A Little Night Music

1. A Jubilant Song (Dello Joio, Norman)
2. Sure On This Shining Night (Barber, Samuel)
3. Der Abend (Brahms, Johannes)
4. Bogoroditse Devo - All Night Vigil, Op. 37 (Rachmaninoff, Sergei)
5. Laudate Pueri - Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, KV 339 (Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus)
6. Laudate Dominum - Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, KV 339 (Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus)
7. Send In the Clowns - A Little Night Music (Sondheim, Steven)
8. In the Night We Shall Go In (Raminsh, Imant K.)
9. Good Night, Dear Heart (Forest, Dan)
10. My Song in the Night (Wilberg, Mack)
11. Harlem Night Song (Walker, Gwyneth)
12. Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight (Carter, Calvin and James Hudson)
13. The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Funk, Jeff)
14. Buffalo Gals (Chilcott, Bob)

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC — Notes and Texts

 

As the hectic “music” of the daytime subsides, the night brings its own variety of musical colors and genres, moods and emotions.  The night-themed variety in tonight’s concert ranges from Broadway show tunes to sacred vespers music; from classical masterworks to 1950’s/1960’s doo-wop; from profound sadness to rollicking good fun.

 

In exploring the inspirational qualities of the night, Griffin Choral Arts is joined by young singers, artists, and other performers from the Lamar County schools in celebrating the importance of life-long passion for and involvement in the arts in building community through creativity.

 

In singing and listening to the music of the night we can experience relaxation, amusement, consolation, and encouragement.  Nocturnal richness awaits.  In the words of one of tonight’s songs, “Come, let us roam the night together.”

 

 

A Jubilant Song                                                                        Norman Dello Joio, 1913-2008

A musical embodiment of Walt Whitman’s famous “barbaric yawp” with its crashing piano accompaniment, primal open-chord structures, and sheer exuberance, this piece is a rousing concert-opening paean to the lifelong–even cosmic–joy of singing.  The lyrics are adapted from Whitman’s “A Song of Joy” (Book XI from Leaves of Grass).

 

O!  Listen to a jubilant song!

The joy of our spirit is uncaged, it darts like lightning!

For we sing of the joys of youth, and the joy of a glad light-beaming day.

O!  Our spirit sings a jubilant song that is to life full of music,

a life full of concord, of music, of harmony.

We sing prophetic joys of lofty ideals.

We sing a universal love awaking in the hearts of men.

O! to have life a poem of new joys, to shout, dance, exult, and leap.

O! to realize space and flying clouds, the sun and moon.

O! to be rulers of life, of destiny and of life.

Listen to our song.  O!

 

American composer Norman Dello Joio was prolific in many forms, for both voice and instruments, in both classical and popular/commercial realms.  Of note in relation to this song celebrating youth, as well as the inclusion on tonight’s program of young musicians, is that Dello Joio was from 1959 through 1973 the director of the Ford Foundation Contemporary Music Project, which sponsored the placement of young composers in high schools to compose for those schools’ music programs.

 

Sure on This Shining Night                                                                            Samuel Barber, 1910-1981

To honor the 100th anniversary of his birth (and his two Pulitzer Prizes in music) GCA has chosen American composer Samuel Barber’s adaptation for four-part chorus of his 1938 work for solo voice and piano.  As Dr. Mulder notes, the adaptation preserves the solo voice quality by giving each voice part a solo-like contour. This effect is especially fitting in light of the lyric’s emphasis on the individual’s solitary contemplation of mortality.

 

The lyric is from Nashville-born poet and Pulitzer prize-winning fiction writer James Agee’s 1934 poem “Description of Elysium,” from the collection Permit Me Voyage.

 

Sure on this shining night

Of star made shadows round,

Kindness must watch for me

This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.

All is healed, all is health.

High summer holds the earth.

Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night

I weep for wonder

wand’ring far alone

Of shadows on the stars.

 

Der Abend (The Evening)                                                            Johannes Brahms, 1833-1897

This art-song is from Brahms’ 1874 collection Drei Quartette [Three Quartets], Opus 64, no. 2.  Though now performed by four-part choruses, Brahms’ vocal “quartets” were composed also with home-performance in mind, to be sung around the parlor piano so fashionable in nineteenth-century middle-class homes. The text (by German poet Friedrich Schiller, 1759-1805) imagines a mythological scene in which the sun-god Phoebus lets his chariot rest, in favor of answering the sweet nocturnal call of the sea-goddess Thetys.

 

(Sung in German.)

 

When I Close My Eyes                                                     James Papoulis; arr. Francisco Nunez

Contemporary American composer Jim Papoulis composes in many musical forms (both traditional and digital) and for both concert and commercial media.  In 1999 he co-founded the Foundation for Small Voices, dedicated to advancing music in the lives of children ages 7-18.  In workshops “promoting teamwork and respect of others, . . . children who often begin with little or no musical experience enjoy the fun and accomplishment of writing and performing their own original work.”  www.jimpapoulis.com

 

Inscription of Hope                                                             Z. Randall Stroope, b. 1953

This touching lyric is adapted from an anonymous text written in Hebrew on a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany, by a Jew–possibly a child–hiding from Nazi persecution during World War II.  The lyric is sometimes associated with Kristallnacht–the Night of Broken Glass–when on November 9-10, 1938, Nazi storm troopers vandalized Jewish neighborhoods, smashing windows in houses and shops.

Highly sought-after contemporary American composer and choral director Randall Stroope captures the poignancy of the lyric especially well in this setting for youth chorus.

 

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.

And I believe in love even when there’s no one there.

And I believe in God even when He is silent.

I believe through any trial there is always a way.

 

But sometimes in this suffering and hopeless despair

My heart cries for shelter to know someone’s there.

But a voice rises within me saying “Hold on, my child.

I’ll give you strength, I’ll give you hope. Just stay a little while.”

 

Bogoroditse Devo                                                                            Sergei Rachmaninoff, 1873-1943

While best known for his piano concerti and symphonies, Rachmaninoff also composed church music. This setting of the “Hail, Mary” (the Archangel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary) is perhaps the most famous and moving of all Russian choral works.  It comes from Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, or All-Night Vigil, a service of prayers and chants celebrated on the eves of Sundays and other major feast days in the Russian Orthodox Church.

 

(Sung in Russian)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, K.339                                   W. A. Mozart, 1756-1791

Laudate Pueri and Laudate Dominum

Unlike the Rachmaninoff All-Night Vespers (known as Great Vespers), Mozart’s evening service represents the tradition of prayer services at each of the daily “canonical hours” of the Christian Church (even into the 16th century Lutheran Reformation).  The Latin “vespers” (meaning “evening”) became known in English as Evening Prayer.  During a time of return to his home town of Salzburg, Austria, Mozart completed his Coronation Mass (to be sung by Griffin Choral Arts in March) and two sets of Solemn Vespers, from the latter of which (1780) tonight’s excerpts are taken.  Of note in both excerpts are the unexpectedly varied, rich mixtures of often contrasting musical styles: in the Laudate Pueri, of an homage to Baroque counterpoint blended with Classical sonata form; and in the Laudate Dominum an almost operatic-like soprano solo introducing the graceful choral homophony.

 

Laudate Pueri (Sung in Latin)

Praise the Lord, you servants, O praise the Name of the Lord.

Blessed be the Name of the Lord from this time forth for evermore.

The Lord’s name is praised from the rising up of the sun to the going down of the same.

The Lord is high above all people and his glory above the heavens.

Who is like unto the Lord our God, that has his dwelling so high, and yet humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and earth?

He brings the simple out of the dust and lifts the poor out of the excrement,

That he may set him with the princes of the people, even with the princes of the people.

He makes the barren woman to keep house and to be a joyful mother of children.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,

As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be, world without end.  Amen.

Laudate Dominum (Sung in Latin)

O praise the Lord all you people and nations, for his merciful kindness is ever more and more towards us, and the truth of the Lord endures forever.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,

As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be, world without end.  Amen.

 

INTERMISSION

 

Send in the Clowns                                                        Stephen Sondheim, b. 1930

This well-known dramatic lyric comes from Stephen Sondheim’s 1973 popular Broadway hit A Little Night Music (adapted in turn from Swedish master director Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night).

 

In Sondheim’s play, the lyric is sung by the character Desirée, an actress reflecting with regret on her mistakes in younger days.

 

In the Night We Shall Go In                                  Imant Karlis Raminsh, b. 1943

Latvian-born composer Imant Raminsh now lives in British Columbia, having become a Canadian citizen in 1954.  “In the Night We Shall Go In” originally appeared as a vocal solo in 1986, but Raminsh re-arranged it in 1997 for mixed choir, cello, and piano.  The text is a poem entitled “The Stolen Branch,” by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, the 1971 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

 

In the night we shall go in, we shall go in to steal a flowering branch.

We shall climb over the wall in the darkness of the alien garden, two shadows in the shadow.

 

Winter is not yet gone, and the apple tree appears suddenly changed into a cascade of fragrant stars.

In the night we shall go in up to its trembling firmament, and your little hands and mine will steal the stars.

 

And silently, to our house, in the night and the shadow, with your steps will enter perfume’s silent step and with

starry feet the clear body of spring.

 

Good Night, Dear Heart                                                                         Dan Forrest, b. 1978

Of this origins of this touching piece about both night and youth.  American composer Dan Forrest writes, “In early October 2008, my brother and his wife found out that the four-month-old girl that they were soon to adopt from Ethiopia [named Etsegenet] was in the hospital. . . . Unable to help her in any physical way they . . . made appeals to speed up the legal process in Ethiopia. Initially, she made a turn for the better, but on October 13 they received the news that she had died. . . . My search for a suitable text [for a musical elegy] ended with a picture from a cemetery in my hometown (Elmira, NY), where the great American author Mark Twain and his family are buried.  My brother and I, from our youth, have known the poem that Twain placed on the tombstone of his beloved daughter Susy, when she died unexpectedly at age 24 and left him heartbroken. . . . I wrote this setting within a day, and gave it to the BJU [Bob Jones University] Chorale for a reading.  They . . . premiered it in a concert only one week later, as an elegy for Etsegent and a poignant reminder to all of us, of the orphans of Ethiopia.”

 

Warm summer sun, shine kindly here,

Warm southern wind, blow softly here.

Green sod above, lie light, lie light.

Good night, dear heart, good night, good night.

My Song in the Night                                                   Arr. Mack Wilberg, b. 1955

Music Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Mack Wilberg sets this anonymous lyric to an equally anonymous Sacred Harp tune entitled “Expression.”  The quiet simplicity of the musical setting perfectly fits the prayerful intimacy of the lyrics.  The phrase “my song in the night” perhaps echoes the “King James” translation of Psalm 77:6:  “I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune with mine own heart, and my spirit made diligent search.”

 

O Jesus, my Savior, my song in the night,

Come to us with Thy tender love, my soul’s delight,

Unto Thee, O Lord, in affliction I call,

My comfort by day and my song in the night.

 

O why should I wander an alien from Thee,

Or cry in the desert Thy face to see,

My comfort and joy, my soul’s delight,

O Jesus my Savior, my song in the night.

 

Harlem Night Song                                                          Gwyenth Walker, b. 1947

This is the second of three pieces in Harlem Songs, originally published in 2001 and revised in 2003.  Dr. Gwyeth Walker (DMA) taught on the faculty of the Oberlin College Conservatory, but retired from academia to pursue her composing career.  Now living on a dairy farm in Vermont, in 2000 she received the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Vermont Arts Council.

 

Of this excerpt from Harlem Songs Dr. Walker writes, “Harlem Night Song is infused with the language of blues: mixed major and minor tonalities, a gentle tempo, humming.  The music is nocturnal, atmospheric.  The chorus sings ‘I love you,’ as if calling back and forth across the Harlem rooftops.  A change of pace follows in the middle of the piece: ‘Down in the street, a band is playing. . . .’   Scat singing, percussive vocal effects and random patterns of ‘I love you’ bring this work to a close.”

 

The text is by the great poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes (1902-1967):

 

Come,

Let us roam the night together

Singing.

 

I love you.

 

Across

The Harlem roof-tops

Moon is shining.

Night sky is blue.

Stars are great drops

Of golden dew.

Down the street

A band is playing.

 

I love you.

 

Come,

Let us roam the night together

Singing.

 

I Dreamed a Dream                                                             Lyrics by Alain Boublil;

music by Claude-Michel Schönberg

This deeply affecting torch song is sung by the desperate young mother Fantine in the 1980 hit musical Les Miserables.  Then YouTube introduced Susan Boyle to the world.  The rest is history.

 

Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight                                 Calvin Carter (b. 1925)  and

James Hudson (1934-2007)

This instantly recognizable doo-wop classic was originally recorded by the Spaniels (of which James “Pookie” Hudson was a member) in 1954, although the song was more widely popularized by the McQuire Sisters in the same year.  Tonight’s arrangement for “barbershop”-style male chorus is by Mel Knight.

 

The Lion Sleeps Tonight                                                            Lyrics and revised music by

George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore

Arr. Jeff Funk

Though probably best remembered in the version recorded by the Tokens in 1961, this song traces to the African roots of which it sings, having been written in 1939 by South African singer Solomon Linda for his group, the Evening Birds.  Alan Lomax drew American attention to the song by recommending it to Pete Seeger and the Weavers, who introduced the “Wimoweh” phrase (although this was a mishearing of the original Zulu word for “You’re a lion”).  In 2004 the song occasioned a lawsuit over royalties between the estate of Solomon Linda and Disney for the use of the song in the stage version of The Lion King.

 

Buffalo Gals                                  American traditional, arr. Bob Chicott, b. 1955

Now probably best known as a leitmotif in the classic Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life, this American folk song was written and published in its main form in 1844, as “Lubly Fan,” by the minstrel-show performer John Hodges.  To engage audiences across the country, the name of the city where the song was performed was often inserted into the lyric–thus, “Buffalo Gals” most likely originally referred to residents of the city in western New York State, not necessarily to young women from the bison-hunting peoples of the Great Plains.  But the association with the “romance” of the Western frontier seems to have stuck.

 

The arrangement sung tonight is by Bob Chilcott, a founding member of the King’s Singers, and a member of the group from 1985-1997.  The work was written in 1998 as a commission for the Highland Park High School chorus, in Dallas, Texas.

 

–Program notes by Bill Pasch

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