KSS will be presenting the first concert of our 2010/2011 season – Voices of Light – on Saturday night. Here are some of the choristers’ favorite pieces from the program.
Says one of the singers about Morten Lauridsen’s Magnum Mysterium: “Such a beautiful & moving piece of music.”
Listen for yourself to the University of Utah Singers performing this piece, which uses the beautiful O magnum mysterium text. Says Lauridsen himself: “This affirmation of God’s grace to the meek and the adoration of the Blessed Virgin are celebrated in my setting through a quiet song of profound inner joy.”
Says another singer: “Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium contains rich harmonies that are wonderful to sing. It has an ethereal quality as the melody develops, winding its way from one voice to another. My hope is that the audience will be drawn into our experience and transported to another plane.”
Yet another singer loves singing Lauridsen’s rich harmonies. The same singer also likes Eric Whitacre’s Lux Aurumque because it has “intriguing harmonies and it sounds kind of ethereal.” Learn more about Lux Aurumque here.
Randall Thompson’s Choose Something Like a Star from Frostiana is another favorite. Listen to the Harvard University Choir singing it, below. (This video also features the lyrics.) One signer calls it “up close to heaven!”
Says another singer: “The music of The Magnificat by Pergolesi [actually by Francesco Durante, formerly attributed to Pergolesi] is quite exquisite, featuring the talented string ensemble that is joining us for this concert. It’s also a thrill to hear individual choir members as our soloists, highlighting some of the talent hidden within our ranks.”
Here’s a video of the opening movement – a baroque delight.
Paul Halley’s Voices of Light – the program finale – merits mention as well: “With Fiona Wilkinson’s amazing interpretation, fingers flying over the keys of her flute, Ron Fox on the organ & the choir soaring, it’s a musical experience unto itself.”
One chorister sums up the program this way: “Once again, Karen has woven together yet another interesting program to challenge the choir & entertain our audience.” Check out the entire program, below.
Bach – Break forth, o beauteous heavenly light (German/English)
Mendelssohn – There shall a star come forth (Christus)
Whitacre – Lux Aurumque
Bach (Kuhnau) – Cantata #142 for Christmas Day
Lauridsen – O Magnum Mysterium
Pergolesi (Durante) – Magnificat
Thompson – Choose Something Like a Star
Halley – Voices of Light
Featuring string quintet, two flutes, organ/piano, timpani and percussion instruments.
In the fall of 2008 KSS recorded Road to Freedom, which features readings by Bryan and Shannon Prince of first-hand accounts they have collected of enslaved people who found freedom in Canada via the Underground Railroad.
The CD was produced by renowned producer and recording arts educator Kevin Doyle at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, and a small team of students from Fanshawe also documented the recording process on video. Above is the result.
If you enjoy the music featured in the video, you can purchase it here.
Have you ever been sitting in a concert and found yourself wondering which pieces were the musicians’ favorites? As a former choral singer myself, I know that there are some songs we singers all love to rehearse and perform, and others that, well, aren’t our favorites.
I recently asked the KSS choristers about their favorite songs from our upcoming jazz concert, Love is in the Air. The answers were revealing, and often fascinating.
Taking a Chance on Love (arranged by Darmon Meader) was mentioned a number of times, for many different reasons. One singer revealed that he kept finding the song running through his head whenever he wasn’t thinking of anything else. Another added that “it’s fun to sing and optimistic!” A couple of other singers mentioned that they really liked the Darmon Meader arrangement that KSS is singing, “because the rhythm is interesting and challenging, and the harmonies are very ‘cool,’ early jazz style. Just plain fun to sing.”
Taking a Chance made conductor Karen’s hit list as well: “It’s a straight-forward, yet harmonically rich setting of this stylish standard. Lots of trading off with a soloist.”
You can hear an exerpt from the song below, sung by a university jazz choir.
Eric Whitacre’s This Marriage was another clear favorite. One singer said that it “has some lovely melodious lines with rich harmonies. It’s a treat to sing with my fellow choir mates, as the different parts work off each other. The lyrics (poetry by Jalal al-Din Rumi) are exotic and convey an intimate, universal message about the sacred relationship in a marriage.”
This Marriage was also mentioned by Karen, for similar reasons: “It’s about an unusual subject – a mature love, a committed love – not just the frothy fizzy first stages of love. It’s a Rumi poem, and I love Rumi. I love the unique harmonic structure – parallel everything – like a single song that is enriched.”
A YouTube version of the song – conducted by Whitacre himself – can be found below.
Another singer mentioned Blue Skies: “I find the tune floating around in my brain at all hours of the day. The harmonies and rhythms skip along, uplifting the spirit, carrying us forward. If I’m feeling lethargic at all, I’ve found that humming a few bars of this piece gets me going!”
A more obscure favorite was another suggestion by Karen: “Live with me and be my love – the first George Shearing tune on the program. It has a smooth sophistication and restraint that sets up the concert wonderfully. Deceptively simple with stylish harmonies that are always fresh.”
Far and away the piece most often mentioned by the singers, however, was Stephen Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns (again arranged by Darmon Meader). I have never really cared for this song, myself, but I have to admit that when I sat in on an early KSS rehearsal back in January, I was won over by Meader’s simple yet gorgeous arrangement. It has obviously struck a chord with the singers, as well.
“When a few of us choir members were in New York City to sing at Carnegie Hall, a couple of us went to see “A Little Night Music,” and Catherine Zeta-Jones sang “Bring in the Clowns,” and it was remarkable. Every time I sing that song at choir I’m transported back to NYC and the wonderful time we had making music with fabulous people in NYC.”
Says another singer: “As well as being a great tune, [it's my favorite because of] it’s connection with “Smiles of a Summer Night,” which is one of my favorite Ingmar Bergman movies, and was the source material for “A Little Night Music.”
Karen has the last word: “It’s a great song, and this is a surprising and imaginative setting of it that really works.”
An orchestra conductor faces the ultimate leadership challenge: creating perfect harmony without saying a word. In this charming talk, Itay Talgam demonstrates the unique styles of six great 20th-century conductors, illustrating crucial lessons for all leaders.
Can a piece of music change people? Transform them, even? It may seem incongruous to include a video from the rehearsals of the Broadway musical Wicked in a blog post about a Haydn mass… but then again, maybe not.
I first heard the song featured in the above video (For Good) about three years ago. It immediately struck a chord with me, not only because the music was stunningly beautiful, but because the words themselves expressed a sentiment that I believe to be true: That we are intrinsically changed by the people whom we know throughout our the course of our lives.
In the above video (an extra segment included in the DVD of the PBS documentary Broadway: The American Musical) the musical’s producer, Marc Platt, explains that music has no filter: It “seeps inside you…[and] pierces you…in a deeper way than words alone do.”
If we are capable of hearing, we have all experienced those moments when music has affected us on a deeply emotional – and perhaps even spiritual – level.
What has any of this got to do with Haydn, though?
Haydn wrote his Missa in Angustiis (Mass in Troubled Times, or Mass in Times of Distress) in the summer of 1798. He was the composer for the court of the Esterházys, a Hungarian noble family, and this particular mass was written for the name day feast (the celebration (or “feast”) of a particular Roman Catholic saint for whom someone is named) of an Esterházy princess.
At this same time in history, Napoleon was attempting to conquer Europe, and the general feeling was one of foreboding and terror as Napoleon won battle after battle, cutting a swathe across the continent. Right before Haydn’s mass was premiered in September of 1798, he and his audience would have heard about British Admiral Horatio Nelson’s stunning victory over Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in Egypt. Perhaps because of this coincidence, the mass later came to be popularly known as the Lord Nelson Mass.
A mass is a choral work originally meant to be sung during the ritual of Christian communion or eucharist, where believers re-enact the last meal of Jesus of Nazareth, when Jesus instructed his followers to eat bread and wine (his “body” and his “blood”) in remembrance of him whenever they gathered together.
The later Christian church formalized the parts of this “holy feast,” writing words that were recited by the priest or sung by the choir: the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei.
In the Kyrie, believers ask for mercy from God. This part of the sung mass is usually very plaintive, and in the case of Haydn’s Missa in Angustiis, in a minor key, which sounds sad and pleading.
In the Gloria, the believers praise God. This part of the mass is usually very joyous.
In the Credo, they recite their beliefs, often in the form of the Nicene creed, a statement of belief that was written by church officials who met at the first ecumenical (multi-denominational) council at the city of Nicea in 325 CE. This section of the mass can often be very long and repetitive, but in the Missa in Angustiis, Haydn uses some musical devices that lighten the mood.
In the Sanctus, the believers again praise God, and in the Benedictus they bless “he who comes in the name of God.”
In the Angus Dei, right before the actual receiving of the bread and the wine, which represent (or stand for) the body and blood of Jesus, believers ask the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world and grant them peace.
But what if you’re not a Christian? How can Haydn’s mass mean anything to you if you don’t believe that Jesus died to pay for your sins, or reconcile you with God?
On a deeper level, humans have been seeking transformation (the radical change of our very essence) for thousands of years. Whether we literally want to change our life situation and circumstances, or change our inner state of being, most of our ritualized behavior (including even contemporary secular (or non-religious) rituals like shaving our body hair, or watching our favorite television show) is designed to transform us – to take us to another place, or make us into something else.
In the Wicked song, For Good, the lead characters talk about how they have been changed because they knew each other.
Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? But because I knew you I have been changed for good.
What does that mean – to “know” somebody? When we use that phrase, we usually mean that we have spent time with someone, learned about their likes and dislikes, their behavior, or their life circumstances. Did you ever stop to think about how small children learn about their world, though? If you’ve spent any time with a baby, you know that everything eventually makes its way into their mouths. Our lips and tongue have a very high concentration of nerve endings, and the part of the brain that corresponds to our mouths is proportionally much larger than the areas of the brain which correspond to other parts of our body. It’s no surprise that the mouth is the primary way for babies to learn about unknown objects.
In the ritual of Christian communion, believers not only take the bread and wine into their mouths, they literally eat the divine elements. If you can “know” something by putting it into your mouth, does that mean you can then “become” someone by eating them? And what does it mean to eat God, or the creative energy of the universe? What does it mean to eat love itself?
When Haydn wrote Missa in Angustiis, he knew that his audience would understand the yearning for change expressed in the Christian ritual of the mass. Through his art, he hoped to create an environment of sound that would complement the ritual of “becoming one” with love. He wanted his audience to be changed “for good.”
As you listen to each part of the mass, open your ears – and through them, your body – to the gradual progression of transformation. What is happening in your life right now? Do you yearn for change – for something better? Can you imagine what it felt like to live in troubled times? Can you imagine the relief of victory? Of peace?
How does the music in each movement touch you? What journey does the music take you on? Where do you end up when the music is finished? Have you, too, been changed?
In this soaring demonstration, deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie illustrates how listening to music involves much more than simply letting sound waves hit your eardrums. After watching this half-hour video you may never listen to music the same way ever again.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes – including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts.
Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it – and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.
In this (fair warning: rather long!) video, Zander enthrals his audience at the TED2008 conference.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes – including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts.
“All told, America is home to more than 270,000 choral groups.”
The above YouTube video features a clip from CBS Sunday Morning about the benefits of choral singing.
“According to Chorus America, 78% of chorus members volunteer in their communities, compared to just 50% of the general public. And they donate to charities at 2 1/2 times the rate of the populace as a whole.”
“As for the children who sing in choruses, educators say they earn higher grades and show enhanced social development.”
Visit this space often for a wealth of background information, research and interviews about our upcoming concerts, as well as cool stuff that we've found on the Internet related to music and choral singing.
Enjoy!
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