LAMC Presents: The Roger Wagner Chorale 35th Anniversary Concert
Apr 25, 1982 - 7:30 PM
PROGRAM NOTES By Richard H. Trame, S.J., Ph.D. Loyola Marymount University
Ave Maria by Victoria has served for years as the signature motet commencing concerts by the Roger Wagner Chorale. It is fitting that it should open the concert of this famed singing group's thirty-fifth anniversary. In this loveliest and most delicate of all Renaissance settings, Victoria, the mystic-priest-composer of Latin texts, only utilizes the melodic structure in its polyphonic phrasing of the beautiful Gregorian Chant of the Angelic Salutation preceding it.
Famed as one of the most skilled and virtuoso settings of this Christmas antiphon, Hodie Christus natus est was published at Antwerp by Sweelinck in 1619. It is one of thirty-seven other Latin motets under the title Cantiones Sacrae produced for the Catholic liturgy. Sweelinck enjoyed great fame as a teacher, organist, and an extraordinarily versatile composer of psalms, canticles, chansons and madrigals. Ecco mormorar l'onde was first published by the great founder of modern opera, Monteverdi, in his Second Book of Madrigals for five voices at Venice in 1590. In this publication Monteverdi demonstrated his maturity as a composer through his thorough assimilation and mastery of the style of Luca Marenzio, prince of Italian madrigalists. Ecco mormorar l'onde provides an almost impressionist image of the reflection of the dawn on the sea.
Although Pierre Passereau (1509-47) may possibly have been a priest, his compositions were confined to the chanson. These were published by Pierre Attaignant, the first of French royal printers of music. Il est bel et bon aptly characterizes his work by its cheerful nature, graceful melody and the use of unsophisticated literary texts. This chanson exhibits an onomatopoeic imitation of the clucking of hens. According to a contemporary it was first heard in the streets of Venice.
The beloved Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring comes from J.S. Bach's Cantata 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben which he reworked from an earlier cantata of the same name for the feast of the Visitation, July 2, 1723. The earlier composition stands among Bach's earliest cantatas composed while he was serving at Weimar in 1716.
The duet for women's voices, We Hasten with Eager yet Faltering Footsteps is excerpted from Cantata 78, Jesu, der du meine Seele written for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 10, 1724. It belongs to the second liturgical cycle he composed in Leipzig. In this series he achieved melodic unity through the use of Chorales.
Laudate Dominum (Psalm 116 in the Vulgate) is the fifth of the Psalms comprising the Solemn Vespers of a Confessor composed by Mozart in 1780 for Salzburg Cathedral. It is Mozart's last setting of a vesper service. The soprano solo with its choral background and its long simple floating melody remains one of Mozart's most loved compositions.
The Roger Wagner Chorale's excerpts from Handel's Messiah will provide us with a close approximation of the choral forces available to him when it was first performed in Dublin shortly after its completion in 1742 wherein he collected all the traditional biblical texts pertaining to the advent of the Messiah, immortalizing them almost more than the Scriptures have.
The Neue Liebeslieder waltzes (Opus 65) followed by six years the successful first set for chorus, soloists and four-handed piano. Composed in 1874 and published in 1875 these fifteen dance-songs with texts from Daumer's Polydora and a poem of Goethe differ markedly in their flavor from the Viennese charm of the first set. This group possesses a strong Hungarian character in which unlike the first set the vocal element predominates over the accompaniment.
Carmen saw its premier at the Opera comique, Paris, March 3, 1875. From Prosper Merimee's story Carmen, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy fashioned the stunning libretto which Bizet scored with such dramatic skill. The Habañera, echoed and commented on by the gathered crowd outside the cigarette factory, gives expression to Carmen's mocking flirtation with Don Jose.
Songs of the Frontier, sung by the men, in a sentimental romanticized style with deft choral arrangement, are from those popular cowboy songs which reached and retained their popularity early in this century.
The Vocalise form stems from early 19th century books of singing exercises most often published with piano accompaniments. Their purpose was to facilitate a more artistic expression in the pursuit of these exercises. Many were likewise composed to highlight specific types of vocal problems encountered in voice training. By the early 20th century composers of repute began to write vocalises, wordless melodies, as concert pieces. Ravel, Rachmaninov, and Vaughan Williams contributed vocalises to the literature often accompanied by various instruments. Chenoweth's vocalise has attained considerable fame and popularity in the United States.
Very shortly after his arrival in Paris in 1832 Chopin became the most fashionable piano teacher in, the aristocratic salons. His Etudes were designed for his students to exploit an amateur's technical progress and capacity with possibilities for romantically sentimental expression. Most of Chopin's Etudes were written between 1829 and 1836. Their numbered sequence within an opus number does not indicate their compositional sequence.
Perhaps of all those working songs of the sea which alleviated the burdens of the sailing vessel's crews, Shenandoah is the most famous. It has attracted innumerable settings, of which Wagner's stands high for popularity. Skip to My Lou served as a type of caller-song in a square dance. The caller indicated the steps and helped to maintain the rhythm with short nonsensical phrases of piquant interest. Among arrangers of the Spiritual, William Dawson of the Tuskegee Institute has achieved distinction. Arrangements of Spirituals must be such that the choral singing does not become so sophisticated that it obscures the essential emotional simplicity of the message it conveys. Moreover, in the thought or Wendell Whalum, of the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Atlanta, Spirituals are susceptible of various interpretations. He has singled out Soon-ah-will Be Done as a Spiritual capable not only of a vigorous assertion of final fulfillment of God's will, but can serve equally as a funeral dirge depending on how it is rendered.
