Music Notes for A Cathedral Christmas
Gaudete by Steven Sametz
For a cappella choir
Steven SametzGaudete (meaning “Rejoice” in Latin) was made somewhat famous in the 1970s when it was performed and recorded by the folk rock group "Steeleye Span," and ever since it has been included in a large number of Christmas collections. The original author of Gaudete is unknown, although it first appeared in a songbook collection called “Piae Cantiones,” published in Finland in 1582. Our version of Gaudete comes from Steven Sametz’s Two Medieval Lyrics, which was commissioned for Chanticleer in 1995. In the middle of this ancient text, the tenors sing the refrain from the popular 16th century Spanish villancico, Riu Riu Chiu.
The Babe of Bethlehem by Abbie Betinis
For a cappella choir
Abbie BetinisThe Seattle Choral Company audience will fondly remember our performances of Abbie Betinis’s music during our last season. Her stunning Aililiu ó Íosa: An Caoineadh was featured during our concert, Celtic Nights last October. A second work, From Behind the Caravan: Songs of Hâfez received critical acclaim when we presented it at Benaroya Hall last April.
For their inaugural concert, The Singers/Minnesota Choral Artists commissioned Abbie Betinis to provide an arrangement, so she chose to arrange William Walker’s shape note tune, The Babe of Bethlehem. William Walker (aka “Singin’ Billy”) was a 19th century Baptist song leader, shape note "singing master", and compiler of two influential shape note tune books: Southern Harmony and Christian Harmony. Betinis beautifully reworked this simple melody into vintage Betinis—with shifting chords, many meters, and colorful moods.
Three Nativity Carols by Stephen Paulus
For choir, harp and oboe
I. The Holly and the Ivy
II. This Endris Night
III. Wonder Tidings
Stephen PaulusStephen Paulus’ music has been described by critics and program annotators as rugged, angular, lyrical, lean, rhythmically aggressive, original, often gorgeous, moving, and uniquely American.
Here is a suite of ancient lyrics set to beautiful new music by this St. Paul resident. Stephen Paulus has been writing imaginative settings of Christmas carols for The Dale Warland Singers for many years and they have brightened America’s holiday landscape. Paulus describes The Holly and the Ivy as “crisp and precise in flavor. The harp and oboe are used as catalysts to spur the text onward.” Indeed, he has written a melody and accompaniment that fit the verse structure of this traditional carol text and surrounded them with continually evolving lines in the accompanying instruments. The texts for This Endris Night and Wonder Tidings, meanwhile, appear in The Oxford Book of Carols, establishing their lineage in the British holiday repertory. Paulus’ setting of This Endris Night is sumptuous, conjuring up the the “mystery of being out in the night,” as he puts it. An occasional conjunction of major and minor enhances the work’s lushness. As the piece progresses, it builds an arc of verses that culminates in “waves of sound,” again quoting Paulus, “with the voices rolling forward in continually overlapping lines that seem to echo in a vast space.” Wonder Tidings returns to the joy of the holiday season.
Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming by Michael Praetorius
Arranged by Jan Sandström
For two a cappella choirs
Michael PraetoriusThis well-known melody has long been a favorite with audiences and choirs. Swedish composer Jan Sandström bases his composition on the music by Michael Praetorius, juxtaposing a smaller SATB choir with a larger SSAATTBB group. Sandstrom is known for close harmonies and cluster effects, so expect an “out of this world” interpretation of this familiar carol at Saint Mark’s Cathedral!
Magnificat by Steven Sametz
For Eight-Part Choir & Pipe Organ
Steven Sametz
The composition idea for Steven Sametz’s Magnificat occurred on an airplane flight from Katmandu. Sametz was taken with what he thought to be a medieval chant being quietly played over the plane’s sound system. When he realized that no music was being played, and that in fact he was hearing the gentle thrumming of harmonics generated by the drone and pulse of the plane’s engines—in Sametz’s words, “a kind of mechanized music of the spheres”—he quickly notated this aural impression (found in the central, harmonically static setting of the Et misericordia.) The piece, although it grows from the plainchant melody, swells to formidable volume and scope, with the soaring treble of the sopranos providing a final adornment in the doxology.
The Chanukah Suite by Jason Robert Brown
I. S’vivon/Al Hanisim
II. Mi Yemalel
III. Finale: Ma’oz Tsur
Jason Robert BrownNotes by Jason Robert Brown
The Chanukah Suite was borne of two separate desires: 1) to make the celebration of Chanukah an exuberant musical experience that both draws on tradition and looks forward to new ideas; and 2) to write a piece for chorus which combined the "Broadway" idiom in which I most often work with more traditional liturgical choral techniques. Therefore, this challenging medley requires both a strict fidelity to the written rhythms and pitches and a real sense of spontaneity. When it's done in the right spirit, this piece should make Chanukah a powerful, soul-stirring, swinging, rock-and-rolling Festival of Lights.
The premiere of the piece was by the Los Angeles Master Chorale under the direction of Grant Gershon at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Sunday, December 11, 2005.
Choral literature for the holidays is all Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, and the few Chanukah pieces out there are generally about as much fun as ... well, shul*. So here's one for the Tribe!
* Yiddish term for school.
Jing-ga-lye-ya by Bruce Sled
For a cappella choir
Jing-ga-lye-ya was an instant success when it was debuted by the Chor Leoni Men's Choir of Vancouver, B.C. Using nonsense words, it is rhythmic and upbeat, and uses cyclical repetition in the parts creating an incredibly catchy groove!
Bruce Sled (b. 1975) graduated from the UBC music program in 1998 where he studied music composition with Stephen Chatman. His music has been performed across Canada, the United States, and in Europe. Choirs that have performed his works include The UBC Singers, musica intima, Vancouver Cantata Singers, and Chor Leoni. He received second place in the Socan choral composition competition in 1996 and 1997. His opera The Nightingale and the Rose was performed by the UBC Opera Ensemble in 1998 in the Chan Center for the Performing Arts. Bruce continues to compose while teaching music in North Vancouver.
Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind by John Rutter
From the choral cycle When Icicles Hang
For choir, strings, harp and two flutes
Text from Shakespeare’s As You Like It
John RutterBlow, Blow Thou Winter Wind is a poignant and flowing song written in 1975 by English composer, John Rutter. It is based on a passage from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and taken from Rutter’s cycle of choral settings When Icicles Hang, which feature settings of texts by Campion and Shakespeare. Rutter has expertly conjured the expressive dancing of the winds and the ensuing biting cold.
Winter by Eric Whitacre
For choir, string orchestra, harp & sitar
Poem by Edward Esch
Eric WhitacreNotes by Eric Whitacre
There is a subtle and fragile dance that takes place between the composer and the work itself, and the creation of each new piece feels like an exotic journey, an exploration into uncharted territory. The initial musical material takes on a life of its own and begins to effect the rest of the piece, so that a strange sort of symbiotic relationship is achieved between the creator and the creation. Few pieces in my catalog illustrate this process as well as Winter.
The very first musical idea I had (after memorizing the poetry by Edward Esch) was just three notes, a simple trill, and as I played with this material I realized that it was reminiscent of Indian music I had heard while a student in college. The sparse, static nature of the poem lends itself perfectly to the classical Indian aesthetic, but I hesitated. A Christmas work with Indian sitar? About snow? For Southern California? My great friend and writing partner David Norona (we are writing an opera together) persuaded me to trust my initial idea, and so without looking back I began composing.
I realized immediately, of course, that I knew nothing about classical Indian music, a musical tradition that easily predates western music and is every bit as complex. I found Paul Livingstone, an amazing sitar player and teacher and started my crash course in Indian music.
In a nutshell, Indian music is based on two major elements: the raga and the tala. The raga dictates not only which notes can be played (there is generally one set of notes to be played for ascending melodies, and a different set for descending melodies), but the mood of the piece as well. Each raga carries with it a specific feeling and a number of traditional gestures; after listening to many different ragas I chose raga desh, a rainy season raga that had (to my ears) a beautiful mix of longing and melancholy. I chose tin tala, the most basic, popular tala, basically a circle of four measures of four beats each. All of this happens over a constant drone played by one or two tambours.
I then set out incorporating these elements into my music. Following the rules of raga desh, every time a line ascends it uses a natural seventh, and descending lines use a flatted seventh. The second degree of the scale is also heavily accented, and so most of my melodies either begin or end on the second degree. When the sopranos sing the line "pure and gentle" it is illustrated using the purest form of the raga, and words like "melting" and "weary" are illuminated with traditional Indian glissandi (slides) . The word "shimmers" is performed once by the choir (accompanied by trilling, 'shimmering' strings) but is echoed throughout the piece by the string orchestra. The tala is rhythmically faithful throughout the entire work, and the only time it strays is for one measure when the poem reads "a single snowflake awakens and watches the world"; I liked the idea of painting "awakens" with an extra beat, as if the very fabric of the universe were altered by this simple event.
Winter was commissioned by the Pacific Chorale, and is dedicated in deepest friendship to Mr. David Norona, the man who encouraged me to follow my instincts.
Fantasia on Christmas Carols by Ralph Vaughan Williams
For choir, strings, organ, timpani and bells
Ralph Vaughn WilliamsVaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols dates from 1912 and it has become a perennial favorite every since. This holiday work draws on the composer’s love for the rich tradition of English folk songs and hymns, a tradition he cultivated all his life. It is therefore suitably dedicated to Cecil Sharp (1859-1924), an English folk-song and folk-dance collector and editor, organist and writer. The Fantasia is immediately appealing, from its very beginning. Unusually, it opens with an almost haunting brief cello solo, introducing the baritone, which in turn ushers in the orchestra and choir. Fantasia incorporates four traditional English carols, one collected by Vaughan Williams himself in Sussex, another by Sharp and two by a Mrs. Leather in Herefordshire. This is a beautiful, warm-hearted piece, with the kind of timeless melodies that always prove popular, as was the case at its first performance in September 1912.
Christmas Goes Classical by David Maddux
David MadduxDavid Maddux has composed and arranged music in a variety of applications for over three decades. From winning six free accordion lessons in a music store fishbowl drawing as a child, he moved on to surprise his parents by mimicking his sister's John Thompson piano pieces. Years later, it seemed a short leap to landing the role of featured piano soloist in the apocalyptically sweeping Jennifer Lopez motion picture epic, "The Wedding Planner".
David has been the primary on-call arranger for Seattle Men's Chorus since 1990, has directed the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus, and was founding director of the musical-theatre troupe, Pro Homo Voci. He has served as resident music director of Seattle Civic Light Opera, and has acted as consultant to Disney Entertainment. He has arranged and orchestrated revues and materials for Harvey Fierstein, Rosemary Clooney, Lily Tomlin, Nell Carter, Armistead Maupin, and Ann Hampton-Callaway.