rhapsody on Anglo-American Ballad Tunes was another rhapsody, for oboe and strings, by Wayne Barlow entitled The Winter's Passed. It, too, falls into the ambiguous category about which I wrote last time: it quotes two different Anglo-American folk songs at length, but the setting and harmonic language is wholly original.
One of the two folk songs is easily identifiable as “Wayfaring Stranger”—but that one is the “B” theme. The other, the “A” theme, is more pervasive, sounding both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
Back when I worked for Theodore Presser Company in the days when they ran a retail store, I ran across Folk Songs of the Americas (ed. A.L. Lloyd et al) published by Novello (London, UK; out of print; but I’ve seen copies for sale on eBay) some time in 1991. It contained many songs I’d never heard of, but one title I recognized was “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” I turned to it expecting to see some variation of the familiar melody associated with John Jacob Niles, but: lo and behold, here was the tune that Barlow used in The Winter's Passed!
According to Wikipedia:
“These words are set to two distinct melodies: one of which is traditional, and the other was written by the Kentucky folk singer and composer John Jacob Niles. (Emphasis mine.) Niles recalled that his father thought the traditional melody was ‘downright terrible,’ so he wrote ‘a new tune, ending it in a nice modal manner.’”
This confirms something I’d suspected for a long time. I have no idea why Niles’ father disliked the traditional tune so, unless he was thinking of a different one altogether...
Needless to say, the arranger-half of me got right to work on it, since, to my knowledge, it had never been set chorally (and, as far as I can tell, still hasn’t). I completed a setting for soprano solo, mixed chorus and celtic harp (or keyboard) that summer.
It took until 2014 for it to be premiered, after some substantial revision and refinement. Here it is, sung by the Vocal Ensemble of Community College of Philadelphia under my direction, accompanied by H.L. Smith, II, with soprano soloist Shanice Manley.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Rhapsody on Anglo-American Ballad Tunes Musings on a Thin, Erasable Line: Composing vs. Arranging
I have spent as much time as an arranger and editor as I have as a composer over the past (roughly) five decades, if not more—and have wound up equally obscure in all three fields. Part of the reason why this is so, especially regarding arranging, is purely practical: many performance situations require music tailored to a very specific situation. Most of the time, that required tailoring results in something that isn't widely marketable.
So: this will be the first, probably, of many musings, semi-rants, and occasional behind-the-scenes posts on this other creative process.
I think I have always viewed composing and arranging as two sides of the same coin: the only difference is whether the material to be worked over is one’s own or someone else’s.
Having said that: a distinction should be made between the brand of arranging that is really transcription—changing a given piece’s instrumentation or adding or subtracting parts; as opposed to working with only a melody line, sometimes a harmonization (& sometimes not), and fashioning a whole new musical environment for said melody. These are two completely different approaches requiring completely different skill sets.
Shuttling back and forth between these two fields has led me to wonder, at times: if a piece prominently quotes or utilizes preëxisting material, is that piece automatically an arrangement? Or is it an original composition that happens to use preëxisting material? Please feel free to weigh in and discuss!
Herewith a piece that, I believe, falls into this category and poses the question: my Rhapsody on Anglo-American Ballad Tunes, a work for 11 solo strings (or string orchestra) and piano (covering what, someday, will be wind and harp parts). It uses two different tunes to which the Old English ballad “Barbara Allen” may be sung, and its influences and models are threefold:
One was Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants on “Dives and Lazarus” for large string orchestra and harp—one of my all-time favorite orchestral works. Here is one of a number of excellent performances; I would rather have you see an actual performance video than hear a commercial recording with nothing but a slide for a visual.
Another was a less well-known rhapsody for oboe and strings: Wayne Barlow's The Winter's Past. Watch and listen here.
The third was Art Garfunkel’s achingly beautiful rendition of “Barbara Allen” (to one of the tunes used here) from his solo album Breaking Away. The Rhapsody itself is based on an earlier choral piece that had a not-so-terrific text, reworked into its present instrumental form.
The performance on Soundcloud.com is the world premiere; and so far, the only performance, anywhere, ever. The track has additional information posted which I won’t repeat here, except I must thank the late Gregg Smith (1931–2016) for programming it at his Adirondack Festival of American Music in Saranac Lake, NY in 1995. You may listen here.
So: this will be the first, probably, of many musings, semi-rants, and occasional behind-the-scenes posts on this other creative process.
I think I have always viewed composing and arranging as two sides of the same coin: the only difference is whether the material to be worked over is one’s own or someone else’s.
Having said that: a distinction should be made between the brand of arranging that is really transcription—changing a given piece’s instrumentation or adding or subtracting parts; as opposed to working with only a melody line, sometimes a harmonization (& sometimes not), and fashioning a whole new musical environment for said melody. These are two completely different approaches requiring completely different skill sets.
Shuttling back and forth between these two fields has led me to wonder, at times: if a piece prominently quotes or utilizes preëxisting material, is that piece automatically an arrangement? Or is it an original composition that happens to use preëxisting material? Please feel free to weigh in and discuss!
Herewith a piece that, I believe, falls into this category and poses the question: my Rhapsody on Anglo-American Ballad Tunes, a work for 11 solo strings (or string orchestra) and piano (covering what, someday, will be wind and harp parts). It uses two different tunes to which the Old English ballad “Barbara Allen” may be sung, and its influences and models are threefold:
One was Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants on “Dives and Lazarus” for large string orchestra and harp—one of my all-time favorite orchestral works. Here is one of a number of excellent performances; I would rather have you see an actual performance video than hear a commercial recording with nothing but a slide for a visual.
Another was a less well-known rhapsody for oboe and strings: Wayne Barlow's The Winter's Past. Watch and listen here.
The third was Art Garfunkel’s achingly beautiful rendition of “Barbara Allen” (to one of the tunes used here) from his solo album Breaking Away. The Rhapsody itself is based on an earlier choral piece that had a not-so-terrific text, reworked into its present instrumental form.
The performance on Soundcloud.com is the world premiere; and so far, the only performance, anywhere, ever. The track has additional information posted which I won’t repeat here, except I must thank the late Gregg Smith (1931–2016) for programming it at his Adirondack Festival of American Music in Saranac Lake, NY in 1995. You may listen here.
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Update: RIP Robert Page (1927–2016)
My opening post mentioned Robert Page in passing as having programmed my May the Words on the last concert he conducted with the Temple University Concert Choir in May of 1975, before he left Philadelphia for a post at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Today, August 9, I learned of his passing on August 7. (So much for two-week spacing between posts here for now...)
I can honestly say that I would not be the musician/composer/conductor/educator I am today had I not sung in his Concert Choir in the '70s; and I may not have even gone to Temple for undergraduate school had I not also been a student in his High School Choral Workshop (sponsored by Temple) the summer between my junior & senior years in high school—where I first sang Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana—with the Pennsylvania Ballet & Orchestra (the first of some two dozen performances as an undergrad), & Arthur Honegger's King David—in a staged performance with chamber orchestra, no less.
That was only the beginning of what would prove to be an unrivaled undergraduate choral experience. The repertoire we did completely warped my musical thinking (these are the highlights):
Ligeti: Requiem (in its entirety; the Kyrie movement is the “Obelisk” music heard in 2001: A Space Odyssey)
Bernstein: Chichester Psalms
Beethoven: Choral Fantasy
Rachmaninoff: The Bells & 3 Russian Peasant Songs w/the Philadelphia Orchestra & recorded on RCA Red Seal
Page: 3 Christmas Motets; two of which were for triple chorus; inspired by his work preparing the Temple choirs for Penderecki’s Utrenja, Part I (“The Entombment of Christ”), premiered with the Philadelphia Orchestra & recorded on RCA Red Seal the year before I arrived.
Ives: Psalms 54, 67 & 150
& that was just my freshman year!
Subsequently (& we may have done some of the following in my freshman year as well; I’d have to go back & look):
Penderecki: St. Luke Passion with the Philadelphia Orchestra—that was the Philadelphia premiere; Page himself conducted
Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust (concert version); Eve Queler, conductor
Bach: St. Matthew Passion (tour concerts w/chamber orchestra)
Ives: Psalm 150 (again); 3 Harvest Home Chorales, & the Holidays Symphony (also w/Philadelphia Orchestra & just the symphony recorded on RCA Red Seal)—though the Holidays Symphony involved exactly one page of unison singing at the end of the 4th movement…
Puccini: La Boheme (Concert Choir was drafted to be the chorus for that year’s opera production)
Rossini: The Turk in Italy (Concert Choir was drafted to be the chorus for that year’s opera production as well, but I had one of the lead roles in that one)
Karl Korte: Pale is This Good Prince; an oratorio; world premiere; recorded on a private label
Ariel Ramirez: Misa Criolla (on which I was one of the percussionists—that's for a separate post, perhaps…)
Max Reger: Vater Unser—imagine a work using the tonal language of Wagner’s Prelude & Liebestod from Tristan & Isolde—but in a setting of the Lord’s Prayer in German for triple chorus, a cappella…
Arthur Honegger: Cantique de Pacques (women’s chorus) & La Danse des Morts
Poulenc: Six Chansons, Un Soir de Neige & Mass in G
Ravel: Trois Chansons (Ravel’s sole contribution to the a cappella repertoire; all on his own texts, by the way)
Schönberg: De Profundis (a late, atonal setting of Psalm 130 in Hebrew)
Webern: Enflieht auf Leichten Känen (Op. 2; pre-atonality [but not by much...])
...over & above the standard historical (Renaissance through Romantic era) motets, folk songs, spirituals & show tunes that flesh out tour programs. Nor does this enumerate the additional, equally wide range of repertoire performed on graduate conductors’ recitals in which I sang and, occasionally, soloed.
RP, as many of us used to speak of him, never took no for an answer—that’s what made this dizzying array of professional level rep possible. To be honest, he carried a measure of contempt for “singers” as opposed to “musicians” (something I do not perpetuate in my own practice) which often led to sarcasm & abusiveness in rehearsals—it came off as funny if you weren’t the target of it; but certainly not if you were the target thereof. Once upon a time, that was the norm for working “effectively” with choirs; one can’t do that & get away with it any more (as Robert Shaw once learned the hard way—singers actually walked out of rehearsal after one particularly egregious fit of abuse).
But RP also brought a profound depth of study and background to everything he conducted, such that simply rehearsing and performing any given work was an education in itself.
While I was never a one-on-one student of his, nor did I ever take an academic class with him, singing with RP provided a wildly wide exposure to and education in choral literature, along with performance experiences like no other, all at an impressionable age. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Thank you, RP...please give Gregg Smith (1931–2016) my regards.
Sunday, August 7, 2016
A New Beginning: May the Words (1973)
This, in a few words, is long overdue.
Having been recently added to the composer roster of MusicSpoke.com is the impetus for the appearance of this new venture, which has been in the planning stages only since May of this year.
I owe gathering up the courage and resolve to embark hereupon to two small and wondrously useful books by visual artist Austin Kleon: Steal Like An Artist and, probably more so, Show Your Work!
Of the latter book, he says:
“In ten tight chapters, I lay out ways to think about your work as a never-ending process, how to build an audience by sharing that process, and how to deal with the ups and downs of putting yourself and your work out in the world:
1. You don’t have to be a genius.
2. Think process, not product.
3. Share something small every day.
4. Open up your cabinet of curiosities.
5. Tell good stories.
6. Teach what you know.
7. Don’t turn into human spam.
8. Learn to take a punch.
9. Sell out.
10. Stick around.”
I highly recommend it! (No, I haven't become Mr. Kleon’s publicist—credit where credit is due, that’s all.)
For decades now, I have been working in relative obscurity, as countless composers now and before me have done; always hoping for That One Big Break(through) that will change my fortunes for the better. That’s hard enough to come by in the music industry, let alone if one, like me, is classically oriented, and, worse yet, not regularly writing for the concert hall. And said break(through) probably has to be not singular, but at least several in number, if not many.
That’s not to say that my work is completely unknown and unheard, as is the fate of far too many. Indeed, I am very fortunate in that there are a few places (mostly houses of worship, as it turns out) where some music of mine is heard with some regularity. Alas, that brand of journeyman work—liturgical music miniatures of one sort or another, original or arranged—true gebrauchsmusik, if you think about it—somehow doesn't count as being a successful composer nowadays—if, indeed, it ever did.
We in the classically-oriented end of the field tend to think that we have no choice but to work and create in obscurity. If no one knows or cares about what we’re doing, we remain obscure. Couple that with fear of rejection, and it becomes a vicious, depressing, and soul-draining cycle.
This is the source of the name for this blog: No More Rusty Paper Clips! Too many of us have had them handed to us: we submit a work to a competition or for consideration by a conductor for programming, and it is returned to us after some months (or years) with a rusty paper clip in one corner—meaning: it was never unclipped and looked over.
No more, I say! Of course, electronic media and sending .pdfs out makes paper clips somewhat obsolete, but still…No more, I say!
In this day and age of social media and the blogosphere, there’s really no reason not to put one’s work/works-in-progress out for examination and scrutiny any more. True, it’s still possible to have one's work met with indifference (been there, too; far too many times…), but the chances of that should be smaller the bigger the population one reaches—I hope!
So: at this point in my life (the youth of my old age, I guess) it’s time to start showing my work intentionally and committedly, and to start following Mr. Kleon's 10 Steps. I don’t see these as 10 easy steps, nor, I suspect, would he—some are easier than others. In fact, each of these steps seems to call for commentary of one sort or another. (Oh, boy! Material for another 10 posts at least!)
Initially, many of the pieces I'll be talking about here have recordings posted on Soundcloud.com; more specifically: <https://soundcloud.com/robert-ross-9>, where my handle is <Robert Ross 11>. (I can't explain the "robert-ross-9" in the URL…) Soundcloud.com is free to join (though you don’t have to join; & once you do, you don’t have to post anything or spend any money there). It will simply be nice to know if you've listened to something of mine there. Soundcloud.com has mobile apps for iOS and Android as well.
The bottom line is that when I talk about a work of mine, you’ll be able to listen to it, come to your own conclusions, comment thereon…and, maybe even become interested in performing it? Buying it? Recording it? Etc., etc., etc. it?
And that’s my goal: to generate interest in/inspire performances and/or recordings of/inspire commissions for more of—my music. In short: to become less obscure and more in-demand—to establish a brand! (Hmmmnnnnn: “Establish a brand/be in demand!” Catchy…)
How often will I be posting? Good question! Blogs are, after all, a big commitment requiring fresh material regularly! I’m going to aim to post once every two weeks or so initially—I’m not certain this is a topic that necessarily merits a daily or even a weekly post, despite what Mr. Kleon’s Step #3 advises. Then again, maybe I’ll discover he's right…
Every once in a while, I reserve the right to veer into an area not directly related to my music, but I don’t plan to do that very often.
So: I invite you to become part of an interested, supportive community here—not just of me, but of everyone who participates herein. Sign up for Soundcloud.com now and check out what’s there, just in general! I may create related FaceBook and Twitter accounts specifically for this blog—it depends on what happens once it’s out in cyberspace. If you know other potentially interested musicians/conductors/composers, please help me spread the word—<insert cliché of your choice regarding greater numbers…>.
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As this is a beginning, it seems fitting that it include some sort of invocation/benediction; and so my initial offering here is an early work: May the Words (1973) for SATB choir a cappella on Psalm 19:15 (14).
This piece was inspired by having sung David Amram’s setting of a longer version of the text in English translation found in his Shir L’erev Shabbat (pub. C.F. Peters; now, apparently, out of print) which the Temple University Concert Choir (then under the direction of Robert Page) sang to open its Spring, 1973 tour concerts. It was on June 14, after completion of that year’s tour, that I sat down that afternoon and composed this setting in the space of about an hour.
My musical goal in this piece was to create something mystical-sounding by striking a balance between Renaissance-style polyphony (that year’s tour program also included the Josquin DesPres Ave Maria…Virgo Serena—my first exposure to the music of DesPres) and thoroughly modern tonal language. That the piece practically wrote itself that quickly is still an exhilarating memory!
I submitted it to Mr. Page in the Fall of 1973. It took until his very last concert with the Temple University Concert Choir in May, 1975 for him to program it—but program it, he did!
To this day, I think it works well—it has been sung any number of times in synagogue services (mostly High Holy Days) and Judaica concerts in which I have been involved. It is suitable not just for synagogue (as a post-Amidah meditation), but also church (introit, short anthem, or communion meditation), or as a concert opener.
The recording (to which you may listen here) comes from a concert by the Yavneh Ensemble under my direction. It is now published by MusicSpoke.com and purchasable from them here . MusicSpoke.com co-founder Kurt Knecht’s reflections about May the Words may be found here.
Enjoy, and see you again soon!
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