By Scot Hanna-Weir
She’s ten today; The world is Bridget’s.
She’s found her way to double digits.
So drink a toast, a tasty tipple,
That double digits may grow to triple.
It is not every day that you get to celebrate someone making it to triple digits and on August 16th of this year, that is exactly what Kirke Mechem will do. Born in Wichita, Kansas in 1925, Kirke has spent the last century creating a diverse output of wonderful music for almost any kind of musical genre you can imagine, though the University of Kansas gave him an honorary doctorate for his “notable contributions to choral music and opera” in particular.
More about KirkeKirke entered Stanford as a creative-writing major, changed his major to music, earned an MA at Harvard, conducted and taught at Stanford, and turned down a similar job at Harvard in order to concentrate on composition.
He lived three years in Vienna, where he came to the attention of Josef Krips, who later championed the composer’s orchestral works as conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. Mechem was guest of honor at the 1990 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and was invited back for an all-Mechem symphonic concert by the USSR Radio-Television Orchestra. He was granted a lifetime-achievement award by the National Opera Association, and has eight doctoral dissertations written about his music.
His operas have received international acclaim: “sharp, lively opera buffa” (Die Presse, Vienna); his symphonies won brilliant reviews in Moscow: “a master symphonist” (Musical Observer, Russia); his string quartet was played on tour by both the Czech Quartet and the New Zurich Quartet: “searches sharply and deeply without sentimentality” (San Francisco Examiner); his piano sonata was called “an important work, rich in ideas, modern without exaggeration” (I Vradyni, Athens, Greece); and his many choral works have earned him the title, “dean of American choral composers.” The Choral Journal called him “one of America’s most prolific and imaginative composers”.
100: Celebrating Kirke MechemThis evening, we bring the Bay Area together to celebrate our beloved Kirke with the combined voices of four different choral ensembles and the San José Chamber Orchestra. Just like Kirke’s compositional output, tonight’s program is incredibly varied, but all with something specific to communicate. Our guest conductor, Eliza Rubenstein, shares in common with Kirke his English major beginnings, and perhaps it is because of this that his love of text and the clear importance of the text in the derivation of every work on this program is so apparent. Even in the lightest of pieces, the first three selections from his Birthdays: Round Numbers, Kirke still finds ways to treat the text with clarity and importance that unfolds in the musical language around it. And this gift for text becomes particularly notable in his works like American Trio, Earth My Song, Island in Space, and tonight’s selections from Songs of the Slave.
Each movement of Birthdays: Round Numbers began as a round and then was outfitted for the concert version that you are hearing this evening. Many of the rounds were original poetry composed by Kirke, often for a specific person or group. The full set of rounds gives a shout to each decade from 10 to 70, but in tonight’s program we’ll only hear about the ages of 10, 50, and 70. The last movement asks, “Is Seventy Old?” and gives a list of a number of artists and authors who created great works late into their life. I like to think Kirke is proof of the last line of this text: “Shout, ‘World, here I come! I just got started.’ Tahdah!”
Earth My Song is also a collection of text by Kirke Mechem, but not the same one you might be thinking. In this case, the texts are by Kirke F. Mechem (1889-1985), Kirke’s father. The set of three pieces is holistic with the initial material of the first movement returning near the end of the third. Like much of Kirke’s music, the set grapples with death. In the first movement, each verse is a different season of our lives. In Spring, everything seems so new. In Summer, we search for truths previously unknown. In Autumn, those previous truths seem so far away and the mystery of our youthful discovery disappears. But in Winter, we “go where truth is found: Earth my song, earth my wage, In the still and starless ground.”
The second movement, Isle of the Dead, is a vivid picture of the painful and unrelenting searching for those that we loved after death. The graves open and the dead walk the earth again. The dead are those who lived long lives, but also those who died in their prime, and those who died as children. None of them can find the other and are endlessly searching. And that, it is described, “is the first intimation and outpost of hell”.
But as hopeless or dark as the first two movements may seem, the third, Rebirth, gives us hope in the image of the rose. A rose that hangs on too long and must finally succumb to death in winter, only to be reborn again in time. Perhaps time exposes Death, not just for the first spring roses, but for us all.
American Trio is a set of three pieces on texts by American poets that was commissioned by Old First Concerts, San Francisco in 2003. The premiere was particularly Bay Area with participation from The San Francisco Chamber Singers (Robert Geary, Director), San Francisco Choral Artists (Magen Solomon, Director), and San Jose State University Choraliers (Charlene Archibeque, Director). Kristina Nakagawa sang in the Choraliers during this premiere and actually conducted one of the movements for the performance, so it is only fitting in celebrating Kirke that she returns to this set.
The first movement, Fire and Ice, sets the poetry of Robert Frost and is a dialogue between the voice parts throughout the majority of the piece, nodding to the multitude of perspectives presented in phrases like: “Some say the world will end in fire.” The second movement, on poetry by Edwin Arlington Robinson sets his haunting “Richard Cory”. The piece begins by painting the picture of how admired Richard Cory is and how so many aspire to be just like him if they could. But however the world may view a person, there is always the inner turmoil that may not be seen on the outside. Finally, the third movement is on a text by e. e. cummings. The setting perfectly captures the frenetic nature and enthusiasm of spring and of sweet, young, blooming love.
In Satan Hates Music, Kirke creates a text inspired by the writings of Martin Luther and describes both the ways that Satan despises music (as might have been obvious from the title) and the incredible power of music to do good and make beauty. Kirke often accompanies the good things about music with nods to J. S. Bach, while Satan almost always appears with the interval of a tritone (or as it was known by at least the early 1700s, diabolus in musica, or the devil in music).
Former Astronaut Russell Schweickart contributed some of the text to Island in Space and writes about Kirke’s setting:
“You realize that on that small spot is everything that means anything to you, — all history, all poetry, all music … all death, birth, love, tears … all on that small spot… I hope that people are able as they listen to Mechem’s setting to place themselves, momentarily at least, in a space where they can in some sense look back not only at the earth as I did, but also at humankind and where we are going as a people, as a life form, as we move into the future.”
Our guest conductor this evening, Eliza Rubenstein, describes her conducting the Carnegie Hall premiere of Songs of the Slave as “the no-doubt-about-it pinnacle of my musical life (so far)”. However, she also goes on to say that her “entire 20+-year friendship with Kirke is an ongoing and ever-renewing highlight”. It was Eliza’s idea that we put on this party, and we are so delighted that she is joining us to conduct two of the movements from Kirke’s cantata on this concert. Blow Ye The Trumpet is the opening movement of the cantata and Danuel explores the connection of the deliverance of the biblical figure Daniel and the abolitionist John Brown. The question throughout this variation on the spiritual Danuel is: if God delivered Daniel, then why not everyone?
The final work on tonight’s program is Kirke’s extended cantata, Singing is So Good a Thing, or SISGAT as we all have affectionately come to call it. The subtitle of the work, “An Elizabethan Recreation” and the author of the text (and some of the music), William Byrd, give us a good indication of where the work is going. Here, Kirke presents multiple movements setting Byrd’s text from 1588 on why everyone should sing. Highlights include (in paraphrase):
In between each of the choral movements, there is a short interlude which is often an orchestration of keyboard music by Byrd, or in the case of Ayre, a solo vocal piece. The writing is both quite “renaissanc-y” and full of modern dissonances and cleverness. Beyond this, the piece is littered with little inside jokes for the choir or instruments. For instance, in the score for the tenth movement, Dialogue, Kirke writes in lyrics for the instruments who take offense to the idea that there’s nothing that compares to the voices of men. At the very end of the work, there is a moment where we wish all men would learn to sing, and the tenors and basses don’t quite find the harmony that they might have been looking for. Like so much of Kirke’s music, there are moments of delightful and ridiculous humor, movements of beautiful and dramatic writing, and a fundamental love of text in musical form. The joyfulness of Kirke’s love of all these things is so apparent in his work.
Kirke closes his memoir, Believe Your Ears: Life of a Lyric Composer, with these thoughts:
Great art is more than beautiful, more than joyful, more than exciting, more than consoling. It is life-affirming. It brings forth our greatest faith in the human race. When I hear overwhelmingly great music, I feel wonder and gratitude that one human being has been able to construct such magnificence. Tears come to my eyes, as they do when I walk into an exhibit and am suddenly struck by the immense beauty of a painting. If mankind can conceive such visions and achieve the enormous skill to make them live in the hearts of all of us, what are we not capable of? A work of art is a celebration of humanity—not only the humanity of its creator, but of the capacity of all humans to understand, to love and to be nourished by art. This phenomenon is a kind of miracle, which we must forever treasure.
She’s ten today; The world is Bridget’s.
She’s found her way to double digits.
So drink a toast, a tasty tipple,
That double digits may grow to triple.
- Bridget at Ten, Kirke Mechem
It is not every day that you get to celebrate someone making it to triple digits and on August 16th of this year, that is exactly what Kirke Mechem will do. Born in Wichita, Kansas in 1925, Kirke has spent the last century creating a diverse output of wonderful music for almost any kind of musical genre you can imagine, though the University of Kansas gave him an honorary doctorate for his “notable contributions to choral music and opera” in particular.
More about KirkeKirke entered Stanford as a creative-writing major, changed his major to music, earned an MA at Harvard, conducted and taught at Stanford, and turned down a similar job at Harvard in order to concentrate on composition.
He lived three years in Vienna, where he came to the attention of Josef Krips, who later championed the composer’s orchestral works as conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. Mechem was guest of honor at the 1990 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and was invited back for an all-Mechem symphonic concert by the USSR Radio-Television Orchestra. He was granted a lifetime-achievement award by the National Opera Association, and has eight doctoral dissertations written about his music.
His operas have received international acclaim: “sharp, lively opera buffa” (Die Presse, Vienna); his symphonies won brilliant reviews in Moscow: “a master symphonist” (Musical Observer, Russia); his string quartet was played on tour by both the Czech Quartet and the New Zurich Quartet: “searches sharply and deeply without sentimentality” (San Francisco Examiner); his piano sonata was called “an important work, rich in ideas, modern without exaggeration” (I Vradyni, Athens, Greece); and his many choral works have earned him the title, “dean of American choral composers.” The Choral Journal called him “one of America’s most prolific and imaginative composers”.
100: Celebrating Kirke MechemThis evening, we bring the Bay Area together to celebrate our beloved Kirke with the combined voices of four different choral ensembles and the San José Chamber Orchestra. Just like Kirke’s compositional output, tonight’s program is incredibly varied, but all with something specific to communicate. Our guest conductor, Eliza Rubenstein, shares in common with Kirke his English major beginnings, and perhaps it is because of this that his love of text and the clear importance of the text in the derivation of every work on this program is so apparent. Even in the lightest of pieces, the first three selections from his Birthdays: Round Numbers, Kirke still finds ways to treat the text with clarity and importance that unfolds in the musical language around it. And this gift for text becomes particularly notable in his works like American Trio, Earth My Song, Island in Space, and tonight’s selections from Songs of the Slave.
Each movement of Birthdays: Round Numbers began as a round and then was outfitted for the concert version that you are hearing this evening. Many of the rounds were original poetry composed by Kirke, often for a specific person or group. The full set of rounds gives a shout to each decade from 10 to 70, but in tonight’s program we’ll only hear about the ages of 10, 50, and 70. The last movement asks, “Is Seventy Old?” and gives a list of a number of artists and authors who created great works late into their life. I like to think Kirke is proof of the last line of this text: “Shout, ‘World, here I come! I just got started.’ Tahdah!”
Earth My Song is also a collection of text by Kirke Mechem, but not the same one you might be thinking. In this case, the texts are by Kirke F. Mechem (1889-1985), Kirke’s father. The set of three pieces is holistic with the initial material of the first movement returning near the end of the third. Like much of Kirke’s music, the set grapples with death. In the first movement, each verse is a different season of our lives. In Spring, everything seems so new. In Summer, we search for truths previously unknown. In Autumn, those previous truths seem so far away and the mystery of our youthful discovery disappears. But in Winter, we “go where truth is found: Earth my song, earth my wage, In the still and starless ground.”
The second movement, Isle of the Dead, is a vivid picture of the painful and unrelenting searching for those that we loved after death. The graves open and the dead walk the earth again. The dead are those who lived long lives, but also those who died in their prime, and those who died as children. None of them can find the other and are endlessly searching. And that, it is described, “is the first intimation and outpost of hell”.
But as hopeless or dark as the first two movements may seem, the third, Rebirth, gives us hope in the image of the rose. A rose that hangs on too long and must finally succumb to death in winter, only to be reborn again in time. Perhaps time exposes Death, not just for the first spring roses, but for us all.
American Trio is a set of three pieces on texts by American poets that was commissioned by Old First Concerts, San Francisco in 2003. The premiere was particularly Bay Area with participation from The San Francisco Chamber Singers (Robert Geary, Director), San Francisco Choral Artists (Magen Solomon, Director), and San Jose State University Choraliers (Charlene Archibeque, Director). Kristina Nakagawa sang in the Choraliers during this premiere and actually conducted one of the movements for the performance, so it is only fitting in celebrating Kirke that she returns to this set.
The first movement, Fire and Ice, sets the poetry of Robert Frost and is a dialogue between the voice parts throughout the majority of the piece, nodding to the multitude of perspectives presented in phrases like: “Some say the world will end in fire.” The second movement, on poetry by Edwin Arlington Robinson sets his haunting “Richard Cory”. The piece begins by painting the picture of how admired Richard Cory is and how so many aspire to be just like him if they could. But however the world may view a person, there is always the inner turmoil that may not be seen on the outside. Finally, the third movement is on a text by e. e. cummings. The setting perfectly captures the frenetic nature and enthusiasm of spring and of sweet, young, blooming love.
In Satan Hates Music, Kirke creates a text inspired by the writings of Martin Luther and describes both the ways that Satan despises music (as might have been obvious from the title) and the incredible power of music to do good and make beauty. Kirke often accompanies the good things about music with nods to J. S. Bach, while Satan almost always appears with the interval of a tritone (or as it was known by at least the early 1700s, diabolus in musica, or the devil in music).
Former Astronaut Russell Schweickart contributed some of the text to Island in Space and writes about Kirke’s setting:
“You realize that on that small spot is everything that means anything to you, — all history, all poetry, all music … all death, birth, love, tears … all on that small spot… I hope that people are able as they listen to Mechem’s setting to place themselves, momentarily at least, in a space where they can in some sense look back not only at the earth as I did, but also at humankind and where we are going as a people, as a life form, as we move into the future.”
Our guest conductor this evening, Eliza Rubenstein, describes her conducting the Carnegie Hall premiere of Songs of the Slave as “the no-doubt-about-it pinnacle of my musical life (so far)”. However, she also goes on to say that her “entire 20+-year friendship with Kirke is an ongoing and ever-renewing highlight”. It was Eliza’s idea that we put on this party, and we are so delighted that she is joining us to conduct two of the movements from Kirke’s cantata on this concert. Blow Ye The Trumpet is the opening movement of the cantata and Danuel explores the connection of the deliverance of the biblical figure Daniel and the abolitionist John Brown. The question throughout this variation on the spiritual Danuel is: if God delivered Daniel, then why not everyone?
The final work on tonight’s program is Kirke’s extended cantata, Singing is So Good a Thing, or SISGAT as we all have affectionately come to call it. The subtitle of the work, “An Elizabethan Recreation” and the author of the text (and some of the music), William Byrd, give us a good indication of where the work is going. Here, Kirke presents multiple movements setting Byrd’s text from 1588 on why everyone should sing. Highlights include (in paraphrase):
- It’s easy
- It’s healthy
- It’s good for speaking
- Instrumental music has nothing on vocal music
In between each of the choral movements, there is a short interlude which is often an orchestration of keyboard music by Byrd, or in the case of Ayre, a solo vocal piece. The writing is both quite “renaissanc-y” and full of modern dissonances and cleverness. Beyond this, the piece is littered with little inside jokes for the choir or instruments. For instance, in the score for the tenth movement, Dialogue, Kirke writes in lyrics for the instruments who take offense to the idea that there’s nothing that compares to the voices of men. At the very end of the work, there is a moment where we wish all men would learn to sing, and the tenors and basses don’t quite find the harmony that they might have been looking for. Like so much of Kirke’s music, there are moments of delightful and ridiculous humor, movements of beautiful and dramatic writing, and a fundamental love of text in musical form. The joyfulness of Kirke’s love of all these things is so apparent in his work.
Kirke closes his memoir, Believe Your Ears: Life of a Lyric Composer, with these thoughts:
Great art is more than beautiful, more than joyful, more than exciting, more than consoling. It is life-affirming. It brings forth our greatest faith in the human race. When I hear overwhelmingly great music, I feel wonder and gratitude that one human being has been able to construct such magnificence. Tears come to my eyes, as they do when I walk into an exhibit and am suddenly struck by the immense beauty of a painting. If mankind can conceive such visions and achieve the enormous skill to make them live in the hearts of all of us, what are we not capable of? A work of art is a celebration of humanity—not only the humanity of its creator, but of the capacity of all humans to understand, to love and to be nourished by art. This phenomenon is a kind of miracle, which we must forever treasure.
