The Annual

 Glebe Music Festival

In conjunction with The Glebe Society Inc

Concert 7:
Sunday 2nd December 2007 at 3-00pm,
St Scholastica's Chapel, cnr Arcadia Road and Avenue Road, Glebe Point.

Coro Innominata

© 2007 Patricia Baillie

Programme

Coro Innominata

Musical Director– Marcus Hodgson

Sopranos

Nicola Bevan
Olivia Engel
Monica Gessner
Catherine Hastings
Katrina Jenns
Catherine O’Neill
Sally Smith
Moira Thompson

Altos

Louise Barkl
Sarah Drury
Rachel Dulson
Sarah Dunn
Marta Ferracin
Christine Hodgkiss
Melissa Laird
Bronwyn Robertson
Anna Yerbury

Tenors

John Apps
Robert Chapman
Kevin Cousins
Christoph Kaufmann
Mark Nettle
Hamish Williamson

Basses

Michael Davies
Francis Dorman
David Fisher
David Kelly
Cameron Mowat
Greg Peters
Peter Templeton
Marcel Vanrooyen

Soloist

Soprano – Nicole Thomson

Coro Innominata was formed in the early 1990s by singers from several of Sydney’s larger choirs who wished to explore further a cappella and chamber choir repertoire. The choir stages a number of concerts at venues in Sydney each year and sings regularly at church services, weddings and other functions. In 2002 members of Coro Innominata joined a tour of England singing with Sydney Philharmonia at “The Proms”. During 2003 the choir celebrated a decade of public appearances in some of Sydney’s finest acoustic venues such as Kincoppal Chapel, Rose Bay, St Francis Church, Paddington, and St Scholastica’s Chapel, Glebe. Over the past decade Coro Innominata has also performed as part of the Glebe Music Festival, Sydney Writers’ Festival – Spring Writing and The Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival. The choir has also appeared at Carols by the Cauldron at Sydney Olympic Park and Carols at Darling Harbour.

Marcus Hodson’s musical foundations were built on the grand English traditions of church and varsity choral repertoire. He san in choirs as a boy treble and later read Music at the University of North Wales, Bangor, under William Mathias. Basing himself in London for a career in Arts Administration, he soon became involved in the London choral scene, performing with the Thames Singers, the Abbeyville Singers, the church of St John the Divine, Kennington, and St Peter’s Kensington.

Since his arrival in Australia in 1991 he has sung with the Choir of Christchurch St Laurence, Sydney Philharmonia Motet Choir, Sydney Chamber Choir, and has been a member of Coro Innominata since 1996. He started assising the Musical Director David Vivian Russell in 1998, taking rehearsals and occasional services. His first full concert conducting the choir was in 2002 in a programme of Spanish Renaissance polyphony which as followed by further guest conducting in that year and in 2004. He directed the choir in a full programme of music from the English Renaissance in May 2005, and was appointed to the position of Musical Director in August 2005.

Soprano Nicole Thomson was born in Queensland and studied at the Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane. In 1996, Nicole moved to Sydney to join The Song Company and although she left the company as a full-time member in 2007, she has since performed with the ensemble in tours to Western Australia and Europe, as well as recording with them on several occasions.

Having performed with Pinchgut Opera, Sydney PHilharmonia, Aark Ensemble, Cantillation, ACO Voices and the Sydney Symphony since moving interstate, Nicole’s past perfomances have included the Aurora Festival, the Sydney Sympnony’s Shock of the New, and performances of Mozart’s Requiem, Laudate Dominum, and Haydn’s Nelson Mass with the Strathfield Symphony Orchestra. Soon, Nicole will once again be involved with performances of Pinchgut Opera’s latest production, Vivaldi’s Juditha Triumpans. She is also taking part in a series of performances with Slaga Grigoryan and The Song Company, featuring the Carols of Spain, in the middle of December 2007.

Nicole has been involved in recording several compact discs, more recently in Hong Kong with the Chinese Virtuosi Orchestra. Other CDs include the contemporary opera The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, by Colin Bright, performing the role of ‘Activist’, and also the dramatic theatre work by Martin Wesley-Smith entitled Quito, both through the Australian Broadcasting Commission. After several successful tours throughout Europe, Asia and the United States, Nicole will once again resume traveling in 2008, with performance opportunities within Australia and overseas.

This is Nicole’s first performance with Coro Innominata.

Music From a New World

Programme notes by Marcus Hodgson.

The American continent is the common thread running through today’s programme, but there is also a second thread – one of new beginnings. Music has always played a role in the development of society, whether supporting it through ceremony and ritual or as entertainment. From the earliest times, composers responded to the needs of their societies, and as those societies or environments changed, so composers looked for new styles or voices to express their creativeness. Today’s programme of choral music from the Americas is an example of that process and yet the quality of each piece transcends mere academic exercise and reveals a wonderful world of contrasting melodies and harmonies covering almost 400 years.

Gaspar Fernandes is the earliest composer featured in this programme. Originally from Portugal, he was one of a number of musicians who settled in Mexico shortly after the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors. As Maestro di Capilla at the newly built cathedral at Puebla he would have been required to produce much music in a European style to support the liturgy, but Fernandes was obviously attracted to the local music and incorporated it into his own compositions. He left behind a considerable quantity of ethnic and dialect villancicos, some of them in the Amerindian dialects spoken in the region around Puebla. These include the Tlaxcaran dialect of Nahuatl, tongue of the Aztec empire, of which Xicochi Xicochi is an example. Fernandes’ successor as Maestro di Capilla at Puebla was Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla who traveled from Spain around 1620 and established himself as one of the most important Spanish-born composers of his time. His sacred polyphony is in the old prima practica style of the Renaissance, although the Baroque idioms of increased chromaticism and greater emphasis on the bass and melody lines can be clearly heard. His compositions are characterized by frequent use of double choirs, vital rhythms and a striking originality in the use of sonorities and textures, achieved through antiphonal effects and alternation between major and minor harmonies. Padilla did not develop his style in isolation. Original scores of Victoria, Guerrero, Moralies and others have been found in the library at Puebla. Nevertheless, it comes as no surprise that Padilla’s compositions are marked by elements of originality as the difficulty of travel in those times would have made keeping abreast of European trends a considerable challenge.

A hundred or so years later, in the northern part of the continent, another evolution of choral music was taking place. As with most examples of colonisation, the settlers of North America tried quickly to replicate the environment they had just left. In the few major centres this was achieved quite successfully and music making was frequently a replication of European models. In much of the rest of the country, resources were harder to come by so music came in a much simpler form. Puritan hymns and psalms formed the basis, with or without simpler accompaniment. Community singing was encouraged not only to aid worship but also for is social aspect. The original tunes had simple parts added to them for harmonic interest, which later evolved into “fuguing tunes”: melodies with very simple imitative entries that allowed even the most humble congregation or choir to emulate the old Anglican traditions of Gibbons or Purcell. Singing schools were established, often run by the local teacher or parish clerk, to encourage the singing from print rather than memory, and anthologies were common. William Billings typified the composers of his time, later named the First New England School. An amateur musician and tanner by trade, described by a contemporary as a “singular man, of moderate size, short of one leg, with one eye, without an address and with an uncommon negligence of person”, he nevertheless rose to become a most popular figure in the music community. His anthology The Singing Master’s Apprentice was re-printed four times in the space of two years and the independence song Chester was one of the favourite melodies of the time. His musical style was simple but still displayed interesting changes in metre, word-paining effects and flourishes, as found in The Rose of Sharon, and he could justly lay claim to being the outstanding American-born composer of the 18^th Century.

During the 19^th Century, the musical community actively derided the less sophisticated style of the First New England School. New compositions were largely under the influence of the German Romantic tradition and it was not until the end of the century that some composers started searching for a more American voice. Composers regularly traveled to Europe for study, and for many, these periods away from their homelands were pivotal in shaping what would become their distinctive compositional styles. One such composer was Aaron Copland. His Four Motets were written in 1921 as a study in counterpoint and form for the great composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. He later dismissed them as not representative of his music but they are finely crafted works, and ones which Boulanger held up as models to many successive generations of students. Help Us, O Lord has elements of the blues style that Copland was exposed to in Paris and which would become a regular feature of his more mature works, while the energetic primitivism of Thou, O Jehova could well trace its origins back to the First New England School. By the time Copland wrote In the Beginning in 1947 his writing had matured, as he deliberately sought to create a distinctively American sound. The blues influences are still present but a more angular approach can be heard, along with elements of polytonality and jazz-influenced rhythms. Using the opening verses of the King James Bible, In the Beginning tells the story of Creating in a relatively simple manner before slowly building up to the grand climax as Man is blessed with the gift of a soul.

Like Copland, Samuel Baber spent time studying in Europe, principally Rome. It was there that he composed his only String Quartet and it was from that work that his most famous composition, the Adagio for Strings was taken. Barber was less interested in finding a distinctly ‘American’ voice. His music remains firmly aligned to the European Romantic tradition, but that detracts nothing from the high level of craftsmanship that is evident in all his music. A strong lyrical element pervades much of his music, as heard in the flowing lines of the Adagio (performed here in Barber’s 1967 arrangement set to the Agnus Dei text) of the lilting beauty of The Coolin, the final movement from Recollections.

Randall Thomson is one of America’s most popular choral composers and has much in common with Barber. His music is always sensitively written, with rewarding vocal lines and a natural ease for the text being set. Like Barber, is music is mostly diatonic and his love of the contrapuntal weavings of Palestrina and Lassus can frequently be heard. Again, like Barber, Thomson spent some years studying in Rome before returning to America to compose and to pursue a long teaching career. Whilst in Rome he wrote the five Odes to Horace and several decades later he used a sixth Horace ode, Felices Ter to commemorate the retirement of his old teacher from Harvard. His Alleluia was commissioned by Serve Koussevitzky for the opening of the Berkshire Music Centre. A choral fanfare had been requested but Thomson, deeply affected by the fall of Paris to the Nazis, provided an introspective and calm setting of the single word Alleluia. The musical style again reaches back to the early Baroque and Renaissance with its carefully constructed counterpoint and gentle but inexorably arch towards a subdued climax and quiet ending.

By the end of the last century Morten Lauridsen had overtaken Randall Thomson as America’s most frequently performed American choral composer. O Magnum Mysterium was written in 1994 and since then has had several thousand performances around the world. It celebrates the arrival of Jesus into the world and the adoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary ‘through a quiet song of profound inner joy’.

As is the Sea Marvellous by Anna Jacobs was commissioned by Coro Innominata specifically for this program. Anna completed her Bachelor of Music degree at Sydney University in 2002 with first class honours and the university composition prize for her Mass. Since 2005 she has been doing composition study in America, most recently undertaking the New York University Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. She has selected text from American poet E. E. Cummings and the two movements both contain references to the sea, which Cummings uses as a metaphor for life. “It is at the root of all living things, one constant in a world of variables, something we are born from and go to when we die.” The phrases in the first movement all rise and fall almost wave-like with the occasional echo from Renaissance choral classics (Anna is an ex-chorister of Coro Innominata), while the spirited second movement captures the joy of discovery that can be found at the beach, American or Australian, which itself could be a metaphor for the excitement of a young composer furthering her studies in a new land.

Texts Translations appear in italics

Exsultate Iusti In Domino

Juan Gutierrez de Padilla (c.1595-1664)

Exsultate justi in Domino: recos decet collaudiatio.
Cofitemini Domino in cithara.
In psalterio decem chordarum psallite illi.
Cantate ei canticum novum.
Bene psallite ei in vociferatione
quia rectum est verbum Domini
et omnia opera ejus in fide.

Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous ones:

it is fitting for the upright ones to give praise.
Acknowledge the Lord with the harp.
Sing to him with a psaltery of ten strings.
Sing to him a new song.
Sing praises to him well with a loud voice,
for the word of the Lord is right,
and all his works are done in faithfulness.

Chester

William Billings (1746-1800)

Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And slav’ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not;
we trust in God,
New England’s God for ever reigns.
Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton, too.
With Prescott and Cornwallis join’d,
Together plot our overthrow,
In one infernal league combin’d.
When God inspired us for the fight,
Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc’d,
Their Ships were Shatter’d in our sight,
Or swiftly driven from our Coast.
The Foe comes on with haughty Stride,
Our troops advance with martial noise,
Their Vet’rans flee before our Youth,
And Gen’rals yield to beardless boys.
What grateful Off’ring shall we bring,
What shall we render to the Lord?
Loud Hallelujahs let us Sing,
And praise his name on ev’ry Chord.

I am the Rose of Sharon

William Billings (1746-1800)

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley.
As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among
the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood,
so is my beloved among the sons.
I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house,
and his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, by the toes,
sick of love.
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes,
And by the hinds of the field,
that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
The voice of my beloved! Behold, he cometh leaping upon
the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love,
my fair one, and come away.
For lo, the winter is pas, the rain is over and gone.

Help Us, O Lord

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Help us, O Lord.
For with Thee is the fount of life.
In Thy light shall we see light.
Let us march and try our ways.
Turn to God.
For with Thee is fount of life.
In They light shall we see light.
It is good that man should wait.
It is good that man should hope.
Hope for the salvation of the Lord.
Help us, O Lord.

Thou, O Jehova, abideth forever

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Thou, O Jehova, abideth forever.
God reigneth over all men and nations.
His throne doth last and doth guide all the ages.
Wherefore willst Thou forsake us ever?
When the willst Thou forget us never?
Thou, O Jehova, abideth forever,
And all the length of our days will ever be our Saviour.
When then willst Thou forget us never?
Thou, O Jehovah, abideth forever.

As is the Sea marvelous

Anna Jacobs (b.1980)

(Words by e e cummings)

1.

when go lets my body be
from each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom
the purpled world will dance upon
between my lips which did sing
a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes
will lay between their little breasts
my strong fingers beneath the snow
into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass
their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
with the bulge and nuzzle of the sea

2.

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)
and Maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and
milly befriended a stranded star whose rays five
languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone
for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Shenandoah

American Folksong, arranged by James Erb

O, Shenandoah, I long to see you,
And hear your rolling river
O, Shenandoah, I long to see you
Away, we’re bound away,
Across the wide Missouri.
I long to see your smiling valley
And hear your rolling river
I long to see you smiling valley
Away, we’re bound away,
Across the wide Missouri.
‘Tis seven long years since last I see you
And hear your rolling river
‘Tis seven long years since last I see you
Away, we’re bound away,
Across the wide Missouri.

The Coolin (The Fair Haired One)

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

From a poem by James Stephens

Come with me, under my coat,
And we will drink our fill
Of the milk of the white goat,
Or wine if it be thy will
And we will talk, until
Talk is a trouble, too,
Out on the side of the hill;
And nothing is left to do,
But an eye to look into an eye;
And a hand in a hand to slip;
And a sigh to answer a sigh;
And a lip to find out a lip!
What if the night be black!
Or the air on the mountain chill!
Where the goat lies down in her track,
And all but the fern is still!
Stay with me, under my coat!
And we will drink our fill
Of the milk of the white goat,
Out on the side of the hill!

Agnus Dei

Transcribed from Adagio for Strings

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, grant us peace.

Stabat Mater

Juan Gutierrez de Padilla (c.1595-1664)

Stabat Mater dolorosa iuxta
Crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius.
Cuius animam gementem, constristatam
et dolentem pertransivit gladius.

The anguished mother stood weeping
by the cross on which her son was hanging
A sword pierced her lamenting, grieving heart
that shared his anguish.

Xicochi Conetzintle

Gaspar Fernandes (c.1565-1629)

Xicochi, Xicochi, Xicochi conetzintle,
Cao mitz huihi joco en angelos me,
En angelos me,
Alleluia, Alleluia.

Go to sleep, Go to sleep, Go to sleep, little on,
Surely the angels will carry you on the path,
Little green one.

Felices Ter

Randall Thompson (1899-1984)

Felices ter et amplius,
quos irrupta tenet copula
nec malis divolsus querimoniis
suprema citius solvet amor die

Thrice happy they, and even more,
whom a bond unbroken ever binds,
who are not torn apart by evil quarrelling,
whose love is dissolved only at death’s final day.

Alleluia

Randall Thompson (1899-1984)

Alleluia

O Magnum Mysterium

Morten Lauridsen b.1943)

O magnum mysterium et admirabile sacramentum
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum
jacentem in praesepio.
Beata virgo cujus viscera
meruerunt portare Dominum Christum.
Alleluia.

O great mystery, and wondrous sacrament,
That animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in their manger!
Blessed virgin whose womb was worthy to bear
The Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia.

In the Beginning

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Text from Genesis, Chapter I:1-31 and II:1-7

1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form, and void; darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from darkness.
5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding see, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that is was good.
13. And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and year.
15. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.
18. And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that is was good.
22. God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that is was good.
26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27. So God created main in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
4. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
5. And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
6. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
7. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

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