Gloria by Robert Hanson The genesis for the “Gloria project” goes back to 1977 when Jeordano Martínez and Robert Hanson shared an office. Both were conductors at Elgin Community College and developed a strong friendship and mutual admiration which continues today. In the spring of 2002, the Naperville Chorus performed Hanson’s 1985 composition, The Psalms…

Magnificat by John Rutter The Latin word “Magnificat” begins the Virgin Mary’s joyful outburst following the Annunciation–the Angel’s word that she was to bear the Messiah, as recorded in Luke 1: 46-55. This poem, or song, of Mary has been a central part of the observance of the Advent season in Christian churches since early…

Robert Hanson Maestro Robert Hanson, named 2001 Conductor of the Year by the Illinois Council of Orchestras, has been Music Director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra since 1985. Maestro Hanson came to the ESO in 1974 as assistant to Grammy winner Margaret Hillis and became Co-Music Director with Hillis in 1983. The 2003-2004 season marks…

Te Deum – Antonin Dvorak, Opus 103 “There is a tide in the affairs of men…,” says Brutus, and we recognize, without invoking superstition, that same convergence. Certainly the mid-nineteenth century was such a time for symphonic music; consider, for instance, two men born into provinces of the Hapsburg empire– Antonin Dvorak in 1841 in…

Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise) – Felix Mendelssohn, Opus 52 Thirty-one-year old Felix Mendelssohn had plenty of activity already on his plate in 1840, when Leipzig began planning its celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the invention of printing by Johannes Gutenberg. Never mind that the date and place of that invention were, and are still,…

Christmas Cantata At 79, Daniel Rogers Pinkham is one of the most versatile of American composers, yet perhaps less well known among the public than many of the next generation. Perhaps that is because he has spent almost his whole life in Massachusetts; born there, he taught at Boston Conservatory, Simmons College in Boston, Harvard,…

Psalm 46 a declamatory motet Commander Dan Shanower was born and raised in Naperville. He was killed in the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. A picture of the entire Shanower family and links to information on Commander Shanower can be found here. The setting of Psalm 46 that is receiving its first…

Coronation Anthems The year was 1727, it was early June, and George Frideric Handel had a problem. A newly naturalized British citizen, the 42-year-old native of Halle (near Leipzig in Upper Saxony) was the impresario and orchestra conductor of the Royal Academy of Music in London—not, as might be inferred, an educational institution, but rather…

Une Cantate De Noel Arthur Honegger, a Swiss citizen despite his French birth, was the second eldest of Les Six, the “young Turks” of the musical scene in post-World War I Paris. Like the other five— Poulenc and Milhaud are today the best-known— he paid homage to the avant-garde dramatist Jean Cocteau, and in fact…

A Feast of Carols Randol Alan Bass is a Texan by birth and present attachment, although he earned an M.M. from the University of Cincinnati Conservatory, and completed part of his doctorate at Ohio State. He has founded and conducted several wind and choral groups at various times in his career, and his compositions and…