Saturday, June 10, 2023 – 7:30 pm
Trinity Episcopal Church, Newtown, CT
CONNECTICUT CHORAL SOCIETY
Jennifer Sisco, soprano
Nina Porretta, soloist
Daisy Lowe, soprano
Peter Kendall Clark, baritone
Miriam Liske-Doorandish, cello
Linda Sweetman-Waters, organ
Eric Dale Knapp, conductor
PROGRAM
ANN HAMPTON CALLAWAY
AT THE SAME TIME
Jennifer Sisco, soprano
KURT BESTOR
PRAYER OF THE CHILDREN
ARR. ANDREA S. KLOUSE
Vocal Quartet
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
1685-1750
CELLO SUITE NO. 1 IN G MAJOR, BWV 1007
I. Prelude
II. Allemande
IV. Sarabande
Miriam Liske-Doorandish, cello
JOHN RUTTER
b. 1945
MASS OF THE CHILDREN
Kyrie
Treble Choir – Soprano and Baritone
Gloria
Treble Choir – Soprano and Baritone
Sanctus and Benedictus
Treble Choir – Soprano and Baritone
Agnus Die
Nina Porretta, soloist
Finale – Dona Nobis Pacem
Treble Choir – Soprano and Baritone
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
ANN HAMPTON CALLAWAY
b. 1958
AT THE SAME TIME
This song is about how we’re all in it together; whatever we’re going through, there are many others going through it at the same time. It was written by Ann Hampton Callaway, a Jazz/Cabaret singer known for improvising songs based on audience suggestions. According to Callaway, Barbra Streisand helped her bring this song together: “She got on the phone with me and I was a little intimidated to speak with her, but I said, ‘Barbra, what do you want me to do here?’ She said, ‘I want it to be simple but profound.’ What does that mean? ‘I want people to understand exactly what you mean the first time you hear a song, and then the second time and third time, every time after that, to have new meanings unfold.’ As it turns out, that simple guidance has been something I think of every time I write a song now. It’s been a wonderful filter for everything I try to do.” Ann Hampton Callaway wrote the first version of this song in 1987, but wouldn’t let anyone have it because she was determined to have Streisand record it. Callaway’s friend Amanda McBroom, who wrote the song “The Rose”, passed the song along to Streisand’s record company, who loved the song, but asked for a rewrite, since Streisand is very particular about her songs. “I said I would be willing to do whatever it takes,” Callaway told us. “I think it was 150 rewrites later, she said, ‘OK, I think this is perfect. I think I’m ready to do it.’ It was just a thrill to have that message out in the world in her voice. I knew in my guts never to give up on that dream.”
KURT BESTOR
b. 1958
PRAYER OF THE CHILDREN
ARR. ANDREA S. KLOUSE
An important contribution to today’s choral repertoire, this deeply moving tribute to the children of Bosnia was given national and international prominence with Weston Noble and the Luther College Nordic Choir. In December of 2012, Kurt Bestor dedicated his heartfelt song, “Prayer of the Children” to our children lost in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14th, 2012.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Born: 1685, Eisenach, Germany
Died: July 28, 1750, Leipzig, Germany
CELLO SUITE NO. 1 IN G MAJOR, BWV 1007
Composed around 1720
The Cello Suites of Johann Sebastian Bach
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
– William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
Overview
Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello occupy a special place in the repertoire for both player and listener. Cellists regard the suites as sacred touchstones for their instrumental art demanding the utmost in technique, interpretation and expression requiring years if not a lifetime to master. Listeners treasure a unique sound palette featuring the warm, deep and wooden sonority of the intimate solo cello so close to the natural human voice presenting a collection of musical short stories rich with elegant designs, wide-ranging emotions and transcendent reflections. A complete performance of the six suites permits a total immersion: to acclimate, yield and expand into the astonishing diversity of what might at first seem constrained by its minimal means, its stark simplicity. Like so many comprehensive sets of music by Bach, the suites appear to encompass a whole universe possibilities, a world in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour.
Bach composed the cello suites sometime around 1720, the same time (and most likely before) he wrote the equally astonishing six partitas and sonatas for solo violin. During these years from 1717-1723, Bach was employed as the Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold in the court of Anhalt-Köthen (Cöthen). Prince Leopold was a music lover who also retained a talented group of orchestral and chamber musicians suitable for Bach’s finest inspirations. Unusually free from the demands for religious music typical of his other employers, under Prince Leopold, Bach composed some of his finest secular instrumental music during these years including the Brandenburg Concertos, the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, and, of course, the cello and violin suites. We cannot precisely date the suites because a manuscript in Bach’s own hand has never surfaced. There exists a manuscript by his second wife, Anna Magdalena, as well as a possibly earlier manuscript by the organist and friend Keller (c.1726). It seems the suites were not officially published until 1824 (in Paris), at least one hundred years after Bach composed them, and even then, they were largely regarded as exercises or studies for private consumption, certainly not for public performance. Indeed, at this time in history, Bach himself would have been considered an antiquated obscurity known only to certain professional musicians such as Felix Mendelssohn who would daringly mount a “debut” performance of the St. Matthew Passion a few years later.
The suites languished in near obscurity until a 13-year-old Catalan cello student named Pablo Casals discovered a printed copy at a second-hand bookseller in Barcelona in 1890. Casals began a lifelong obsession with the suites practicing them for well over a decade before presenting them in public performance. It would take Casals nearly half a century following his discovery to record the suites from 1936 through 1939. The Casals recordings finally introduced the cello suites to the larger world establishing them firmly in the repertoire of masterworks. Today, there are hundreds of printed editions and several dozens of recordings by the world’s greatest cellists. Indeed, like much of Bach’s extraordinary “absolute” music that seemingly transcends any particular instrumentation, the suites have been transcribed and recorded for a wide range of instruments and ensembles.
The Baroque Dance Suite
The suite was a dominant form of instrumental chamber music in the late Renaissance and Baroque eras. A suite comprises a set of idealized dances (e.g. for listening, not dancing), which, by Bach’s time, represents a broadly European amalgam including dance types from Italy, France, Germany, England and Spain. Each dance features a particular tempo, rhythm and character contributing a pleasing diversity of mood and expression to the composite suite. All six suites include four standard dances at their core:
Allemande – From the French word for “German”, moderately paced in duple rhythm (2 or 4 beats to a measure), by convention, often placed first. These are often the most complex movements of Bach’s suites.
Courante – A triple meter dance with regional differences here historically following the swiftly running Italian Corrente.
Sarabande – Originally a sensuous dance of African and South American origin that made its way back to Spain. In France and Germany, the Sarabande assumed a slow, stately quality using a triple meter with an emphasis on the second beat. In Bach’s cello suites, the Sarabande tends to be the deeply expressive emotional heart of the music.
Gigue – The French spelling of the lively dance from England otherwise known as the Jig. With a rocking compound triple meter (e.g. featuring beats in two’s and three’s) and a jolly demeanor, the Gigue is typically the energetic finale of a suite.
Like many suites and sonatas of the era, Bach begins each suite with a Prelude, an introductory movement historically used to ensure the tuning of the instrument, warm up the fingers, establish the primary tonality of the piece and possibly display some spontaneous virtuosity. It has been said by many that the essential character of each suite is fully revealed in the opening of the prelude often with thematic linkages across the other dance movements.
Finally, in the penultimate movement of each suite before the Gigue, Bach interpolates a pair of additional dance movements in a lighter “galant” style often called the Galanterien (German) to distinguish them from the essential four main and more substantial dances of the suite. Whether Minuet, Bourrée, or Gavotte, each originally fashionable dances from the French court with their own distinctive meter, accent and character, Bach supplies two of each with the first reprised in the manner that persisted in the minuet and trio of the Classical era, e.g. Minuet I – Minuet II – Minuet I.
Suites V and VI: Special Considerations
While it seems indisputable that Bach’s suites were indeed composed for the cello, the last two suites raise special considerations. The fifth suite calls for a special tuning of the cello – technically called scordatura – where the 4th and highest string is tuned down in order to facilitate chords and provide an especially rich sonority. It is up to the cellist whether to use this non-standard tuning or to play the suite with technical adjustments to accommodate the standard. The sixth suite was actually composed for a cello with 5 strings (one more than usual), a special instrument of Bach’s time and even possibly his own invention that has never quite been identified. The last suite hence spans a wider sonic range, that, again, the cellist is likely to accommodate on a standard 4-string cello.
Suites for Solo, Unaccompanied Cello (senza basso)
Most chamber music of the Baroque era, even when titled “solo” called for a main instrumentalist plus a group of one or more additional players known as the “continuo”, “basso continuo” or just “basso.” While the main instrument took the melodic lead, the continuo group supplied a crucial bass line plus the harmony, typically with an instrument capable of playing chords such as the harpsichord or the lute. Naturally, Bach’s cello suites are written for a true soloist, without basso continuo. The instruments of the violin family including the cello are supremely capable of playing single note melody lines but have a much more difficult time playing chords, multiple notes (e.g. multiple strings) simultaneously, the essence of harmony. There are numerous places in the suites where the cellist is called upon to play 2, 3 and even 4 note chords (or “stops”), yet the majority of the music features single-note lines without chords, seemingly without harmony. Yet one of the great miracles of Bach’s music for solo instrument (even in pieces for keyboard) is the rich harmony and harmonic motion accomplished by implication: harmonies are formed by a succession of arpeggiated notes – one at time – and our listening mind connects them into chords after the fact. In many ways, the implied harmonic motion of the suites is their most affective quality.
The miracle of these suites for solo cellist goes further. Bach is remembered as a supreme master of counterpoint and polyphony: music formed by more than one voice or part playing simultaneously. As with the magic of harmony implied overtime in a kind of time-lapse development, Bach similarly implies a polyphonic texture as if the single cellist were really multiple cellists, each playing within a certain range with call, response and imitation weaving the several parts into a multiplicity of voices. This astonishing effect is the product of the composer, the capable cellist and the keenly attentive listener all of whom participate in constructing the illusion.
The Composite Set of Six Suites: Coherence on a Higher Order
Bach was a master of composing sets and collections that encompass profound variety and diversity within a single rubric. There is the rich variety of movements within each suite, but, naturally, variety on a higher level as we move across all six suites. Each suite is composed in a different key signature with two of the six in a minor key. Some of the suites are bright and exuberant; others are dark, melancholy and deeply reflective. Indeed, the mood will change within each suite itself, even within each movement, on a turn of phrase, even a fleeting gesture. The progression of suites from one to six seems to demonstrate a progression of complexity, intensity and length with the 5th suite being the most “emotionally profound”, the 6th suite being the longest and perhaps most complex, certainly, as a fitting finale, the most triumphant. While it may challenge the stamina of the listener and surely the performer, a complete performance of all six suites is an epic journey of a singular kind reserved for the rare occasion when time and place converge into a supreme experience of the very highest order: A spiritual ritual.
The First Suite (G major) opens with a fantasia-like Prélude whose steady rhythmic motion and breadth of harmonic inflection generate a sweeping grandeur that culminates magnificently in the heroic gestures of the closing measures. The ensuing movements follow the old custom of pairing a slow dance with a fast one: an Allemande (here marked by wide-ranging figurations and swiftly flowing rhythms) is complemented by a Courante, a dance type originally accompanied by jumping motions; a stately Sarabande is balanced by a pair of Minuets (the second of which, in G minor, exhibits a delicious, haunted languor) and a spirited Gigue of vibrant character.
© Kai Christiansen, Used by permission.
JOHN RUTTER
b. 1945
MASS OF THE CHILDREN
Mass of the Children was written in response to an invitation to compose a new work for a concert during the American Choral Directors’ Association national convention in New York in February 2003. Rutter’s larger-scale choral works have been relatively few – the Gloria, the Requiem, and the Magnificat are the most often performed – but each one has a distinct character. Mass of the Children represents something new in the composer’s work insofar as it was conceived with an integral role for a Treble choir alongside an adult mixed choir, two soloists, and orchestra. The role of the Treble choir is to add a further dimension to the traditional Latin Mass sung by the adult choir, sometimes commenting, sometimes amplifying the meaning and mood. Mass of the Children is a non-liturgical Missa brevis, with the traditional Latin and Greek Mass text interwoven with several English poems.
The Mass text itself (a Missa Brevis, that is to say a mass without a Credo section) is mainly sung by the adult choir or the soloists. The children sometimes sing the Latin- for example at the Christe eleison, the opening of the Gloria and at the Benedictus– but elsewhere they and the two soloists sing specially chosen English texts which in some way reflect upon or illuminate the Latin. The work opens with two verses from Bishop Thomas Ken’s morning hymn for the Scholars of Winchester College, and it closes with the children singing his evening hymn with Tallis’ timeless melody, as the adults intone the traditional Dona nobis pacem, a prayer for peace. This creates a framework (from waking to sleeping) within which other texts and moods appear in kaleidoscopic succession, like events in a day or landmarks in a life.
The five texts upon which this work is based, Kyrie; Gloria; Sanctus and Benedictus; Agnus Dei and Dona Nobis Pacem, are derived from poetry by Thomas Ken, William Blake, Lancelot Andrews and St. Patrick, as well as traditional Latin and Greek.