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Circle Singers Program Notes March 5, 2005
Tonight's concert celebrating the music of Canada opens with the Canadian National Anthem, O Canada. Pianist and organist Calixa Lavallee was a noted musician and composer in the United States and France as well as in Canada. Born in 1842 in Vercheres, Canada, he worked as a pianist in the United States and fought with the Northern army in the Civil War, attaining the rank of lieutenant. Following the war he studied in Paris, then returned to Canada. He was commissioned to compose O Canada for the "Congres National des Canadiens-Francais" to be performed during the St. Jean-Baptiste Day celebrations in 1880. Later he returned to the United States to work and was elected president of the Music Teachers National Association. Art Songs In 1913, at the age of twenty-three, English-born Healey Willan came to Canada to head the Theory Department of the Toronto Conservatory (now the Royal Conservatory of Music). As the organist-choirmaster of St. Mary Magadalene, he soon was acclaimed for the liturgical music written for his choirs. While rooted in medieval plainsong, this music abounds in chromatic Romantic harmonies. In his art song, Fain Would I Change That Note, Willan pens a romantic tribute to Love. This short piece, beginning and ending in E major, is replete with chromatic and enharmonic harmonies and key changes. These transitions to remote keys are used expressively: first, as the poet yields to "love…the perfect sum of all delight;" and then, in spite of the bitter content of love (minor key!), the poet proclaims, "I serve thee with thy heart…" Born in Toronto, organist-choirmaster, composer, and teacher Eugene Hill (1909-1976) studied with Healey Willan. His setting of a two-verse sixteenth-century poetic text is gently Romantic. The opening key of E minor reflects sadness as the poet bids his love to "Weep you no more." The opening four-note motive returns at the end of each verse, as sleep restores the poet's loved one, and the music cadences each time in the hopeful key of G major. Organist and pianist Thomas Baker (b. 1944 Toronto) has worked as a performer-composer with improvisational theater groups, and he currently conducts three choral ensembles in Uxbridge and Kingston. His Chinese Love Lyrics are in a twentieth-century idiom, with atonal harmonies and constantly shifting meters, which he uses to evoke mood. Both songs have an F-sharp pitch orientation. Spring sets an eleventh-century text in a brief eleven measures. The A minor modal melody comes to an unexpected harmonic conclusion to express the poet's joy. In Then I Gave Thanks, Baker uses sharp dissonance to illustrate his bitter mood, brought on by the pounding rain. Shifts in mood are evoked by changing tempos and meters. Baker uses the interval of the perfect fourth harmonically and in constructing melodic lines. The piece end tranquilly on a unison C. Madrigals
Contemporary Carols, Hymns and Anthems Composer David Duke (b. 1950 Vancouver) has chosen the madrigal style for his three songs: lions, tygers, and bears. The modern madrigal style originated in sixteenth-century Belgium and Italy, as composers searched for a refined style for poetic expression. It is a free style, primarily homophonic, but with a fair amount of imitation between the voices. It is also a mannered style, typified by chromaticism and coloristic effects. The English madrigal is similar to the Italian, but with typically English touches of tongue-in-cheek merriment and contrasts between serious or melancholy sentiments and lighter moments. Duke, very tongue-in-cheek, sets three short texts, two whimsical and one enigmatic, in this elegant madrigal style. While basically tonal, lions employs chromaticism and journeys through remote keys at points of high drama. For example, the harmonies in E-flat major cadence on a sudden f-sharp major chord, as the king of beasts ponders losing his power. To portray the cryptic text of tygers, Duke moves from E major to F-sharp major/minor, and concludes on an f-sharp-c-sharp open fifth. Open fifths and fourths (also employed by Baker) are the principal harmonies of the medieval period and have a particularly haunting quality, aptly illustrating the concluding text of tygers: "our dreams are jungles with tyger eyes." The whimsical bears contrasts tempos, with a presto section of running sixteenth-notes and imitative entrances, reminiscent of the English madrigal. Written in D major, the harmonies shift to G minor with the text, "many things in life, alas! are not remotely fair." Tempos and harmonies work together to portray the humor of the text (don't be afraid to laugh!). The Words of Anne Frank Oskar Morawetz was born in 1917 in Czechoslovakia. He left his country in 1938 after the Nazi occupation, and came to Canada in 1940. His works have been performed all over the world, programmed by such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, and Kurt Masur. His compositions are noted for the "melodic and rhythmic vitality of his music, sincerity of expression, and his sense for building up powerful, dramatic climaxes." He claims to be a traditionalist, and says, "Ever since I was a child, music has meant for me something terribly emotional, and I still believe there has to be some kind of melodic line." His Who Has Allowed Us to Suffer? takes its text from the diary of Anne Frank. The text addresses the seemingly unanswerable search for meaning in the wartime suffering of the Jewish people. Despite Morawetz's claim to be a "traditional" composer, this is an atonal work. The opening phrase, sung by the tenors, just misses being the tone row of serial music, using eleven of the twelve possible pitches. There seems to be an F-sharp key center (F-sharp again!), with frequent B minor tonalities (F-sharp is the dominant of B). There are frequent enharmonics, with F-sharp written as G-flat, for example. Once again, the solemn and melancholy sound of open fifths, as the voices move in parallel chords, underscores the wrenching text. Adding to the mood, the parallel chords often move in the descending half-step "sighing motive." The chromatic melody lines create a sense of restlessness, emphasized by the constantly shifting meters. Even though Anne Frank seems to find an answer that gives meaning to the suffering, musically the basic question does not find resolution in this work. Folk Songs Born in England in 1936, Derek Healey came to Canada in 1969, where he received a Doctorate from the University of Toronto and taught at the Universities of Victoria, Toronto, and Guelph, and later at the University of Oregon. His earlier neo-classic style gave way in the 1960s to atonal influences, and after coming to Canada, ethnic music shaped his composition. The Eskimo Hunting Song is derived from a song Healey heard at Baker Lake, near the geographical center of Canada. Nine Inuit cultural groups have been associated with this area. The Inuit tradition holds that a godlike spirit permeates nature. Every living being, even the hunted, contains this spirit and must be treated with respect. Typical of folk song is the pentatonic (five-note gapped) scale employed. The song is reminiscent of a tribal chant. Healey divides the choir into twelve voices, with one voice maintaining a G pedal throughout the piece. Once again the harmony of the open fifth provides a haunting quality. Healey's Danse, mon moin', danse! (Dance, my monk, dance) is an arrangement of a simple folk ditty with a typical nonsensical text. Probably originating as a song sung while grinding corn or wheat, a girl sings to "my monk." If he wishes to dance, she will give him a variety of things: a tie for his waist, a rosary, a psalter, a robe of sackcloth, and, if he hasn't taken a vow of poverty, many other things. But he seems not to hear the dance in the sound of the mill wheel turning. Healey has taken this simple tonal ditty and added great variety: he adds spice with a very dissonant accompaniment, creating harmonies by stacking intervals of a fifth, as Baker stacked intervals of a fourth. He also uses harmonic fourths and both open intervals melodically in voices accompanying the tune. Gradually the density of the texture increases, building excitement. Keith Bissell (1912-1992 Ontario) served a Supervisor of Music for Edmonton schools, where he introduced the Orff method, "which emphasizes the truth that all significant musical development is based in the first place on an awareness of one's own roots." Folk materials influenced many of his works for voice and orchestra. His arrangement of Nova Scotia folk song, A Maid I Am In Love, is a tonal piece in Dorian mode, typical of folk music. Bissell derives great variety in his treatment of the different voices. Kelsey Jones (1922-2004) was born in Connecticut and moved to New Brunswick in 1939. He took classes at the University of Toronto from Healey Willan. A composer in many genre, he taught theory in Canadian universities. He loved folk song and considered himself a "dyed-in-the-wool Romantic," writing music to express his feelings, music that had true meaning for him. Yet there is much dissonance in his music, which he said he used "when there's a reason for it." His Five Limericks are all set in minor modal-sounding keys. Jones uses language to imitate sounds and to create a picture of the text. His harmonies are interesting: for example, the tune of the first limerick is in A minor, while the accompanying voices are in A major. Jones's whimsical The Table And The Chair is written in the style of a folk song in a G minor/modal key. The harmonies are unconventional, with non-harmonic added notes and some sharp dissonances. Jones illustrates the text with word painting on "bumpy bump" in ostinatos by the tenors and basses. Variety is created with the voices in counterpoint and with tempo changes to illustrate the action. The harmonies end (as the table, chair, and friends conclude a fine day!) on a G major triad. Harry Somers (1925-1999), born in Toronto, was a prolific composer of works for orchestra, choir, voice, chamber ensemble, and piano, and also composed for stage, film, and television. Somers talks about his two drinking-song arrangements, The Old "Mayflower" and Si j'avais le bateau (If I have a boat). "The every-day use of wines for convivial and ceremonial occasions has given French folk music a large repertoire of drinking songs…. The simulations of trumpet and drums are derived from the idea of 'chin' or 'mouth' music in many Newfoundland songs, such as The Old 'Mayflower.' 'Chin' or 'mouth' music is a vocal imitation of instrumental music and is used for dancing when a fiddle or accordion is not handy. Some singers become so proficient that they are often called upon even when instruments are available. Those familiar with jazz singing will realize that the art of instrumental vocalization is very much alive today. In my arrangement of Si j'avais le bateau I've used 'composer's license' because I felt such simulation of instruments might naturally be taken up by the singers in the convivial atmosphere in which the song is usually sung." Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943) was born in Ontario, Canada, but soon moved to Niagara Falls, New York. He graduated from Oberlin Conservatory in 1908, and later studied at Columbia University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. For nearly twenty years he was associated with the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, and is best known for the many spiritual arrangements he wrote for his Hampton choirs. He composed approximately one hundred works for piano, chorus, and solo voice.
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