For Chorus and Organ

Program Notes

by Richard H. Trame, S.J., Ph.D. It is often said that Reger forms a dividing line between the 19th and 20th centuries of music. Many of his works are the German equivalent of French impressionism. This arresting and vigorous Toccata was composed in 1901. It consists of several loosely connected sections and is more rhapsodic in character than might be expected from the tide. In the forefront of Antonin Dvorák's (1841-1904) best known religious compositions one would certainly mention the Stabat Mater (Op. 58) of 1877, the Requiem (Op. 103) of 1892, and possibly his oratorio St. Ludmilla (Op. 71) of 1886. Sandwiched in between Stabat Mater and the Requiem is his only surviving Mass in D (Op. 86) of 1887. As a boy, Dvorák noted that, " ... during the annual church festivals, Masses by Cherubini, Haydn and also Mozart were heard ... and they aroused my desire to become a real musician." Between the age of 16 and 18, while he attended the Prague Organ School, he composed and subsequently destroyed two youthful and somewhat grandiose ventures into Mass composition, one in B flat and one in F minor. Twenty-eight years were to elapse before his third sally into the genre. In early 1887, he received a commission from a close friend, Joseph Hlavka, founder of the Czech Academy of Sciences, to produce a Mass for the dedication of a small church newly built and adjacent to his castle at his country estate near Luzany. This commission represented a challenge to Dvorák since his performance resources were limited to organ accompaniment with a small mixed choir alternating with soloists. His enthusiasm, however, for the commission overflowed in a letter. "I pay no heed to the whole world .. .! am working hard at the new Mass ..." No more apt way can be advanced to describe the Mass in D than to quote Dvorák's own appraisal of it. "Most honoured Councillor and dear Friend, I have the honour to inform you that I have successfully completed the work (the Mass in D), and that I am very pleased with it. I believe it is a work which will fulfill its purpose. It could be called: faith, hope, and love of Almighty God, with thanks for the great gift which has enabled me to complete this work successfully in praise of the All Highest and in honour of our art. Do not be surprised that I am so pious - an artist who is not, cannot achieve anything of this nature. Have we not examples in Beethoven, Bach, Raphael and many others? Finally my thanks are due to you for giving me the impulse to write a work of this kind, for otherwise I would probably not have thought of doing so; hitherto I have written works in this class only on a grand scale for large numbers of performers. On this occasion I have written for a small ensemble, yet I venture to assert that my work has been successful." Dvorák himself directed the Mass at the church's dedication on September 11, 1887. Subsequently, in 1888 and 1889, it received three other performances in Pilsen and Prague. His attempts to get his publisher Simrock to print the Mass met, much to his anger and chagrin, with the negative assertion from Simrock that "no one buys a Mass and the few (choral) societies which might perform it do not justify the cost of printing it." Indeed it was not until 1970 that the first authentic edition of this organ version was published by the Czech publisher Supraphon. Nevertheless, Dvorák did not desist in his efforts to secure publication. They brought fruit in 1892 when the English firm Novello and Company agreed to publish the Mass but only if Dvorák orchestrated it. This he did between that March and June. As Novello had predicted, this orchestral version, though somewhat maimed in printing accuracy and without a full score, accounted for the subsequent popularity the Mass in D came to enjoy in England and America. The Mass' orchestral version now rejoices in a new accurately printed critical edition of 1986 by the German publisher Carus Verlag. This afternoon's performance of the organ version of the Mass gives expression to Dvorák's original inspiration. We paraphrase annotator Klaus Döge's trenchant overview. The compositional simplicity of this work, in which the influence of the classics and especially the model of Schubert are always discernible, its restrained use of chorus and organ avoiding all blatantly dramatic effects, and finally the folk-like originality of the melodies so characteristic of Dvorák, account for the Mass in D's long-standing effectiveness. A standard of cathedral repertoire, Hubert Parry's I Was Glad When They Said Unto Me was composed for the coronation of Edward the VII in 1902 and has been sung at every subsequent British coronation. The anthem exhibits the sheer splendour and inspiration reminiscent of Parry's early cantatas. Psalm 117: Praise the Lord, All Ye Nations, is one of the five psalms long associated with the ancient office of Vespers. It is also employed as the Communion in the Mass for the Propagation of the Faith, as a psalm to be sung after Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and as a general antiphon of praise. Quoting from the Foreword and Performance Notes of Frederick Swann, "The many and varied organ works of Jean Langlais are universally known and admired. His choral works are few and rarely performed, which makes this 'new' (composed 1976, published 1998) setting of Psalm 117 a welcome addition to the repertoire." This afternoon's performance marks the premiere of this published version, with Frederick Swann at the organ. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) professed admiration for that earlier period in music when "music served things greater than itself, the glory of God ... " Between 1942 and 1945, while he was composing his brooding and sombre opera Peter Grimes, he produced five of his unique and popular works. While returning to England from America he composed, on shipboard, The Hymn to St. Cecilia and The Ceremony of Carols. These were succeeded in 1943 with Rejoice in the Lamb and The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard. Finally, in 1945, he produced his Festival Te Deum for chorus and organ, his second setting for the Anglican liturgy, the first having been composed in 1935, at the age of22. The Festival Te Deum was commissioned to celebrate on April 25, 1945, the centenary of St. Mark's Church, Swindon. In the words of the commentator Anthony Milner, this polymetric work "emphasizes its precise textual declamation by constantly varying metres for the voices over an organ accompaniment moving in steady dotted rhythm - a metrical counterpoint exceptional in Britten's works." This Festival Te Deum illustrates Britten's fundamental approach when composing for amateur singers. Without abdicating his personal idiom, he employed uncomplicated materials in ways that led the performers into new awareness of the musical possibilities of the English language. Twentieth-century Hungary has produced three significantly eminent composers, Erno Dohnányi (1877- 1960), Béla Bartók (1881-1945) and Zoltan Kodály (1882-1967). Bartók and Kodály also achieved distinction as scientific collectors of their homeland's folk music. Moreover, while Bartók achieved fame chiefly as a composer of instrumental music, Kodály veered more in the direction of vocal composition in which melody occupied prime importance. In the words of his biographer, Lazlo Eösze, " ... almost no other 20th century composer showed greater knowledge of the choral art or showed greater devotion to it than Kodály. For him the beauty of the human voice and the charm of singing were alike inexhaustible and he contributed to choral music of all kinds." Significant among these compositions are his Te Deum, the Psalmus Hungaricus and the exquisite Missa Brevis. It is noteworthy that in 1966 the American Guild of Organists, after commissioning Kodály the previous year, premiered-at their national convention in Atlanta, Georgia-his last complete composition, Laudes Organi (In Praise of the Organ). Of further note is that our organist today, Frederick Swann, played that world premiere. This work commences with a lengthy and majestic organ prelude, which then leads into Kodály's setting of a 12th-century text derived from a manuscript from the Swiss monastery of Engelberg, in praise of the king of instruments. In view also of Kodály's choral orientation, he also fittingly includes in Laudes Organi high praise for Guido of Arezzo (991-1033). He was the inventor of precise pitch notation through the lines and spaces of the staff. He likewise invented the art of Solmization (learning by "do," "re," "mi," etc.) Like so many others of Kodály's choral works, Laudes Organi is a melding together of Gregorian Chant, Bach-like polyphony, and Romantic harmonization with the parlando style of Hungarian folk melodies. While composing this very attractive work, Kodály expressed with urgency his concern for the role of singing in human life. "Our age of mechanization leads along a road ending with man himself as a machine, only the spirit of singing can save us from this fate."

Archival Recording