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One Performance 8 p.m. Saturday, March 9, 2002 Michael Olbash will present a pre-concert discussion of the Duruflé Requiem beginning at 7:15 p.m. in the Cathedral. Tickets: |
The Providence Singers  Jennifer Lester, guest conductor, is among the outstanding organist-choirmasters of her generation. Known for creative programming and advocacy of new music, she is the founder and music director of the Seraphim Singers, a Boston ensemble specializing in sacred music. Ms. Lester has promoted several local composers by commissioning their work, among them Elliot Gyger, Graham Ramsay and Julian Wachner, each of whom has contributed a major work to the Seraphim Singers repertoire. Among the works Ms. Lester has commissioned is Wachner’s At the Lighting of the Lamps on this evening’s program. Ms. Lester is also music director of the Philovox Ensemble, a professional chamber chorus that records for the Arsis label. In her position as associate music director of the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School, she conducts the handbell choirs, directs the parish adult choir, acts as organist of St. Paul Parish, and teaches singing and music theory to the members of the Boston Boy Choir. Active as both recitalist and organ accompanist, Ms. Lester has performed in the leading New England organ concert series, including the Methuen Memorial Hall series. Recent appearances as accompanist include the Providence Singers, the Holden Consort, Boston University’s Marsh Chapel Choir, and the Back Bay Chorale, in such works as Fauré’s Requiem, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and Duruflé’s Messe Cum Jubilo. Her work as accompanist with the Boston Bach Ensemble can be heard on the Arsis disc, Julian Wachner: Sacred Music. A Fulbright scholar, Ms. Lester studied organ at the Academy of Music in Vienna with Michael Radulescu. She was awarded the Bachelor of Music degree in organ with honors from the New England Conservatory, and the Master of Music in conducting from Yale University. Ms. Lester is a past dean of the Boston Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Notes on the Music | |||||
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Notes by Michael Olbash |
In his 1903 pontifical document Motu Proprio, Pope Pius X declared that “the Church has cultivated and fostered the progress of the arts unceasingly, allowing for the use of religion in all things good and beautiful discovered by man in the course of the ages,” and that the Gregorian chant of the Roman tradition must be given “pride of place” above all other forms of musical expression in the liturgy. Though his meticulous perfectionism limited his published output to a mere handful of works, Duruflé has demonstrated an ability to borrow from those things good and beautiful composed for us by masters throughout the centuries and bind them all amidst the constant underpinning of Gregorian chant, resulting in some of the most sublime and resplendent music of our time. In his complete oeuvre each genre of Roman Catholic church music is represented but once: a Requiem, a Mass, a motet collection, one organ suite, one prelude and fugue, and one chorale variation. It could be said that Duruflé has bequeathed to us one perfect gem for each category of liturgical music. His work has contributed immeasurably to the art of liturgical music and has opened for us a better understanding of the applications of chant in the modern church. The Requiem, Duruflé’s longest and most substantial work, was composed in 1947 and follows the form and character of the setting by Gabriel Fauré. Like Fauré, Duruflé chose to break away from the operatic and highly dramatic Requiem settings of Berlioz and Verdi. He sought to focus his setting not on visions of hell and damnation but on images of rest and peace. Although the original orchestration calls for large orchestra including triple winds, full brass ensemble, several percussionists, organ and strings, Duruflé’s use of the orchestra is restrained and subtle rather than heavy-handed. Only in the Sanctus and sections of the Libera Me does the orchestra reach fortissimo, and in the case of the Sanctus, it is a dynamic of joy, not fear. Duruflé twice rescored his Requiem: once for chorus and solo organ, and a “compromise” version for reduced orchestra and organ. Today’s performance of the Requiem has been prepared with special attention to the system of chant interpretation developed during the 19th century by Dom Prosper Guéranger and his congregation of Benedictine monks at Solesmes. The “Solesmes Method,” sanctioned by the Vatican as the official system of uniform interpretation of chant, emphasizes the primacy of the text and the authenticity of melodic and rhythmic structures. The monks describe the rules of this system as having been “drawn from the holy Fathers, some of whom learnt this way of singing from the Angels, while others received it from the teaching of the Holy Spirit speaking to their hearts in contemplation.” Contrary to most forms of musical expression, Gregorian chant is not encumbered by the confines of rhythm, meter and symmetry, thus permitting the text to determine the contours of each phrase. It lacks the romantic accentuation and emotiveness of modern music, relying only upon the arsis (rising) and thesis (falling) of the neums, like the irregular yet infinitely soothing and gentle sounds of the tide swelling and resting against the shore. Duruflé addresses the difficulty of capturing this essence of chant within the confines of modern notation: “I have done my best to reconcile, as far as possible, the Gregorian rhythms, that which has been fixed by the Benedictines of Solesmes, with the demands of modern meters. The strictness of barline structure, with its strong beats and weak beats returning at regular intervals, is in effect difficult to reconcile with the variety and suppleness of the Gregorian line where there is only a succession of rising and falling. The strong beats had to lose their dominant character to take the same degree of intensity as the weak beats, in such a manner that the rhythmic Gregorian accent of the stressed Latin syllables could be placed freely on whichever beat of our modern meter.” In each of the movements of the Duruflé Requiem, the Gregorian chant melodies of the burial Mass are skillfully assimilated, sometimes quite prominently, while at other times revealing itself subtly, as the drama unfolds. In any case, these ancient melodies provide the coherence for this array of musical expression, just as for the Christian, the Lord is eternally present amidst the joys and trials of the human experience. The Requiem begins with the “Requiem aeternam” movement, which places the familiar burial chant above the impressionist background of flowing strings. It is followed seamlessly by the “Kyrie eleison,” which employs a contrapuntal style reminiscent of a Renaissance motet. Then the “Domine Jesu Christe” movement develops with the scope of modern opera, leading up to a frenzied, almost “jazzy” rendering of the “Sanctus.” The center of the Requiem, the “Pie Jesu,” is the only solo movement and is by far the most intimate and personal moment of the piece, in which the emotions of joys, sorrows, grief and peaceful resignation are all expressed. Following the “Pie Jesu” comes an extraordinarily peaceful setting of the “Agnus Dei.” Rather than expressing an appeal for clemency, it evokes the serenity of one who is about to die, receiving the Lord for the last time through the viaticum, ready to meet his sustaining God. This is followed by the “Lux Aeterna,” which very clearly summons the imagery of the light of heaven. The “Libera Me,” with its sudden twists of chaos amid the sounds of the “last trumpets” of Judgment Day, is only a temporary moment of uncertainty before the final rest, as choirs of angels welcome the weary soul to Paradise with the familiar chant melodies of the “In Paradisum.” Julian Wachner | |||||
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Notes prepared by the composer |
At the Lighting of the Lamps was commissioned by Jennifer Lester for The Seraphim Singers in the spring of 1998 and completed in April of 1999. The work is in three movements which form an arch-like cycle framed by a flute soliloquy, representing the “laetare,” or “glimpse of joy” offered by God to humankind in the form of fire. The shape of the whole work emulates the complete act of lighting the evening candles, exulting in the warmth and gift of that fire, and extinguishing the candles only to repeat the ritual again the following day. In this way, the form and setting attempt to highlight the symbolism of the eternity of ritual and the faith that rituals themselves articulate. The compositional language of the work is intentionally set against the background of a neo-Medieval sound world. Thus chant-like vocal lines are juxtaposed against typically “French” twentieth-century harmonies much in the style of Duruflé or Messaien. This creates a sense of the ancient within the modern, further symbolizing the eternity of ritual. In addition, there are a few intentional melodic and gestural borrowings from Orff’s Carmina Burana (another twentieth-century work looking back to the Middle Ages). Orff’s music has often been labeled as ritualistic, albeit not always as a compliment. These elements of Orff’s compositional language have become cliche and are immediately evocative of tribal activities. Thus, these two seemingly disparate musical languages are combined to create a work that is at once lyrical, neo-Gothic and modern. | |||||
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Notes on Janácek and Otcenás, presented here with permission, were prepared by James C. Liu using the following sources: Slonimsky, Nicolas, ed. Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. 8th ed. New York: Schirmer Books, 1992. Vogel, Jaroslav. Leos Janácek: A Biography. Trans. by Geraldine Thomsen-Muchová. London: Orbis Publishing, 1981. Simeone, Nigel, John Tyrrell, and Alena Nemcová. Janácek’s Works: A Catalogue of the Music and Writings of Leos Janácek. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. |
Leos Janácek was born on July 3, 1854, in Hukvaldy, Moravia. He was the son of a choirmaster and by age 11 was already singing in a Brno choir. He studied at the German College in Brno between 1869 and 1872 and studied organ at the Prague Organ School from 1874 to 1875. He completed his studies in composition at the Leipzig and Vienna Conservatories between 1879 and 1880. Even as a student, Janácek taught and conducted. Upon completion of his studies in 1881, he became the director of a new organ school in Brno and conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. His activities included editing a music journal and collecting Moravian folk songs with Frantisek Bartos. He also taught and played in Brno until 1925, and died in Moravská in Ostrava on August 12, 1928. Janácek lived at a time when Russian, Czech, Slovak, and other related nationalities began to assert their independence from the Germanic empires that dominated European politics and culture. This “Pan-Slavic movement” emphasized the common origins of these cultures and sought to establish artistic traditions distinct from the German and Austrian ones. Janácek had a natural interest in the Pan-Slavic movement. His contribution to it was the development of a style of vocal writing that sought to emulate the natural inflections and rhythms of Moravian speech in musical notation. His best known choral work translates the standard Mass text into a Moravian dialect. Janácek also drew inspiration from the harmonies of Moravian folk song, going beyond the confines of romantic tonality. Janácek’s Otcenás was directly inspired by a cycle of seven paintings titled Ojcze nasz (Lord’s Prayer) by the Polish painter Jósef Krzesz-Mexcina (1860–1934). The paintings illuminated the text of Matthew 6:9–13 using very human situations. The paintings were reproduced in the Polish journal Tygodnik illustro-wany in November 1899. A copy of this journal found its way to the directors of a women’s shelter in Brno, where Janácek’s wife and daughter were active participants. The directors decided to stage the paintings as living tableaux and commissioned Janácek to set the paintings to music. They dramatized five of the seven paintings, not necessarily following the original captions. Janácek scored his piece for tenor, four-part chorus, harmonium, and piano. The music and dramatic scenes were premiered in June 1901. Janácek published the final version, arranged for harp and organ, in 1906. This work owes more to the pictorial style of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition or Orff’s Carmina Burana than to the rarefied world of sacred music, for Janácek was always more interested in folk melodies and the needs of the people than in the sacraments of the church. The modal harmonies, angular rhythms, and pitches imitating the inflections of speech anticipate the Moravian folk style that would come to full fruition in his Glagolithic Mass. Descriptions of the tableaux that were presented, based on the paintings, were published in the Brno paper Lidové noviny on the day of the 1901 première and are quoted in the following discussion. In the opening scene (Our Father, who art in Heaven), “the fervent prayer of a believing people mingles with the soft chime of the village bell.” The harp and organ represent the bells, and the prayer is sung as a canon at the octave between male and female voices of the choir. The second segment (Thy kingdom come) depicts “a family with a dying child.” It begins with the tenor soloist announcing, “Thy kingdom come,” echoed by the choir. After a brief interlude that includes the bell motif and the opening chant tune, the tenor sings a poignant solo. The choral echo over a single melodic idea may suggest resignation to God’s will. In the third tableau (Give us this day our daily bread), “the villagers sing gaily in the field at the harvest. Suddenly a storm breaks and in one stroke all that has been achieved with toil and sweat is destroyed. Desperate cries to Heaven are heard as though the storm raged in the people themselves.” The choir sings this segment in a more strident tone, representing a peasant populace that is defiant rather than submissive. The fourth tableau (Forgive us our trespasses, described as “Quiet prayers from a prisoner in jail for the forgiveness of sins”) is a contrite tenor solo, with the choir entering again to echo the second verse. In the fifth and final segment (Lead us not into temptation), “a tired mother overcome by lack of sleep leans over her sick child. A thief who has broken into the room stands behind her with hand raised to kill her.” The choir is again angular and defiant; perhaps the repeating figure in the bass line warns against evil in ourselves and in others. |
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