Past event

Program

Director’s note

Dear friends,

I’m so pleased to welcome you to Legacy, the opening concert of our 2023-2024 season! This program and performance are the culmination of the work of so many wonderful and dedicated people, and a demonstration of what makes Lux unique in what has become a renaissance in the Western choral music scene. (Note: due to the length of this note, please feel free to click/tap here to skip to the venue information and reminders.)

When Lux first began, none of us had high-level choral experience. I was a prospective Music Education major, and I ended up waving my hands in front of the group only because I had recently sat in on a conducting class while on a college visit. It didn’t make sense for me to be the key originator of programming decisions in a group where everyone’s qualifications were equal(ly non-existent), and besides, we placed a high value on everyone involved having ownership of the art we created. We therefore designed a repertoire selection process that you’re unlikely to see in other arts organizations: Instead of putting the power of program-creation exclusively in my hands, our programs are developed by our repertoire committee, which I chair, then voted on by the singers at large. This particular program, built in recognition of the 150th birthdays of Max Reger and Sergei Rachmaninoff, was created in collaboration with tenor John Mullan and bass/Assistant Director Thomas Rust.

One of my favorite things about this process is that it brings a vast range of perspectives on the choral artform to our programming. It expands the styles and origins of the music we perform and challenges me to spend time developing fresh interpretations of music that I might not otherwise have studied. This is particularly true of Legacy, which includes a number of pieces I've been elated to dig into, and I’ve been belaboring some of my close friends with all sorts of fun facts and revelations as I've researched and score-studied.

Aside from bombarding friends with the fruits of my score-study, I’ve also applied this research to inform the way we’re presenting this music. We’ve named the program Legacy not only because of the indelible and unique legacies which our four featured composers built, but because of how these legacies were built, and what legacies & traditions their music borrowed from and expanded upon. 

Max Reger’s Acht Geistliche Gesänge (Eight Sacred Songs) were directly inspired by Bach’s famed chorales–an influence which shines through quite clearly on the first listen. These pieces form a sort of “through-line” of musical legacies: inspired by Bach, they were among the last songs Reger (who lived from 1873 to 1916) would finish before suffering a heart attack in his hotel bed in Leipzig, with the first proof of his eight songs sitting on his bedside table, only partially edited. 

Just a year before the publication of Acht Geistliche Gesänge in 1916, another composer finished a multi-movement work under similar circumstances: Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) completed his highly celebrated All-Night Vigil in response to a growing public interest in Russian sacred music, spurred by Pyotr Tchiakovsky's own All-Night Vigil published in 1882. We’ve chosen the stunning seventh movement of Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil as the final selection on our program tonight. It’s fitting that, much as Reger’s piece expands on Bach’s chorales, Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil is in many ways an extension of Tchaikovsky’s 1882 piece.

Amy Beach (1867-1944), much like Rachmaninoff and Reger, was very dedicated to the education of young composers and performers—in Beach’s case, women composers in particular. While Rachmaninoff and Reger drew from the music of their past to create music of the present, Beach tended to focus more on the art of contemporaries and on empowering the next generation. She often favored texts by contemporary poets, and showed great admiration for other female intellectuals, including poet Sara Teasdale, who gave Beach direct permission to set her poem for Dusk in June, and educator-researcher Elizabeth Agassiz, to whom Help Us, O God is dedicated. Although Beach wrote many pieces for vocalists and vocal ensembles, Beach was also renowned for her orchestral works. In fact, she often used her own art songs and choral pieces to store melodies and themes for later use in orchestral suites, sonatas, and other large-scale works.

While Beach stored melodies in pieces to use and develop them in later works, R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943) stored melodies for posterity. Dett, a Black Canadian-American composer, pianist, and educator, was a leading composer even at a time of far more rampant discrimination against African-Americans.He is known and celebrated for using his music to preserve and popularize African-American folk songs by incorporating them into the western classical music idiom. Whether in his pieces for choir, piano, or orchestra, his music nearly always includes influence from African-American folk songs, if not entire melodies and texts. 

Though Legacy is centered around Max Reger’s stunning Acht Geistliche Gesänge, we’ve decided in this program to separate his eight songs, and to pair them with pieces written by his contemporaries. We start with Der Mensch lebt und bestehet, the first movement of the Acht Geistliche Gesänge, introducing themes of glory, death, and fate which run strongly through the texts of our program tonight. We then proceed to our first pairing: Morgengesang and The Greenwood both draw on the beauty & radiance of daytime to illustrate love. Nachtlied and Dusk in June both pray for comfort going into the night, though one speaker wakes and the other does not. While there is a less direct connection between Unser lieben frauen traum and Gently, Lord, O Gently Lead Us, both are heavily redemption-themed: Mary’s dream in the Reger prophesies Jesus’s coming, which provides the hope for the second coming found in the Dett. Kreuzfahrerlied and When the Last Sea is Sailed both connect here through battle: the Reger is a battle hymn written in the beginnings of WWI, and the text of the Beach is a wish for death from the perspective of a Spanish naval captain captured in the Battle of Capo d’orio in 1528.

After intermission, we begin with two pieces which reflect on the state of humanity and our need for salvation in Beach’s Help Us, O God and Reger’s Das Agnus Dei. We then find ourselves again with a pairing connected through war: Schlachtgesang is another battle hymn written as WWI began, and while O Holy Lord is unquestionably about hope for and celebration of the eventual freedom of the enslaved people who first sang the original melody, it’s not impossible to imagine that the ongoing First World War would have added additional context to the “sin and sorrow” consistently referenced in the piece. We end the program with Reger’s Wir glauben and Shestopsalmiye, from Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, both of which are specific declarations of faith: a reason for being for many, which, like all faiths and creeds, connects generations past, present, and future.

We are so incredibly grateful for the privilege to prepare and perform this program together, surrounded by the supportive community we find ourselves in today. If you enjoy tonight’s concert and you are able to do so, please consider making a donation today to help ensure Lux’s ability to present concerts and projects like this and more. Just last month, we were selected to perform at the American Choral Directors Association conference in Providence, Rhode Island! While this is an immense honor, it is a costly endeavor, and we need your support now more than ever before. We’ve started a campaign to support our ACDA trip which you can visit online here. Our ushers can accept cash or checks for donation after the concert. You can also donate by credit/debit card at the merchandise table after the concert, or online here. (Checks should be made out to Lux Choir, Inc.) Lux is a 501(c)(3) organization; donations are tax-deductible. 

Please don’t forget to say hello after the concert! Whether this is your twentieth Lux concert or your first (of hopefully many!), we would love to meet you. We all so much enjoy getting to meet new friends and see old ones, too. I hope you enjoy the concert. We’re so glad you’re here.

—Robby Napoli
Artistic Director


Venue information and reminders

  • In the moments before the concert begins, please silence your cell phones and anything else that might beep or buzz. You are encouraged to use your phone to view this program during the concert, but please ensure it is silenced, and consider turning your screen brightness down as low as is possible while remaining comfortable for you.
  • Restrooms are accessible downstairs through the Gold Room (clearly indicated in the church foyer). The women’s restroom is at the bottom of the stairs, while the men’s restroom is through a hallway at the far left edge of the Gold Room. There is also an all-gender restroom within the utility room in the church foyer (clearly indicated with signage).

Max Reger (1873-1916)

1. Der Mensch lebt und bestehet

from 8 Geistliche Gesänge, Op. 138

About the work

Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger (1873-1916) was born in northern Bavaria at the end of the nineteenth century. He was widely known for his skill as an organist, conductor, and composer. The apogee of his career came in 1911 with his appointment as director of the Meiningen Court Orchestra. He died of a heart attack on May 11, 1916 while visiting Leipzig. The printer’s proofs of the Acht Geistliche Gesänge were found open at his bedside in the room where he passed away. 

Reger took all of the texts for the Acht Geistliche Gesänge from the Deutsche Psalter, edited by Will Vesper and published in 1913. Vesper’s anthology contains non-denominational religious poetry selected for what Vesper perceived as an essential, enduring Germanic character. Reger’s religious sensibilities – he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for his marriage to a divorced Protestant – along with the start of the First World War in July 1914 likely influenced this ecumenical and nationalistic composition. J.S. Bach’s pristine chorale writing was another influence, as Reger edited several works of Bach’s while drafting the Acht Geistliche Gesänge. In contrast with his other, often highly chromatic later works, Reger wrote the Acht Geistliche Gesänge with clear melodic and harmonic restraint to convey a sense of interior piety, complimenting the religious texts he selected. 

Text

Der Mensch lebt und bestehet
Nur eine kleine Zeit;
Und alle Welt vergehet
Mit ihrer Herrlichkeit.
Es ist nur Einer ewig und an allen Enden,
Und wir in Seinen Händen.
Matthias Claudius (1746-1815)

Translation

Man lives and exists
Only a little time;
And all the world passes away
With its glory.
There is only One eternal and at all ends,
And we [are] in His hands.
Translated by John Mullan

Max Reger (1873-1916)

2. Morgengesang

from 8 Geistliche Gesänge, Op. 138

Performance details

Morgengesang is part of a set with The Greenwood. As such, please refrain from applauding at the end of the piece.

About the work

Text

Du höchstes Licht, ewiger Schein,
du Gott und treuer Herre mein,
von dir der Gnaden Glanz ausgeht
und leuchtet schön gleich früh und spät.

Das ist der Herre Jesus Christ,
der ja die göttlich Wahrheit ist,
der mit seinr Lehr hell scheint und leucht,
bis er die Herzen zu ihm zeucht.

Er ist der ganzen Welte Licht,
dabei ein jeder klarlich sicht
den hellen, schönen, lichten Tag,
an dem er selig werden mag.
Johannes Zwick (1496-1542)

Translation

Thou highest light, eternal shine,
God and faithful Lord of mine,
From thee the radiance of grace emanates
And shines beautifully both early and late.

This is the Lord Jesus Christ,
Who is the divine truth,
Who shines and glows with his teaching,
Until he draws hearts to him.

He is the light of the whole world,
So that everyone can clearly see
The bright, beautiful, light day,
In which he may be blessed.
Translated by John Mullan

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

The Greenwood, Op. 110

Performance details

To the best of our knowledge, this piece has not been performed until today.

About the work

Amy Beach (1867-1944) lived, wrote, and performed in New England for most of her life. Her music was often inspired by the natural world around her, especially the natural world as she found it at the MacDowell Colony, an artists’ retreat in New Hampshire where she spent several summers. Many of her choral and vocal works were set to contemporary poetry, including this piece, which takes its text from William Lisle Bowles’s epic “The Grave of the Last Saxon.” Originally composed for children’s chorus, Beach arranged this piece for SATB voices in 1925. 

The Greenwood begins with a joyful depiction of a springtime walk through a meadow, and an appreciation of the beauty of nature together with a loved one. In the second part, the same musical theme returns in minor. The text here laments the change of season, bringing loss and deception. The end of the piece reverts to the original key, and brings with it the recognition that memories of spring and summer bring comfort and peace even in a time of sorrow.

Text

O when ‘tis summer weather,
And the yellow bee, with fairy sound,
The waters clear is humming round,
And the cuckoo sings unseen,
And the leaves are waving green,
O! then ‘tis sweet,
In some retreat to hear the murm’ring dove,
With those whom on earth alone we love,
And to wind thro’ the greenwood together.

But when ‘tis winter weather
And crosses grieve,
And friends deceive,
And rain and sleet the lattice beat,
O then ‘tis sweet to sit and sing
Of friends with whom in days of spring
We roamed thro’ the greenwood together.
William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850)

Max Reger (1873-1916)

3. Nachtlied

from 8 Geistliche Gesänge, Op. 138

Performance details

Nachtlied is part of a set with Dusk in June. As such, please refrain from applauding at the end of the piece.

About the work

Text

Die Nacht ist kommen,
Drin wir ruhen sollen;
Gott walts, zum Frommen 
Nach sein’m Wohlgefallen,
Daß wir uns legen
In seim Gleit und Segen,
Der Ruh zu pflegen.

Treib, Herr, von uns fern
Die unreinen Geister,
Halt die Nachtwach gern,
Sei selbst unser Schutzherr,
Beschirm Leib und Seel
Unter deinen Flügeln,
Send uns dein’ Engel!

Laß uns einschlafen
Mit guten Gedanken,
Fröhlich aufwachen
Und von dir nicht wanken;
Laß uns mit Züchten
Unser Tun und Dichten
Zu deim Preis richten!
Petrus Herbert (c. 1530-1571)

Translation

The night has come,
In it we shall rest;
God rules over the pious
According to his pleasure,
That we may lie down
In his guidance and blessing,
To cherish our rest.

Drive, O Lord, from us
The unclean spirits,
Keep the night's vigil gladly,
Be our guardian,
Protect our body and soul
Under thy wings,
Send us your angels!

Let us fall asleep
With good thoughts,
Awake cheerfully
And from thee not waver;
Let us, in thy keeping,
Our doings and our poems
To thy praise direct!
Translated by John Mullan

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

Dusk in June, Op. 82

About the work

Much of Beach’s music was composed for instruments, including works for piano, orchestra, and chamber ensembles. Her choral and vocal music is less well-known. Dusk in June is a particularly clear illustration of this. Composed for upper voices in 1917 to the poetry of Beach’s contemporary Sara Teasdale, the piece was later arranged for French horn, and is more commonly performed in that form. Dusk in June features heavy chromatic harmonies, and the text uses images from the natural world to express the sense that one lacks a joy or calm that others seem to find easily, and the longing to experience these feelings. The mood of the piece may have been influenced by Beach’s relationship with her aunt Ethel, who came to live with her in New Hampshire in 1916, and died of a terminal illness in 1918. 

The four voices intertwine and create dense harmonies and prolonged resolutions that leave the listener with the same feeling of longing expressed in the poetry. The first section ends with a nod towards a positive certainty, but the upper three voices bring back the opening theme, rocking the piece anxiously back towards uncertainty. The climax of the piece is a plea from the speaker to “like the birds, sing before night,” a hopeful prayer which the final bars suggest may be granted.

Text

Evening, and all the birds
In a chorus of shimmering sound
Are easing their hearts of joy
For miles around.

The air is blue and sweet,
The few first stars are white,—
Oh let me like the birds
Sing before night.
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

Max Reger (1873-1916)

4. Unser lieben Frauen Traum

from 8 Geistliche Gesänge, Op. 138

Performance details

Unser lieben Frauen Traum is part of a set with Gently, Lord, O Gently Lead Us. As such, please refrain from applauding at the end of the piece.

About the work

Text

Und unser lieben Frauen
der traumet ihr ein Traum,
wie unter ihrem Herzen
gewächsen wär ein Baum.

Und wie der Baum ein Schatten
gäb wohl über alle Land;
Herr Jesus Christ der Heiland
also ist er genannt.

Herr Jesus Christ der Heiland
ist unser Heil und Trost,
mit seiner bittern Marter
hat er uns all erlöst.
Anonymous

Translation

And our dear lady
Dreamed a dream
That under her heart
A tree had grown.

And that the tree would cast a shadow
Over all the land;
Lord Jesus Christ the Savior
He is called.

Lord Jesus Christ the Savior
Is our salvation and comfort,
With his bitter torture
He has redeemed us all.
Translated by John Mullan

R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943)

Gently, Lord, O Gently Lead Us

Performance details

Austin Nikirk, soprano soloist

About the work

R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943) was a Black Canadian-American composer, pianist, and educator, considered one of the leading American composers of his time. Most of his works incorporate Black folk melodies into western classical forms. Gently, Lord, O Gently Lead Us is a perfect example. While the composition’s structure and harmony are based on classical models, its themes are taken from a Bahamian spiritual originally sung at funerals. Dett lowers the original melody by a third and doubles all rhythmic values.

Even before Dett published Gently, Lord in 1924, its melodic source (“Dig my grave long an’ narrow”) drew attention from musicologist and critic Henry Krehbiel—remarkable at a time when Black art was more frequently discouraged or ignored. In a 1914 review, Krehbiel described the melody as “fairly Schumannesque in breadth and dignity.” Dett’s setting of the piece, which replaces the Bahamian text with the words of a hymn by Thomas Hastings, is written in a traditional rounded binary (ABA’) form in which the repeated A section is modified slightly. In this case, it accommodates the coda, set simply to the word “amen” as the basses create a pedaltone on a low F.

Text

Gently, Lord, O gently lead us
Pilgrims in this vale of tears,
Thru the trials yet decreed us,
Till our last great change appears.
When temptation’s darts assail us,
When in devious paths we stray,
Let Thy goodness never fail us,
Lead us in Thy perfect way.

In the hour of pain and anguish,
In the hour when death draws near,
Suffer not our hearts to languish,
Suffer not our souls to fear.
And when mortal life is ended,
Bid us in Thy bosom rest,
Till by angel bands attended,
We awake among the blest.
Thomas Hastings (1784-1872)

Max Reger (1873-1916)

5. Kreuzfahrerlied

from 8 Geistliche Gesänge, Op. 138

Performance details

Kreuzfahrerlied is part of a set with When The Last Sea is Sailed. As such, please refrain from applauding at the end of the piece.

About the work

Text

In Gottes Namen fahren wir,
seiner Gnaden begehren wir,
nun helf uns die Gottes Kraft
und das heilig Grab,
da Gott selber inne lag.
Kyrieleis.

Sanktus Petrus der ist gut,
der uns viel seiner Gnaden tut,
das gebeut ihm die Gottes Stimme.
Fröhlich nun fahren wir!
Nun hilf uns, edle Maria, zu dir
fröhlich und unverzagt!
Nun hilf uns, Maria, reine Magd.
Anonymous

Translation

In God's name we go,
His grace we desire,
Help us, power of God
And the holy grave,
Where God himself lay in repose.
Lord have mercy.

Saint Peter is good,
Who does us many of his graces,
God's voice commands him.
Happily now we go!
Now help us, noble Mary, to you
Joyful and undaunted!
Now help us, Mary, pure maiden.
Translated by John Mullan

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

When The Last Sea is Sailed, Op. 127

Performance details

To the best of our knowledge, this piece has not been performed until today.

About the work

When the Last Sea is Sailed is one of just eight pieces that Beach wrote for tenors and basses (compared to her output of over 150 pieces). The author of the piece’s text, John Masefield, was known for his depictions of life at sea, having spent several years in the British merchant marine in his youth. He published his first collection of poetry, Salt-Water Ballads, in 1902. These ballads include one of his most famous poems, “Sea-Fever,” as well as “D’Avalos’ Prayer,” which Beach sets in this piece. The poem is likely written from the perspective of the titular speaker, Alfonso d'Avalos, a naval captain and prisoner of war during the 1528 Battle of d'Orso.

Beach sets Masefield’s text with two markedly different sections in rounded binary (ABA’) form. The A section of the piece begins with a solemn tone, with the speaker resolved to his nearing end. Suddenly, the piece shifts to a quicker compound meter as the speaker describes a raging storm. The piece ends in a return to the original music, with an extended coda and a final prayer for God’s grace.

Text

When the last sea is sailed and last shallow charted,
When the last field is reaped and
The last harvest stored,
When the last fire is out and the last guest departed
Grant the last prayer that I shall pray,
Be good to me, O Lord.

And let me pass in a night at sea,
A night of storm and thunder,
In the loud crying of the wind
Through sail and rope and spar,
Send me a ninth great peaceful wave
To drown and roll me under
To the cold tunnyfishes home
Where the drowned galleons are.

And in the dim green quiet place
Far out of sight and hearing,
Grant I may hear at whiles
The wash and thresh of the sea foam
About the fine keen bows
Of the stately clippers steering
Towards the lone northern star
And the fair ports of home.
John Masefield (1878-1967)

Intermission 15m

Ended

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

Help Us, O God, Op. 50

Performance details

Austin Nikirk, Melodia Mae Rinaldi, Jenna Barbieri, Adam Whitman, John Logan Wood, Thomas Rust, soloists.

Help Us, O God is part of a set with Das Agnus Dei. As such, please refrain from applauding at the end of the piece.

About the work

This motet is one of Beach’s earliest pieces for choir, published in 1903. Help Us, O God requires both sensitivity and stamina from the choir, with expansive vocal ranges matched by a demand for refined musicianship. For this piece, Beach selected verses from the Book of Psalms (Psalms 79:5, 9; 95:6; 44:26) around themes of repentance, divine justice, and deliverance. The composition’s musical ambition is well suited to the gravity of its text.

Beach opens the first of three parts with a dense polyphonic texture, leading the choir along dramatic dynamic and melodic contours. The second part gives way to a calmer trio of upper voices. Beach’s affinity for close harmony is especially clear in this middle section, as the trio make use of and play off of each other’s melodic lines. The textural change also brings about a textual shift, with an invitation to worship and kneel before God. In the third and final part, Beach introduces a five-voice fugue. The altos lead the other parts, which follow in turn and explore the fugal subject’s melodic dimensions. Finally, all voices join together in a climactic, homophonic end to this masterful work.

Text

Help us, O God of our salvation,
For the glory of thy name.
O deliver us, and be merciful unto our sins.
O God, be merciful for Thy name’s sake.
O Lord, God of hosts, how long wilt Thou be
Angry against the prayer of Thy people?

Wilt Thou hide Thyself forever?
Shall Thy wrath burn like fire?
Why sleepest Thou? Awake, arise,
Cast us not off forever.
Wherefore hidest Thou thy face
And forgettest our misery and trouble?

Oh come, let us worship and bow down,
Come, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

Arise for our help, and redeem us
For thy mercies’ sake.
Adapted from several psalms

Max Reger (1873-1916)

6. Das Agnus Dei

from 8 Geistliche Gesänge, Op. 138

About the work

Text

O Lamm Gottes, unschüldig
am Stamm des Kreuzes geschlachtet,
all zeit gefunden düldig,
wiewohl du wurdst verachtet:
All Sünd hast du getragen,
sonst müßten wir verzagen,
erbarm dich unser, o Jesu.
Nikolaus Decius (1485-1541)

Translation

O Lamb of God, innocently
Slain on the trunk of the cross,
Ever patient,
Though you were despised:
All sin thou hast borne,
Or else we should despair,
Have mercy on us, O Jesus.
Translated by John Mullan

Max Reger (1873-1916)

7. Schlachtgesang

from 8 Geistliche Gesänge, Op. 138

Performance details

Schlachtgesang is part of a set with O Holy Lord. As such, please refrain from applauding at the end of the piece.

About the work

Text

Mit Gottes Hilf sei unser Fahrt!
Maria halt uns in der Wart!
Sankt Peter unser Hauptmann sei!
Unsere Sünde Herre Gott verzeih,
daß wir ewgen Todes frei!
Kyrie eleison.

Dank sei dir, Dank dem heiligen Gott,
des Himmels Fürst, Herr Sabaoth!
Allgegenwärtig Dreifaltigkeit,
steh uns bei zur Gereichtigkeit!
Lob und Dank sei dir geseit.
Kyrie eleison.
Matthias Kemnat (1429-1476)

Translation

With God's help may we journey on!
Mary, keep us in your protection!
Saint Peter be our leader!
Forgive our sins, Lord God,
That we may be free from eternal death!
Lord have mercy.

Thanks be to you, thanks to the holy God,
Prince of Heaven, Lord Sabaoth!
Omnipresent Trinity,
Help us to be just!
Praise and thanks be to you.
Lord have mercy.
Translated by John Mullan

R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943)

O Holy Lord

About the work

While the first of Dett’s pieces on our program borrows and modifies the melody and text of a Bahamian spiritual, O Holy Lord takes both melody and text without substantial alteration from a call-and-response Black American spiritual. Dett drew the original melody from The Story of the Jubilee Singers, a biographical history of the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers which includes a large collection of the repertoire they performed as they toured across the country. This melody is thus preserved secondarily in Dett's piece we are singing tonight, and first in the written repertoire of the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

O Holy Lord—one of Dett’s only pieces for 8-part choir—begins with the tenors and basses in four parts, slowly building to add the altos in unison, who then split when the sopranos enter together. When writing the modified call-and-response verses from the original spiritual, Dett invokes the six-winged seraphs, using the first entrance of upper voices to sing “holy, holy, holy” in place of new verse text. This is then followed by the “done with sin and sorrow” response found in the original verses. Fittingly, the first time the choir opens up to a widened eight-part texture is to sing the second iteration of “holy, holy, holy.” The original text is literally about being set free from sin by Jesus’s resurrection, and metaphorically a celebration of the eventual liberation of the enslaved people who likely first sang this melody. Given that Dett published this setting of the piece in 1916, it’s not impossible to imagine that, though the original meaning of the phrase “sin and sorrow” surely rang true for Dett, the ongoing First World War may have added another layer of meaning to the piece for him and for singers and audiences who performed or listened to it at the time.

Text

O holy Lord,
Done with sin and sorrow.
African-American spiritual

Max Reger (1873-1916)

8. Wir glauben an einen Gott

from 8 Geistliche Gesänge, Op. 138

About the work

Text

Wir glauben an einen Gott,
Schöpfer Himmels und der Erden;
mit Worten ließ er werden
alle Dinge zu seinem Gebot.
Von der Zarten ward er geboren,
Maria, der reinen, auserkoren
uns zu Trost und aller Christenheit.
Für uns wollte er leiden,
ob wir möchten vermeiden
schwere Pein, den Tod der Ewigkeit.
Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Translation

We believe in one God,
Creator of heaven and earth;
With words he made
All things to his commandment.
He was born from the tender one,
Mary, the pure, chosen to comfort us
and all Christendom.
He wanted to suffer for us,
If we wished to avoid
Severe pain, the death of eternity.
Translated by John Mullan

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

7. Shestopsalmiye

from All-Night Vigil, Op. 37

About the work

Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was one of the foremost pianists and composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was born in Russia, and lived there and in Germany until the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917. He spent the rest of his life touring as a concert pianist, with residences in Switzerland and the United States. 

Rachmaninoff’s opus 37, the All-Night Vigil, premiered in March of 1915 at a benefit concert for war relief. He wrote the entire fifteen-movement composition in less than two weeks from January to February 1915. The All-Night Vigil is widely regarded as the finest example of Russian sacred music and the culmination of decades of choral excellence in and around the Moscow Synodal School, the center of Orthodox church music in Tsarist Russia. Rachmaninoff selected texts for his composition from the Orthodox all-night vigil service, which comprises prayers to be said at certain times of day designated Vespers, Matins, and Prime. Rachmaninoff’s setting of the morning office, Matins, begins with movement seven of the All-Night Vigil. In the Shestopsalmiye or Six Psalms, the choir imitates the bells rung during this service while chanting “Glory to God in the highest.”

Text

Слава в вышних Богу,
и на земли мир,
в человецех благоволение.
Господи, устне мои отверзеши,
и уста моя возвестят хвалу Твою.

Transliteration

Sláva v vḯshñiẖ Bógu,
inaz̃emlí̃ m̃ir,
f cheloṽétseẖ blagovolé̃ ñiye.
Góspod̃i, ustñé moí otṽérz̃eshi,
i ustá moyá vozṽestá̃ t ẖvalú Tvoyú

Translation

Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth, peace,
Good will towards men.
O Lord, open thou my lips,
And my mouth shall show forth thy praise.

Performers

Soprano

  • Amanda Densmoor
  • Austin Nikirk
  • Melodia Mae Rinaldi
  • Abigail Winston

Alto

  • Jenna Barbieri
  • Ariana Parks
  • Anya Trudeau

Tenor

  • John Mullan
  • John-Paul Teti
  • Adam Whitman
  • John Logan Wood

Bass

  • Michael Brisentine
  • Ciaran Cain
  • Collin Power
  • Thomas Rust
  • Han Wagner

Donors

Concert Sponsor

  • Anonymous
  • Rick Hale

Patron

  • Denise Eggers
  • Davis Healy
  • Jeannette Mendonca
  • Frank & Kathy Napoli
  • Robby Napoli
  • Lenka Shallbetter
  • Dennis & Rebecca Teti
  • John-Paul Teti

Sponsor

  • Anonymous
  • Matthew Bowman
  • Allison & John Nikirk
  • Thomas Smith
  • Jason Spiegel
  • Max Tirador

Donor

  • Jason Edwards
  • Jo Evans
  • Carrie Ieda
  • Jared Ison
  • Anthea Jackson
  • Hannah Kolarik
  • Paul Mealor
  • Liana Stiegler Orndorff
  • Kimberly Parr
  • Jacob Allen Reed
  • Linda Rigsby
  • Ivette Torres
  • Adam Whitman

In-kind donor

  • Vigilante Coffee