NOTES ON THE PROGRAM

 ELAINE HAGENBERG selections from Illuminare

llluminare is Elaine’s first extended work, consisting of five-movements for SATB chorus and chamber orchestra. Using lesser-known sacred Latin texts, the piece takes us through a season of beauty and goodness that has been disrupted by darkness and confusion. But as Light gradually returns, hope is restored, illuminating our future and guiding us in peace.

BERNSTEIN Chichester Psalms

The impetus for Bernstein’s creation of Chichester Psalms came in December 1963 in the form of a commission letter from Walter Hussey, Dean of the Chichester Cathedral in Sussex, England, for a festival to be held in Chichester in August 1965. (The work was premiered July 15, 1965, in New York City, with the composer conducting the New York Philharmonic, before its August performance two weeks later in Chichester.)

The commission couldn’t have come at a better time. Since he had become music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1958, Bernstein had completed only his “Kaddish” Symphony No. 3 (1963). In his commissioning letter, Hussey informed Bernstein that he and the Chichester organist and choirmaster John Birch “wondered if you would be willing to write something for us… The sort of thing we had in mind was perhaps, say, a setting of Psalm 2, or some part of it, either unaccompanied or accompanied by orchestra or organ, or both.” In a follow-up letter after Bernstein had accepted the commission, Hussey added, “I hope you will feel free to write as you wish and will in no way feel inhibited by the circumstances. I think many of us would be very delighted if there was a hint of West Side Story about the music.”

Bernstein didn’t bother with an organ, but he did include music cut from the Prologue to West Side Story as well as verses from Psalm 2 in the second movement. He also recycled materials from his incomplete musical The Skin of Our Teeth. Each of the three movements includes a complete psalm and a fragment from another; the fragments either agree or contrast with the ideas expressed in the complete psalm.

The first movement for chorus and orchestra presents the complete text of Psalm 100 and fragments from 108. Following the opening chorus of Psalm 108:2, the music runs headlong into a bouncy 7/4-meter, dance-like music in praise of the Lord with great noise and joy.

The second movement begins with a cymbal flourish leading immediately into a setting of Psalm 23 for treble voice accompanied by harp. The peace is broken by the bellicose nature of Psalm 2:1–4 rendered as a martial type of music for full chorus, brass, and percussion. The remainder of the movement weaves together the two different themes.

After a plaintive opening for strings and solo trumpet, the third movement continues with calmness and peace representing the sentiments expressed in Psalms 131 and 133:1. 

―Steve Lacoste

BRAHMS Schicksalslied, Op. 54

In the last years of the 18th century, the great German poet Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) published a two-volume epistolary novel entitled Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece, in which he invoked a pantheistic vision of the world and prophesied the return of the golden age through poetry and love. One day in 1868, during his summer vacation on the North Sea Beach at Wilhelmshaven, Brahms read the free-verse passage known as “Hyperion’s Song of Destiny” and decided to set it to music immediately, but the work was not to be completed for three years. The problem was that the two-part poem first depicts heavenly bliss and then earthly suffering, but Brahms wanted to end the work positively or happily. Repeating the first part of the poem after the second had been sung did not satisfy him. In 1871, he found the solution and gave the work its final form: orchestral prelude, choral setting of the poem, and an orchestral postlude substantially the same as the prelude. On October 18, 1871, in Karlsruhe, he conducted the premiere.

-Notes © by Leonard Burkat

MACK WILBERG A Cloud of Witnesses (CARNEGIE HALL PREMIERE)

A Cloud of Witnesses was composed in 2016 for an Easter concert by The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square. In composing the piece, Wilberg wanted to avoid the more traditional approach to musical settings of sacred drama that is the typical cantata-oratorio structure of alternating soloists and chorus. By having the choir declaim the scriptural words of individuals, the choir and audience experience the message communally and approach more closely a personal and empathetic understanding of its import. David Warner, a friend and frequent collaborator, provided the lyrics for the piece. 

A Cloud of Witnesses weaves multiple witnessing stories of Christ’s Resurrection into a single tapestry, drawing on accounts from all four of the Gospel writers and the opening of the Acts of the Apostles. It uses the King James Version as a doctrinal source and foundational text, though in places the use of alternative translations allows the listener to hear these familiar narratives afresh. Compressing this wealth of witness accounts into a shorter form of 20-plus minutes creates a momentum of overlapping, successive stories that builds into a dramatic, panoramic sweep. Rather than lingering on details or musing on individuals’ reactions, Wilberg and Warner hoped to highlight the breathless, incredulous astonishment among Christ’s followers at the first discovery of the empty tomb, their fearful doubting, and their unrelenting wonder at the events that quickly followed.

In these witnessing stories, there is a clear distinction between visual recognition and spiritual understanding—between seeing and believing—a distinction that demarcates the secular and sacred interpretations of the phrase “to witness.” Throughout the work, this difference is represented musically by chant-like accounts of the physical “seeing,” interspersed with more contrapuntally enriched internal climaxes at the moments when Christ’s disciples recognize and attest to the reality of His Resurrection. The simple, tightly circumscribed melodies of the narrative vignettes are modeled on the declamatory nature of Anglican chant. The polyphonic responses—Alleluias, Spirit-filled realizations, and Christ’s own injunctions—amplify and enrich the witness accounts. In these contrapuntal nodes, the imitative motifs cluster around small, close groups of pitches, creating harmonic “clouds” as each individual testimony lends form and strength to the developing “cloud of witnesses” (a metaphor borrowed from Hebrews 12:1).

After a short orchestral dawn, the women at the empty tomb inquire frantically in fear, “Never shall we see Him?” The accounts then move sequentially through the witnessing experiences of Peter and John, Mary Magdalene, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and Thomas before coming full circle back to Peter, who is admonished to testify and spiritually feed Christ’s followers.

As the Apostles are gathered at the work’s conclusion, Christ is taken up to heaven in a cloud, underscored musically by repetitions of a rising eighth-note figure that has been present, though not always overt, throughout the entire work. In a direct parallel with the disciples staring into the empty tomb, these disciples stare into the empty sky. As before, they are admonished by two angels that they should not trust what they see with their physical eyes alone: “Why gaze up and grieve? For your Lord and Master soon will come as you have seen Him go.” This climactic passage is the inverse of the agitation and fear that characterized the work’s opening statements. All have now received indelible witness of His Resurrection, in both sight and spirit, and are assured that He not only lives but will return. The coda to this vivid chronicle repeats Christ’s own promise that He will constantly be with those who believe. As the first words in this inspiring work were a repetition of the fear-filled “Never,” the conclusion is a gentle, comforting, everlastingly sustained “Always.” 

—Notes by Dr. Luke Howard 

ARR. MACK WILBERG Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing 

Robert Robinson (1735–1790) studied voraciously and preached widely after a dramatic conversion as a teenager, quickly becoming an established Baptist minister. His words of “Come Thou Fount” were written to describe his newfound joy and purpose. Originally set to a different tune, once the hymn text crossed the Atlantic, it was paired with a uniquely American melody (Nettleton) perhaps written by the Connecticut evangelist, Ahasel Nettleton (1783–1844). Text and tune were first published together in 1813. 

—Program notes © Bryant Moxley and Alandra B. Brannon