This program features the world premiere of The Forty Steps, a concerto for cellist Uri Vardi and the oud player Taiseer Elias. The ultimate message of this work--a fusion of Israeli and Arabic musical traditions--is peace, recognizing both commonalites and differences among cultures. Following intermission, we turn to one of the finest choral works of the 19th century, Rossini's Stabat Mater. The Madison Symphony Chorus and four soloists--soprano Celena Shafer, mezzo-soprano Kirstin Chavez, tenor Laurence Brownlee, and bass Arthur Woodley--join us for Rossini's powerful setting of one of the most moving of medieval Latin prayers.
 

Joel Hoffman (b.1953)
The Forty Steps

Joel Hoffman wrote this work in 2007. It receives its world premiere at these concerts. Duration 25:00.

Canadian-born Joel Hoffman trained at both the University of Wales and the Juilliard School of Music. He is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, where he is also Artistic Director of its annual new music festival, MusicX. Some of the organizations that have commissioned Hoffman’s music include the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, the Fromm Foundation, the Cincinnati Symphony, the National Chamber Orchestra, the Washington Camerata, the American Harp Society, and Madison's own Karp family.

Many of Hoffman's works are notable for incorporating a wide variety of cultural influences and for their social consciousness. For example, his 2003 opera The Memory Game and several additional works draw on the life of Mordechai Gebirtig, the Polish-Jewish songwriter who died in the Jewish uprising in the Krakow Ghetto in 1942. His new work, The Forty Steps, is a cross-cultural exchange between Israeli and Arabic musics. The title itself refers to a spiritual concept shared by both Jewish and Islamic texts.

The Forty Steps was commissioned for the Israeli cellist (and UW-Madison faculty member) Uri Vardi and the Arab-Israeli oud player Taiseer Elias. While it is the most prominent instrument in classical music in many Arabic and North African cultures, the oud (or 'ud) may be less familiar to western audiences. A short-necked lute, it has its origins in ancient instruments seen in images from ancient Mesopotamia. The present form probably originated in present-day Iraq or Iran in the early middle ages, spreading throughout the Islamic world, and eventually to Europe by way of Moorish Spain. There are many national styles of oud-playing but many share a high value placed on ornamentation and the use of microtones: pitches between the half-steps of Western-style tuning. Dr. Hoffman provides the following program note for the work:

"First of all, I would like to say that it is a great honor to have been chosen for this project. So often artists (whether visual, literary, aural or otherwise) can feel like their work does not contribute--at least not directly--to the stream of cultural discourse in the political, economic and social worlds. This was an opportunity to do just that: to make a direct statement concerning a topic that has been and will continue to be at the center of the world stage--the question of how to produce and sustain positive collaboration among people of very different backgrounds.

"I am well aware of the responsibility of this task, and of the fact that in composing a piece that addresses such a large issue, there are many ways to fail. For example, if the piece is a simple cry for peace it will resonate well with those who think that it's a simple problem but will be marginalized by those who understand it is an almost unimaginably complex set of problems. If, on the other hand, the piece is too abstract and universal in its message, it runs the risk of saying nothing pertinent. But equally, if it tries to make a detailed political proposal it will surely fail since music is not suited to such things beyond a superficial level--and would in any case have almost no likely musical value at all.

"So part of my solution is to show in this piece both the connections and the differences between the Western and Arabic musical traditions. Fortunately, the concept of the piece--a concerto for oud, cello and orchestra--seemed an ideal way to present these fascinating, rich, often contradictory elements, because each of the two solo instruments can individually represent its respective tradition in a direct, audible and visual manner and yet AT THE SAME TIME, each can converse intimately with the other on a purely musical level. And the orchestra can be a sort of mediator--offering a fertile musical foundation against which the two protagonists spin out their separate yet joined-together musical stories.

"A couple of examples of how this was accomplished: you will hear a number of sections in which the two soloists are playing essentially the same music together. Nevertheless, the oud part will be embellished with traditional Arabic ornaments and non-equal-tempered notes, while the cello voice is a realization of a conventional Western-style fully-notated cello part. Maybe a good analogy is a pizza with the same basic ingredients throughout, but with one set of spices on top of one half and a different set on the other.

"Another example lies in the three cadenzas, one in each movement. In the first two, the oud is presented with an opportunity to improvise…yet it is not a completely open-ended opportunity. The oud player is asked to improvise using the harmonic and melodic materials of the piece (which are Western in conception), and to marry these to Arabic improvisation techniques and styles! The third cadenza continues the same degree of freedom for the oud player, but this time it is a double cadenza--the cellist is asked to participate but with Western improvisation techniques and styles at the same time. The result, of course, will be not the one or the other, but a distinct and fascinating conversation between both.

"Lastly, I’d like to clarify the significance of the title, The Forty Steps: My friend David Aaron, who is a scholar of ancient Hebrew as well as Arabic culture at Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College, confirmed for me that the number 40 has special significance in both cultures. This number resonates in terms of significant things happening across the spans of 40 days, weeks and years…in remarkably similar ways in both Hebrew and Arabic writings and traditions. I decided to incorporate the number in three symbolic ways: the piece contains 40 different notes (no more, no less), 40 contiguous sections and 40 separate instrumental parts, not including the two soloists. These characteristics help give the work unity and consistency, but they are not intended to be directly heard. I also wanted to make the symbolic statement that the road to peace is not a short one (very few steps), but that it is also not infinite either (40 steps is a large number but one that can easily be imagined).

"Above all, I hope this work will be a musically rewarding conversation between two cultures whose traditions are at the same time profoundly different yet profoundly connected." [Joel Hoffman, January 2008]
Visit Joel Hoffman's homepage.
 

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
Stabat Mater

Rossini completed the first version of this work in 1832, though half of its numbers were in fact written by another composer. The final version, entirely Rossini's work, was completed in 1841, and was first performed in Paris, at the Théâtre Italien, on January 7, 1842. We have performed the work on two previous occasions, in 1955 and 1984. Duration 61:00.

In 1831, when he began his Stabat Mater, Rossini's career as a composer was largely behind him. He had written his largest and most complex opera, William Tell, in 1829, and despite its success, he never wrote another stage work. There seem to have been a host of reasons why the finest opera composer of his age stopped composing operas: ill health, lasting sadness over the death of his mother in 1827, marital problems, and simple fatigue after twenty years of concentrated effort in the theater. He had largely settled in Paris by this time, and in 1831, he and a friend, the Spanish banker Alexandre Aguado visited Madrid together. While in Madrid, Rossini met the Archdeacon of Madrid Cathedral, Francisco Fernandez Varela, who asked the composer to write a setting of the Stabat Mater. Rossini was at first unwilling, claiming that he had little experience in sacred music--though he had in fact written several sacred works and the fine Messa di Gloria earlier in his career. He was also a great admirer of the famous Stabat Mater by Pergolesi, and was hesitant to set the same text. Rossini eventually agreed, on the condition that the work should never be published, and he returned to Paris.

Rossini delivered the complete score to Varela in 1832, and the Archdeacon had it performed in Madrid on Good Friday in 1833. But what Rossini never mentioned was that he had farmed out half of the numbers to a colleague in Paris, Giovanni Tadolini, the conductor of the Théâtre Italien--Tadolini composed six of the original twelve movements and the concluding Amen. The unsuspecting Varela was delighted with the work, however, and true to his word, kept the score in his private library.

The new Stabat Mater was introduced to great fanfare in Paris in early 1842. Despite the rather irregular way it had been created, Rossini had produced one of his last great masterpieces. The poet Heinrich Heine heard the premiere of the Stabat Mater and wrote that the Théâtre Italien was transformed into "a vestibule of heaven." Not everyone was impressed, however. Richard Wagner wrote a sneering account of the whole affair, lampooning Rossini and Aguado, and the whole Parisian musical public for its sudden "piety." Heine noted that others complained that that work was too light and operatic, and just "too entertaining" for its solemn subject matter. But these sour notes aside, the Parisian public loved it. And the reception in Paris was not nearly as enthusiastic as the reaction to the first Italian performance in Bologna three months later. Gaetano Donizetti, who conducted the concert, reported that: "The enthusiasm is impossible to describe. Even at the final rehearsal, which Rossini attended, in the middle of the day, he was accompanied to his home to the shouting of more than 500 persons." In all, there were nearly thirty performances across Europe in 1842 alone.

The text of the Stabat Mater was one that was perfectly suited to Rossini the dramatist. This 13th-century sequence by Jacopone da Todi, one of the finest poems of the Middle Ages, tells of the emotions endured by the Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross, as she watches Jesus suffer and die. The hymn was part of the liturgy for the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary (September 15), but was frequently used in other devotions to her. The character of the Stabat Mater is personal and moving, as the poet suffers along with Mary. In the end, the poem is a direct and profound prayer.

The opening movement, the longest section of the Stabat Mater, begins with a solemn orchestral introduction--the overture to a tragic drama. The chorus enters with severe counterpoint, and alternates with the solo quartet, moving toward a pair of muted climaxes on the words dum pendebat Filius (where her Son is hanging). Cujus animam, after its dour introduction, is pure opera, a bravura tenor aria with a darker contrasting middle stanza and a brief cadenza near the end. Quis est homo has a more flowing background, as the two women sing solo passages, then the entire text in a closely woven duet. The bass aria Pro peccatis has strident music appropriate to the most violent moment in the poem. This is followed by one of the unaccompanied sections of Rossini's setting, Eia Mater, fons amoris--a conversation between solo bass and chorus that is the great dramatic turning-point of the entire Stabat Mater. From this point onwards, the poem turns away from the images of Mary's anguish towards a more personal prayer.

In the long, dramatically complex quartet Sancta mater, istud agas, the poet begs to share Mary's suffering, culminating in the heartfelt fac me tecum plangere (but let me weep with you). The mezzo-soprano strikes a similar tone in her "cavatina" Fac ut portem. Rossini then exploits all of the dramatic end-of-the-world imagery of Inflammatus et accensus, an aria for soprano and chorus that is constantly interrupted by the angry brass fanfares of the Last Judgement. The movement takes on a triumphant tone at the end. Rossini again turns to unaccompanied voices at for the fervent prayer Quando corpus morietur. The final Amen is suitably grand, a furious choral fugue, that comes to a sudden halt for a brief reminiscence of the introduction, before Rossini brings the Stabat Mater to a close with a ferocious coda.
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program notes ©2008 by J. Michael Allsen