By Jacob Stockinger
The UW-Madison held its commencement ceremonies in May.
But today is when many high schools around the area will hold commencement ceremonies for graduating seniors. The Ear has been invited to parties celebrating two of them.
What music should I offer to post as my congratulations?
I thought of several choices.
But in the end, I come back to the old royal coronation stand-by: “Pomp and Circumstance” No. 1 by the English composer Sir Edward Elgar (below). By the way, he composed five such marches and some of the others are also pretty good. (Hear them on YouTube.) But No. 1 is The Best.
I know! I know!
You’ve all heard it too often.
But its magic – its energy combined with its stateliness and dignity — never fails to stir me.
The Brits just seem to have a special talent for processional marches, much like their gift for pastoral music and musical landscapes.
So here it is, in a popular YouTube video at the bottom from the BBC Proms in 2012. It includes choral singing by the huge crowd that adds to the version. After all, what is the future for graduates if not “The Land of Hope and Glory“?
Is The Ear the only one who gets goosebumps listening to it?
And if you can think of another suitable processional – or even a better one – please leave a note and, if possible, a YouTube link in the COMMENTS section.
Happy Graduation to the Class of 2015!
By Jacob Stockinger
Thank you, Middleton Community Orchestra.
Surely The Ear can’t be the only person who is starting to feel unpleasantly overwhelmed with holiday music — to say nothing of holiday shopping and holiday cards, with holiday this and holiday that.
Holiday music seems ever-present this time of the year. It is in stores and malls, on the radio and TV, in the churches and even in the many concert halls. And it has been going on for weeks, if not months.
So coming into the home stretch of Christmas Week, The Ear is feeling particularly grateful to the Middleton Community Orchestra (below), a largely amateur group that also includes some very accomplished professionals.
The MCO rarely, if ever, disappoints me. But this upcoming concert, which is NOT billed as a “holiday” concert, seems especially inviting since it promises to offer the gift of music –- not just holiday music, but real music.
Coming into Christmas Week, I find this to be a very welcome offering, a pitch perfect program.
The concert not only features terrific music but also the right length at the right cost, and includes some post-concert meet-and-greet socializing so you can meet the musicians and other audience members.
Here is the announcement from MCO co-founders Mindy Taranto and Larry Bevic:
The Middleton Community Orchestra’s December concert is this coming Monday, Dec. 22, at 7:30 p.m. at the Middleton Performing Arts Center, which is attached to Middleton High School, at 2100 Bristol Street, a simple right turn off University Avenue going west towards the Beltline a few blocks before Parmenter Street.
The MCO is excited to be sharing the stage with Madison Symphony Orchestra principal clarinetist Joe Morris (below top) who will be performing the Concerto for Clarinet and Strings by the 20th-century English composer Gerald Finzi.
You’d be counting down the days if you have heard Joe play (below top, in a photo by Cheryl Savan), and the work by Gerald Finzi (below bottom) is a beautiful piece through which Joe’s amazing clarinet playing soars.
Don’t miss the chance to hear Joe, the MCO and this beautiful concerto. How many 24-year-olds do you know who have won an audition from among 60 other clarinettists vying for the job? Come hear one of our local treasures.
The concert will be conducted by Middleton High School music teacher Steve Kurr (below).
The program starts with the popular and rousing “Academic Festival Overture” by Johannes Brahms (below), which uses tunes from German drinking songs and which Brahms composed to celebrate an honorary degree he received.
Then, after the lovely Finzi concerto, please stay so you can experience the irresistible energy and drive of Symphony No. 7 by Ludwig van Beethoven (below), which concludes the program. It is many people’s favorite Beethoven symphony and was highly thought of by the composer and other famous composers including Richard Wagner who famously called it “the apotheosis of the dance” because of its lively rhythms.
(By the way, the well-known and haunting slow movement featured prominently in the Oscar-winning film “The King’s Speech” several years ago. You can hear it at the bottom in a popular YouTube video.)
We hope to see you Monday. Tickets are $10, with students admitted free of charge. Advance tickets are available at Willy Street Coop West or at the door on the night of the show starting at 7 p.m. You can also call (608) 212-8690 to reserve tickets in advance.
There will be a reception (below) for the audience and musicians after the concert.
For information about the Middleton Community Orchestra, including how to support it and how to join it, here is a link to its website:
http://middletoncommunityorchestra.org
By Jacob Stockinger
Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who hosts an early music show every other Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9 FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.
By John W. Barker
Robert Gehrenbeck and his Wisconsin Chamber Choir (below) gave an entirely English choral program as the conclusion of their season on last Saturday night.
And, despite the heat, and the frightfully uncomfortable pews of Grace Episcopal Church on the Square — not to mention the competition of the Con Vivo chamber music concert — a considerable audience turned out to hear it.
The program took as its theme “Ralph Vaughan Williams (below, 1872-1858) and Friends,” highlighting the work of one of the most important composers of the 20th century, but one whose music still has not been taken up sufficiently in our country. (When was the last time you heard one of the great nine symphonies of “VW” played by an American orchestra?)
The beginning of the program was rightly dominated by Vaughan Williams. After an elaborate Psalm setting, titled “A Choral Flourish,” a Latin motet by Thomas Tallis (below, ca.1505-1585) provided context for VW’s great a cappella Mass in G Minor—though, alas, only its first two movements. Like the composer’s famous Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, the writing cleverly opposes soloists, and small and larger groupings against each other. (I note for the record that there were a few moments of intonation problems.)
Next came an English hymn by Imogen Holst (below top, 1907-1984), daughter of VW’s dear friend and colleague, Gustav Holst, and an anthem from an Anglican service by Herbert Howells (below bottom, 1892-1983), one of VW’s devoted disciples.
The “Psalm tune” by Thomas Tallis (if with a modernized English text imposed) was a noteworthy gem, familiar, of course, as the subject for VW’s Tallis Fantasia, already mentioned, followed naturally by another of VW’s elaborate settings of Psalm 90, “Lord, Thou has been our refuge”—again, a piece that juxtaposed a small group (vocal quartet, below) against a larger (full choir).
Following the intermission, three of VW’s arrangements of examples from his favorite source, English folksongs, these about sailors.
There followed the one serious mistake of the program: VW’s Serenade to Music. This is a lovely setting of Shakespeare’s wonderful tribute to music in lines from Act V of The Merchant of Venice. It was composed in 1938 to honor conductor Sir Henry Wood and his orchestra, featuring 16 singers with whom he had worked. VW allowed the 16 solo lines to be adapted for full chorus, and Gehrenbeck’s compromise was to have 13 singers in the choir sing specifically solo lines, while their joint parts were taken by the full choir.
It was a shaky compromise, hindered by the fact that some of the choir soloists were not quite equal to their assigned solos. Most disastrous of all, however, was the substitution for the orchestral role of a solo violin and organ.
Violinist Leanne League (below top), who plays with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, fiddled very beautifully, and organist Mark Brampton Smith (below bottom) played well. But violin and organ do not an orchestra make. This piece just should not have been attempted this way in this program. (You can hear an orchestral version of The Serenade to Music, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, at the bottom in a YouTube video. Be sure to read the listener comment about the Serenade to Music reduced Sergei Rachmaninoff to tears.)
Two short and supposedly humorous pieces about animals, composed by Elizabeth Maconchy (below, 1907-1994) were awfully trivial: I would gladly have sacrificed them for the rest of the Vaugah Williams’ Mass in G Minor.
Finally, to restore some balance, there were three folksong arrangements by Gustav Holst (below, 1874-1934) himself—the last of them, the “Blacksmith’s Song,” familiar to many in its alternate treatment as a movement in Holst’s Suite No. 2 for Band.
One thing that concerned me throughout was the question of section organization. Up to Imogen Holst’s piece, the chorus was grouped by voice parts. But thereafter the singers were repeatedly scrambled, breaking down such part groupings. This is a practice now favored by many choral directors, who will use the argument, among others, that such scrambling furthers blending.
But blending can be achieved at the price of structural clarity. In much of the program’s music there was a great deal of unison writing, or very simple chordal writing, and the strength derived from the blending was truly powerful.
But in other cases, the interaction of parts was muddled. The prime example was the sturdy Tallis Psalm: its “tune” is in the tenor part, which should have had a united prominence but was instead dispersed and diluted.
I have raised this issue before, and I will continue to do so, no doubt to much scoffing.
That issue aside, the program demonstrated the wonderful choral sound that Gehrenbeck (below) has developed with these 33 singers. They sing their hearts out for him, but in suavely balanced ensemble that is a joy to hear.
It is clear by now that Gehrenbeck, who directs choral activities at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has set a new standard for choral singing in Madison, and has a lot to offer us in times ahead.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Madison-based early music group Eliza’s Toyes (below) will be performing British sacred choral music from the Medieval and Renaissance eras in two performances – one FREE and one with admission — this coming weekend.
Here is a press release from the group:
“Titled “A British Winter,” the performances will take place on Saturday, Jan. 18, at 7:30 p.m. at the Chocolaterian Café, 2004 Atwood Ave.; and again on Sunday, Jan. 19, at 4 p.m. at the historic Gates of Heaven Synagogue (below), 302 East Gorham Street in James Madison Park.
Admission is free on Saturday at the Chocolaterian; tickets are $15 ($10 for students) on Sunday, sold at the door.
For more information about the concert, please visit the website of Eliza’s Toyes at toyes.info, or its Facebook page at facebook.com/elizastoyes.
In this program, Eliza’s Toyes revisits its founding mission of a cappella early music. The musicians who will perform are sopranos Deb Heilert and Chelsie Propst; Sandy Erickson, alto; Peter Gruett, alto/tenor; Jerry Hui (below), tenor/bass; and Mark Werner, baritone.
A vocal sextet will perform music with Latin and English text composed by William Byrd, Robert Fayrfax, Peter Phillips, Thomas Tallis, Thomas Tomkins, and Christopher Tye. A few anonymous pieces likely of British origin are also included.
The choice of composers spans at least 200 years, and highlights the development of polyphonic British music. Tallis (below) in his early age took works of Fayrfax as a model for his own Latin sacred music; Byrd studied with and worked for Tallis; and both Tomkins and Philips were students of Byrd’s.
Here is the complete program of “A British Winter”:
Anon.: Regina caeli (chant)
Anon.: Regina caeli à 3
William Byrd (1540-1623): Memento salutis auctor
Byrd: O magnum mysterium (sung in a YouTube video at the bottom)
Robert Fayrfax (1464-1521): Magnificat “O bone Jesu”
Peter Philips (1560-1628): O beatum et sacrosanctum Diem (1612)
Thomas Tallis (1505-1585): O sacrum convivium (1575)
Christopher Tye (1505-1573): A sound of angels
Tallis: O nata lux (1575)
Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656): Music Divine (1622)
Anon.: Tidings True
Anon.: There is no rose
Byrd: Sing Joyfully (1641)
Among the selection of music is a rarely heard piece, Magnificat “O bone Jesu” by Fayrfax. Likely composed around 1500-1502, it is a setting of Magnificat text whose musical material is based on Fayrfax’s own motet (survived only in fragments). The piece is a fine example of English choral music of its time: polyphonic settings are only written for the even verses, while the odd verses remain as plainchant; and much of the piece features a trio texture, with intricate rhythmic interactions among voices.
Eliza’s Toyes is a Madison-based early music ensemble specialized in performing vocal and wind music from before 1700. Its creative concert programs often feature geographical or narrative themes, partnering with both music and non-music academic fields. Now in its fifth season, Eliza’s Toyes has been performing at least twice a year, in various venues including UW-Madison Memorial Library, the Chazen Museum of Art, and the Gates of Heaven. It has also been featured on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Sunday Afternoon Live from the Chazen” concert series.