Christmas in Song and Brass
Gloria
At 69, the English composer John Rutter has become an icon of contemporary choral music, especially English music. His association with Clare College, Cambridge, first as a student, then as Director of Music, and later, as the organizer of the much-recorded Cambridge Singers, has led to international recognition. Rutter was honored in 2007 with the title of Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.). He maintains a busy schedule as a guest conductor and has appeared in the Chicago area on several occasions, notably with the St. Charles Singers. Since 2000, the Naperville Chorus has performed his Requiem, his Magnificat, and his Mass of the Children, as well as the current piece. The Chorus and the Naperville Chamber Singers have utilized Rutter carols and settings of folk songs of English or American origin, as well as Rutter arrangements of operatic choruses.
Gloria is one of Rutter’s most ambitious concert works, and its premiere was the occasion for his first visit to the US, in May 1974. The Voices of Mel Olson commissioned the work, and the composer conducted the performance by that chorale in its Omaha NE home. Rutter himself sees this work as analogous to a symphony, with three movements— allegro vivace, andante, vivace e ritmico–i.e. fast, slow, fast, in common with symphonic practice, and, says Rutter, ” exalted, devotional and jubilant by turns”. Gloria represents the second section of the Ordinary, the fixed-form portion of the Latin mass, i.e., the section following the Kyrie, and the introit, when the latter is used. Many composers have set this text as an independent work: The Chorus has previously performed Glorias by both Vivaldi and Poulenc. The practice of subdividing sections of the mass, such as the Gloria and the Credo, into separate movements dates from the time of Bach, who employed it in the B-Minor Mass, but it was popularized by early 18th-century composers. Rutter based his setting on one of many Gregorian chants that utilized this text.
Christmas Cantata
Daniel Rogers Pinkham (1923-2006) was among the most versatile American composers, although almost his whole life was spent in his native Massachusetts. He was associated with Boston Conservatory, Simmons College, the New England Conservatory, Harvard, and the University of Boston; and he served as Music Director of Kings Chapel, Boston, for 42 years (1958-2000). He studied with many musical legends, including Paul Hindemith, Walter Piston, Arthur Honegger, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, and the great Parisian teacher Nadia Boulanger. He studied harpsichord with Polish legend Wanda Landowska, and organ in the US with E. Power Biggs. He was a performer of note on piano, harpsichord, organ, and carillon. As a composer he wrote for all of these instruments, and also extensively for vocalists—his output includes short choral pieces, songs, and longer compositions for various choir and instrumental combinations up to and including full orchestra. He had a keen dramatic sense, and some of his choral works incorporate instructions for staging. Toward the end of his career, he worked on electronic music; he experimented with avant-garde techniques but never committed completely to such devices as 12-tone row. He also encouraged the revival of early music, and arranged many works by Handel, Purcell, and Schubert, among others.
Christmas Cantata, composed in 1957, is an early Pinkham work; he was then 34 and teaching at Harvard, shortly before he took the post at Kings Chapel. He subtitled the work Sinfonia Sacra, indicating a relatively large scope. The cantata was originally scored for chorus and double brass choir (ten instruments), with an optional organ part. While it utilizes traditional Nativity texts—“Gloria in excelsis Deo…” and “O magnum mysterium…” among others—it is original throughout and captures the spirit of the season via its Latin texts and the variety in color and pace of its music. The Cantata begins maestoso , with a question and an answer:
What did you see, shepherds? Tell us! Proclaim to us what was revealed to you on this earth! “We saw a Child and a chorus of angels!”
Then the text expresses awe and wonder, in a more restrained tempo, and honors Mary:
O great mystery, and wonderful sacrament, how the animals watch over the Son of God lying in a manger! Blessed mother, whose pure womb carried Christ?
And the Cantata concludes, allegro, with a celebratory acclamation, in a sprightly, syncopated rhythmic drive, bracketing separate verses:
(Refrain) Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth and goodwill to all!
(V1) Let all the earth praise the Lord and serve the Lord joyfully!
(V2) Come into our sight rejoicing!
(V3) Know now that the Lord is God. He himself made us, and not only us. Alleluia!
The Chorus previously performed Pinkham’s Christmas Cantata in 2002. (I am indebted to former Chorus member Erin O’Neill Doppke for the free translation incorporated above.)
Noel
J. Todd Smith, the son and grandson of missionaries in Africa, wrote this song incorporating language and rhythms from his early life there. In 1997, Smith and his sister Nicol, with a friend, Alan Hall, formed a Christian vocal trio called “Selah”, which continues (although his sister left the group and has been replaced by others). This version of one of Smith’s songs has been arranged by Dr. Brad Holmes, Director of Choral Programs at Millikin University in Decatur IL since 1991. The text, which is in the Kituba dialect, translates as follows:
Noel! Noel! Jesus has come to live with us.
If you want to know the Child, you have to come kneel.
The bass line supports the rhythm and may also imitate the sound of drums.
Omnia Sol
Randall Stroope is a prolific American composer, as well as a conductor and academic; he is currently the Director of Choral and Vocal Studies at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater. Dr. Stroope has received many awards and critical notice in musical publications. His output embraces instrumental as well as choral music, but the latter is a special interest, and his shorter choral works, numbering more than a hundred, have sold over three million copies. He has set poetry from such diverse sources as Sara Teasdale and the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. A New Mexico native, he studied at the University of Colorado-Boulder and at Arizona State. The work performed by the Chorus tonight is in some sense a hybrid: It utilizes Latin text borrowed from Orff’s Carmina Burana, which can be rendered thus:
The sun warms everything, even when I am far away.
Love me faithfully, and know that I am faithful.
So the song is in some respects a farewell; the composer, however, sees it as much more than that, an expression of the interaction we all have with other human beings; hence the subtitle of the piece, “Let your heart be staid“ [i.e., stayed] is intended as a reference to the kinship we have as humans with all those we touch.
Twelve Days of Christmas
The traditional version of “Twelve Days of Christmas” dates from the 16th century; its ‘calendar’ counts the days beginning with Christmas Day and ending on the eve of Epiphany, January 5. Among the wealthy, a gift on each of the twelve days might have been quite common; more to the point, counting songs were popular at that time, and the tune has obvious dance roots. But, like several other too-familiar Christmas songs, this one has, of late, fallen prey to various spoofs and satires: Our tongue-in-cheek version provides a list of works which might gladden the hearts, or at least the ears, of classical-music enthusiasts.
White Christmas
Irving Berlin’s paean to the holiday is probably his best-known composition; certainly it ranks alongside “God Bless America” in the public imagination. This standard was written in 1940 but hit the spotlight when Bing Crosby sang it in the 1942 movie “Holiday Inn”. Crosby’s 1942 recording with John Scott Trotter’s orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers became the greatest hit of its time. Nonetheless, like most recordings of the song, the Chorus’ arrangement—the work of Roy Ringwald, the arranger for Fred Waring– omits an important explanation: Here in the upper Midwest, we don’t do much longing, because many Christmases are white. But the central individual in Berlin’s song actually starts from a different venue:
The sun is shining, the grass is green,
The orange and palm trees sway;
There’s never been such a day
In Beverly Hills, L. A.
But it’s December the twenty-fourth,
And I am longing to be up north…
So imagine yourself in sunny California, and see if you really would want a white Christmas!
-Jim Fancher -2014