By Scot Hanna-Weir
Choral music has been going wild for centuries, and it seems that even for the most serious of composers, when writing about animals they can have a little more fun. It is with that spirit that we present this afternoon’s concert. For many of us performing on this stage, our love of music and singing in choir began at an early age, and we hope that by presenting a concert that can be engaging for our youngest audience members, but also intellectually challenging for the most seasoned of us, we can help kindle a spark in the next generation of choral singers.
With that in mind, we should mention that this afternoon’s performance is still a concert in the traditional sense and that we encourage standard concert etiquette: clapping at the end of multi-movement works, not between, trying to sit quietly and attentively when music is being performed. However, we’d also like to encourage everyone to be unusually tolerant of any stray cheering, clapping, moaning, or other noise making and rustling that might happen. We perform music with the hopes that it moves you as an audience, and if that moving comes with a little extra noise today’s performance, let us celebrate how we accomplished that and not shame them for sharing.
* * *
Ogden Nash (1902-1971) was well known for his comic light-verse, and that is shown with tremendous sensitivity in Eric Whitacre’s six settings of Nash poems on animals. While the regular choral concert attendee might remember Whitacre for his lush cluster chords and evocative harmonic shifts (which admittedly, these miniatures do contain to some degree), his two volumes of Animal Crackers are much more concerned with text painting and character. Each short piece captures the animal perfectly and sets up the clever turns of Nash’s poetry with wit and ease.
As a side note, to any parents in the audience of children of any age, Nash offers this advice to you:
Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore,
And that’s what parents were created for.
* * *
The Silver Swan by English composer Orlando Gibbons is perhaps one of the most serious selections on the program. The text, likely composed by Sir Christopher Hatton is a retelling of what was an ancient Greek myth that swans, having lived a mute life, would sing their “swan song” as they died. The end of the text that Gibbons sets: “More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise” reveals a frustration with the times and of those who are too willing to speak their mind when they have nothing worth saying.
The final selection from our Renaissance set is from a Madrigal Comedy. Banchieri was a particularly prolific composer in this genre that blended what might be seen as the beginnings of opera with the madrigal. The piece is in two parts, first a capricciata that sets the stage: the animals have gathered, and they are going to improvise a counterpoint over a bass line. In the second part, the contrapunto (counterpoint), the animals “improvise” using their unique sounds over a moral sung by the bass in long notes. Two choruses of “fa la las” set off the counterpoint.
* * *
After beginning with a bunch of real animals, it seems right that we should find some imaginary creatures as well! Andrea Ramsey’s set of five Imaginary Creatures captures the wonder and humor of the young authors whom she set. She writes about the work:
With 2020 and 2021 being such challenging years, I found myself with a greater need for joy and laughter in my own world and guessed that others might feel similarly. I have also always loved writing in miniature form. There is something so satisfying about the compact nature of small writes. Beyond the delight of creating a whole world or telling a story in 12 to 90 seconds, they also appeal to my desire for variety (sometimes I get bored easily 😀)
After searching several books (both prose and poetry) and struggling to find the right kinds of texts I was seeking, I though of how many dear friends I have with young children (or grandchildren). Kids are both hilarious and richly imaginative, so why not ask my friends to interview their children about these creatures? I sent the request (along with a series of questions and compensation for their time) and in return, my friends sent me links to adorable videos of their children/grandchildren talking about fairies, mermaids, unicorns, imaginary friends, dragons, and werewolves. I transcribed the interviews, and began selecting the most imaginative and humorous tidbits to assemble as the texts in this work. You’ll notice werewolf did not make the cut. Not for lack of material, but rather I had so much material that I decided to save that idea for a standalone work about werewolves at some point down the road.
As a fun personal connection to this work, Ewan and Blythe MacMullen are the children of my friend Kristina MacMullen, who is currently the director of choral activities at Baylor University, but first came into my life as my predecessor at the Tecumseh Middle School and High School choir job in Tecumseh, MI.
* * *
Many composers have created a set of pieces around the two William Blake poems, The Lamb and The Tyger. This is indeed the case with Andrew Miller, whose setting of The Tyger has a companion piece that sets the lamb. However, in this concert, we create a different kind of companion for this usual pairing by offering Nathaniel Dett’s Listen to the Lambs. Described by Dett as a religious characteristic, it draws on the style of traditional spirituals, but is a dramatic and varied composition. Paired with Miller’s Tyger, which begins with full complex chords and then transitions into a pulsating and crackling ostinato texture that accompanies the eerie melody line throughout the composition.
* * *
David von Kampen’s the bee and the frog are a return to his early compositional roots. As a junior in high school, his first two choral compositions were settings of children’s poems, and so he thought to return to the idea as he prepared for his D.M.A. composition recital at the University of Kansas. The Honey Bee has a buoyant accompaniment in the piano that suggests the constant motion of these two creatures and the ways that they happily move over the earth.
* * *
Christine Donkin has also drawn upon Ogden Nash for inspiration in her setting of Four Choral Critters that are hilariously divided into two sets (The First Two and The Other Two). In today’s concert, we present three of these four pieces: The Duck, The Llama, and The Guppy. The Duck and The Guppy were both pieces that the chorale recorded and produced as virtual choir videos during the pandemic (with some hilarious video submissions that you can see on our Santa Clara Chorale YouTube channel), so it is a delight to return to these pieces in person.
* * *
Joan Szymko’s setting of Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things gives us a moment for pause and reflection in our concert as we think about what we can learn from the creatures who walk the earth with us. There is a tremendous stillness and beauty to Szymko’s setting that perfectly captures the Berry poetry. The calm waters, lying down gently on the floor of the forest, and the sense of freedom embodied in the final lines of the poem are all fully felt in this sensitive piece.
* * *
Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky is described in a looking-glass book that Alice finds lying on a table in Through the Looking Glass. When she first discovers the poem, it is in mirror image, and then realizing that she can hold it up to a mirror, she reads through the poem that she found. Her reaction is much like ours the first time we went through it:
"It seems very pretty", she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see, she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate—"
Sam Pottle’s setting of Jabberwocky fully embraces the nonsense character of the text and evokes its adventuring spirit. You’ll hear the choir accompanied throughout by a variety of percussion instruments, played by members of the choir. We hope that whether you understand all the words or not, you’ll enjoy the wild adventure.
Choral music has been going wild for centuries, and it seems that even for the most serious of composers, when writing about animals they can have a little more fun. It is with that spirit that we present this afternoon’s concert. For many of us performing on this stage, our love of music and singing in choir began at an early age, and we hope that by presenting a concert that can be engaging for our youngest audience members, but also intellectually challenging for the most seasoned of us, we can help kindle a spark in the next generation of choral singers.
With that in mind, we should mention that this afternoon’s performance is still a concert in the traditional sense and that we encourage standard concert etiquette: clapping at the end of multi-movement works, not between, trying to sit quietly and attentively when music is being performed. However, we’d also like to encourage everyone to be unusually tolerant of any stray cheering, clapping, moaning, or other noise making and rustling that might happen. We perform music with the hopes that it moves you as an audience, and if that moving comes with a little extra noise today’s performance, let us celebrate how we accomplished that and not shame them for sharing.
* * *
Ogden Nash (1902-1971) was well known for his comic light-verse, and that is shown with tremendous sensitivity in Eric Whitacre’s six settings of Nash poems on animals. While the regular choral concert attendee might remember Whitacre for his lush cluster chords and evocative harmonic shifts (which admittedly, these miniatures do contain to some degree), his two volumes of Animal Crackers are much more concerned with text painting and character. Each short piece captures the animal perfectly and sets up the clever turns of Nash’s poetry with wit and ease.
As a side note, to any parents in the audience of children of any age, Nash offers this advice to you:
Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore,
And that’s what parents were created for.
* * *
The Silver Swan by English composer Orlando Gibbons is perhaps one of the most serious selections on the program. The text, likely composed by Sir Christopher Hatton is a retelling of what was an ancient Greek myth that swans, having lived a mute life, would sing their “swan song” as they died. The end of the text that Gibbons sets: “More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise” reveals a frustration with the times and of those who are too willing to speak their mind when they have nothing worth saying.
The final selection from our Renaissance set is from a Madrigal Comedy. Banchieri was a particularly prolific composer in this genre that blended what might be seen as the beginnings of opera with the madrigal. The piece is in two parts, first a capricciata that sets the stage: the animals have gathered, and they are going to improvise a counterpoint over a bass line. In the second part, the contrapunto (counterpoint), the animals “improvise” using their unique sounds over a moral sung by the bass in long notes. Two choruses of “fa la las” set off the counterpoint.
* * *
After beginning with a bunch of real animals, it seems right that we should find some imaginary creatures as well! Andrea Ramsey’s set of five Imaginary Creatures captures the wonder and humor of the young authors whom she set. She writes about the work:
With 2020 and 2021 being such challenging years, I found myself with a greater need for joy and laughter in my own world and guessed that others might feel similarly. I have also always loved writing in miniature form. There is something so satisfying about the compact nature of small writes. Beyond the delight of creating a whole world or telling a story in 12 to 90 seconds, they also appeal to my desire for variety (sometimes I get bored easily 😀)
After searching several books (both prose and poetry) and struggling to find the right kinds of texts I was seeking, I though of how many dear friends I have with young children (or grandchildren). Kids are both hilarious and richly imaginative, so why not ask my friends to interview their children about these creatures? I sent the request (along with a series of questions and compensation for their time) and in return, my friends sent me links to adorable videos of their children/grandchildren talking about fairies, mermaids, unicorns, imaginary friends, dragons, and werewolves. I transcribed the interviews, and began selecting the most imaginative and humorous tidbits to assemble as the texts in this work. You’ll notice werewolf did not make the cut. Not for lack of material, but rather I had so much material that I decided to save that idea for a standalone work about werewolves at some point down the road.
As a fun personal connection to this work, Ewan and Blythe MacMullen are the children of my friend Kristina MacMullen, who is currently the director of choral activities at Baylor University, but first came into my life as my predecessor at the Tecumseh Middle School and High School choir job in Tecumseh, MI.
* * *
Many composers have created a set of pieces around the two William Blake poems, The Lamb and The Tyger. This is indeed the case with Andrew Miller, whose setting of The Tyger has a companion piece that sets the lamb. However, in this concert, we create a different kind of companion for this usual pairing by offering Nathaniel Dett’s Listen to the Lambs. Described by Dett as a religious characteristic, it draws on the style of traditional spirituals, but is a dramatic and varied composition. Paired with Miller’s Tyger, which begins with full complex chords and then transitions into a pulsating and crackling ostinato texture that accompanies the eerie melody line throughout the composition.
* * *
David von Kampen’s the bee and the frog are a return to his early compositional roots. As a junior in high school, his first two choral compositions were settings of children’s poems, and so he thought to return to the idea as he prepared for his D.M.A. composition recital at the University of Kansas. The Honey Bee has a buoyant accompaniment in the piano that suggests the constant motion of these two creatures and the ways that they happily move over the earth.
* * *
Christine Donkin has also drawn upon Ogden Nash for inspiration in her setting of Four Choral Critters that are hilariously divided into two sets (The First Two and The Other Two). In today’s concert, we present three of these four pieces: The Duck, The Llama, and The Guppy. The Duck and The Guppy were both pieces that the chorale recorded and produced as virtual choir videos during the pandemic (with some hilarious video submissions that you can see on our Santa Clara Chorale YouTube channel), so it is a delight to return to these pieces in person.
* * *
Joan Szymko’s setting of Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things gives us a moment for pause and reflection in our concert as we think about what we can learn from the creatures who walk the earth with us. There is a tremendous stillness and beauty to Szymko’s setting that perfectly captures the Berry poetry. The calm waters, lying down gently on the floor of the forest, and the sense of freedom embodied in the final lines of the poem are all fully felt in this sensitive piece.
* * *
Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky is described in a looking-glass book that Alice finds lying on a table in Through the Looking Glass. When she first discovers the poem, it is in mirror image, and then realizing that she can hold it up to a mirror, she reads through the poem that she found. Her reaction is much like ours the first time we went through it:
"It seems very pretty", she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see, she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate—"
Sam Pottle’s setting of Jabberwocky fully embraces the nonsense character of the text and evokes its adventuring spirit. You’ll hear the choir accompanied throughout by a variety of percussion instruments, played by members of the choir. We hope that whether you understand all the words or not, you’ll enjoy the wild adventure.
