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NOTE:  These program notes are published here for patrons of the the Madison Symphony Orchestra and other interested readers.  Any other use is forbidden without specific permission from the author.

Madison Symphony Orchestra Program Notes
December 5-6-7, 2008
83rd Season / Subscription Concert No. 4
Michael Allsen

For our annual Christmas Spectacular, we welcome back both the Madison Youth Choirs and Mt. Zion Gospel Choir, and we’re also happy to see the return after a few year’s absence of the Madison Area Concert Handbells.  Spectacular indeed!  This diverse feast of music—both classical and popular—is sure to put you in a holiday mood, and to send you out singing...literally.

We open with on a forceful note with the Bellsong Fantasy by Minnesota-born composer and arranger John Wasson (b. 1956).  There is a Wisconsin connection here: Wasson, who now lives and works in Dallas, had his early musical training at UW–La Crosse, and marched in the Blue Stars drum corps before moving to Texas. His Bellsong Fantasy, written in 1996, opens with a mysterious handbell prelude, but what quickly emerges is the familiar Ukrainian Bell Carol.  The chorus enters, and then the orchestra, in what becomes a powerful setting dominated by brass, percussion, and organ

The “most serene republic” of Venice was among the political and economic superpowers of the Renaissance.  Music and ceremony were very much a part of Venice's civic pride, particularly the stellar musical establishment at the city's principal church, the basilica of San Marco.  After witnessing a festival at the basilica in 1611, the English tourist Thomas Coryat wrote that the music at San Marco was “...so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so superexcellent, that it did ravish and stupefy all those strangers who had never heard the like.  But how the others were affected by it I know not; for mine own part I can say this, that I was for the time even rapt up with Saint Paul into the third heaven.”  Among the music that ravished Coryat was the work of  Giovanni Gabrieli (1553-1612), perhaps the finest of the many composers who occupied the organ bench at San Marco in this period.  Gabrieli wrote masses and motets for use in the lavish liturgy at San Marco, organ works and fine instrumental ensemble music, and madrigals.  Though the precise occasion for his motet Jubilate Deo is unknown, it appears to be among his later works.  (Gabrieli set this exultant Psalm-like text no less than four times.)  In this case, he does not follow the more usual Venetian practice of dividing his forces into two or more choirs, but instead sets the text in dense eight-part counterpoint.  As in contemporary madrigals, he includes some subtle “word-painting.  For example, at the word conjugat (“binds together”) the texture suddenly changes to close, intense imitation.  Similarly, he highlights the words in laetitia (“with gladness”) by shifting to dancelike triple meter.  The choir at San Marco was often supplemented by the many instrumentalists employed by the basilica.  At this program, the vocal lines are doubled by brass players from the orchestra.

In 1717 George Friderick Handel (1685-1759) moved to England to compose and produce opera.  For nearly two decades, Handel was the most successful impresario in England, but by the 1730s, Handel’s Italian opera had gone out of fashion, and he turned increasingly to the English oratorio. His oratorios—dramatic renderings of Biblical stories familiar to his English audiences—were enormously successful, and their popularity endured and grew long after Handel’s death.  Messiah of 1741 is, of course, Handel’s most enduring “hit,” but it is somewhat unusual among his oratorios in that his text is a pastiche of direct quotes from the St. James version of the Bible.  The great virtuoso soprano aria Rejoice Greatly comes from the Christmas section.

We continue with two works that feature the Madison Youth Choirs.  The music of Englishman John Rutter (b. 1945) has appeared on nearly all of our Holiday concerts in recent years.  Here, children's voices sing his Donkey Carol.   Rutter’s original carol has a lively galumphing accompaniment, brightly orchestrated that continues beneath more lyrical lines in the voices.  It ends—of course—with an orchestral hee-haw.   The bells join for an arrangement of It Came upon the Midnight Clear.  This beloved Christmas standard was composed in 1850 by the American hymn-writer and music critic Richard Storrs Willis (1819-1900).  It is heard here in a lush arrangement by John Bartsch. 

The handbells then play an arrangement by Linda McKechnie that weaves together two familiar tunes for the feast of the Epiphany (January 6, or the twelfth day of Christmas). John Henry Hopkins (1820-1891) wrote the lilting hymn We Three Kings in 1857.  Fifteen years later, Georges Bizet (1838-1875) incorporated several Provençal tunes into his music for a melodrama called L'Arlésienne  (“The Woman of Arles”).  Bizet’s Farandole, appears at the climactic moment of the play.  The main theme is a strident march, the Marcho dei Rei—known best to American audiences as The March of the Three Kings.

We of course know Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) as the greatest opera composer of his generation.  But he was a member of a family of church musicians who worked quietly and respectably in the northern Italian city of Lucca for four generations, stretching back to the early 18th century,  and seemed destined to follow in the family business:  while still a teenager, composed a couple of large sacred words performed at the cathedral.  Though Puccini had already been smitten with opera, he studied at the local music school until age 20, and his graduation piece was an impressive setting of the Latin Mass, published long after as his Messa di Gloria scored for tenor and bass soloists, chorus, and orchestra.  (The title is actually a bit misleading: a “Messa di Gloria”—as in Rossini’s famous example—usually includes only a Kyrie and a Gloria, but Puccini’s setting includes all five movements.)   The Mass was performed on the eve of Lucca’s patron saint, St. Paolino, on July 12, 1880.   Though it was a success, it was filed away: Puccini left to study at the Milan Conservatory, and spent the rest of his life in the world of opera.  The manuscript lay quietly in his papers until 1952 when it was finally performed again, in Chicago and Naples. The Messa di Gloria is perhaps his finest early work, and gives every indication that Puccini would become a great musical dramatist.  Gratias agimus tibi, a passionate aria from the Gloria for tenor and orchestra, spins out a whole series of emotions from quietly pastoral lines to a sweeping climax, around the tenor’s simple lines of thanksgiving.   Most composers set the Gloria’s final lines, Cum sancto spiritu as  a chorus, and Puccini was no exception.  It begins a blustery fugue, leading to triumphant statement of the Gloria’s opening line (Gloria in excelis Deo), and grand closing Amen.

The finale to our first half is the concluding Hallelujah chorus from Part II of Messiah.  And if you feel like following the lead of King George III and standing for this great choral acclamation, go right ahead!

Though hymn-writer George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848-1934) penned the words to Ding Dong Merrily on High in 1924, he searched much earlier for the melody: it was originally a tune included in a 16th-century dance manual, Thionot Arbeau’s Orchesographie (1588) intended to be played with a circle-dance called the branle.  This thoroughly danceable tune us heard here in a choral arrangement by Peter Bloesch, who describes it as follows:  “The piece begins with the magical sound of a distant church bell (played on the chimes) amid the gentle flutter of trills in the string section.  The tenors and basses begin the first verse with an air of hushed excitement, as if they are truly awed by the fact that the sky ‘is riven with angel singing.’  The arrangement proceeds in a magical way, alternating between moods of hushed awe, playful celebration, and solemn majesty.  The final ‘Gloria, Hosanna in excelsis!’ is grand and thrilling, and the piece ends on a note of high drama.”

Handbells and percussion play the hymn On this Day Earth Shall Ring, first published in 1582.  This marchlike tune, Personent Hodie, is heard here in an innovative arrangement by Cathy Moklebust.  The Madison Youth Choirs take their own solo turn with lively version of a traditional Caribbean carol, Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy.  Ms. Guarrine then gives us the traditional English carol I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In.  Though this hymn was first published in 1833, it is probably much older.

The well-known Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), with all of those cozy wintertime images, was actually written during the roasting heat of a California summer.  In his autobiography, Mel Tormé (1925-1999) related the story how in July 1945, he drove to the home of his lyricist and collaborator Robert Wells in Toluca Lake.  He found the lyrics lying on the piano, and when Wells finally appeared sweating and hot even in shorts and a t-shirt, he told Torme: “It was so damn hot today, I thought I'd write something to cool myself off. All I could think of was Christmas and cold weather.”  Tormé replied: “You know, this just might make a song.”  The Christmas Song was written in about 45 minutes later that day.  Torme quickly showed the song to his friend Nat Cole, whose 1946 hit recording is now a beloved holiday classic.

We close with a series of shoutin’ Gospel selections by the Mt. Zion Gospel Choir…and then it’s your turn to sing!
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program notes ©2008 by J. Michael Allsen