Lux | Program - Howells: Requiem

From the director

Dear friends:

Welcome to Howells: Requiem, Lux’s final concert of our 11th season of programming. Austin Nikirk, Thomas Rust, Han Wagner, and I developed the program for this concert together. We started, first and foremost, with the titular piece of our program, Howells’s Requiem. When I was first conceiving the general concept for the program that would surround the Requiem, I was reminded of an old program we had once created for a concert that was cancelled due to the outbreak of COVID-19, based around songs of love & loss, the very ideas Howells—and the many others who’ve set Requiem texts—wrestle with in this piece.

The original Love & Loss program was centered on Samuel Barber’s Reincarnations, and so it felt fitting to include just a taste of that triptych in the form of “Mary Hynes,” the first of the set. Other remnants from that previous program include Edie Hill’s evocative We Bloomed in Spring, Caroline Shaw’s refreshing and the swallow, and Pēteris Plakidis’s spell-binding In Memoriam. New contributions came from across our programming team as we reshaped this old program around the Howells: Austin was particularly excited to include Sarah Rimkus’s arrangement of Africa, Thomas brought Britten’s ever-tender setting of Concord, and Han not only brought pieces to the table, but even wrote one, which we’re honored to premiere tonight: Hope!

Across this program are little moments that connect us to love, whether the excited love for a new piece of music, the home-like love of an old friend, or the melancholic love we experience amongst loss. Our most direct connections to this program include Han’s setting of Hope and Sarah Rimkus’s arrangement of Africa. Han’s work, of course, means much to us because Han wrote it, and it was such a joy to see the smiles across the room as we breathed life into Hope for the first time. We love to collaborate with talented young musicians, but when the composer is not just in the room but ingrained in our local community, it brings a special energy to the room. As for Africa, the original Sacred Harp tune on which it is based holds a great deal of significance for those of us who were fortunate to sing it during founding member John-Paul Teti’s wedding just two summers ago.

Those who’ve followed Lux a long time may remember We Bloomed in Spring, our opening piece for this concert, which acts this time as a sort of incipit. The text is a simple and poignant reflection on the beauty, even romance, of humanity’s time on earth. Though our eyes suffer seasons of life and death, our souls are divine, and even our bodies “the leaves of god:” Even as seasons of life may bring loss, we are reminded of, and surrounded by (remnants of) love. A story I love to tell in relation to our first outing with this piece in 2019 is one in which Thomas was walking into rehearsal as we worked this piece by Edie Hill. At the next rehearsal break, Thomas told me hearing that piece from the hallway was one of his first moments of just listening to Lux that put our progress as an ensemble into perspective, because the piece sounded so good in our voices. Today I look back on the work it took to get to that point in 2019 and the ease with which we achieved beauty in the piece seven years later with pride and gratitude.

All this, though, and I’ve yet to give proper acknowledgement to the heart of this program, Herbert Howells’s absolutely stunning Requiem, conducted tonight by our Associate Artistic Director, Thomas Rust. I encourage you to read our program note on the piece (and on the rest of our music tonight), but I will simply put it this way: Howells’s Requiem is (likely) your favorite choral artist’s favorite choral piece. We’ve so much enjoyed digging into the winding and twisting, yet simple and exposed, harmonies of Herbert Howells. His writing makes it clear that the deep connection to grief Howells depicts can only be felt through love. Bruce Tammen, the Chicago Chorale’s founding Artistic Director, said it best, I think: “No one expresses grief, or hope, better than Howells.”

Our 11th season has been one of much transition, both internally and externally, for Lux, and there are many people for whom I’m very, very grateful. First and foremost, I’d like to thank my parents who don’t just pick me up from the airport as I fly in from my graduate classes in Denton, Texas, but willingly house their 28-year-old son for days and weeks at a time so that I am able to be present for Lux rehearsals. I’m also grateful to my friends Anya (on this concert tonight) and Henrique, for housing me for a weekend while my parents were ill. I should especially shout out the multiple times my mom, Kathy, picked me up from DCA or BWI before 7am after a red eye during this concert cycle.

Inside of Lux’s formal structure, Han continues his great work as our new Director of Operations, an often thankless role that is so essential to the wealth and health of our community. You will see some of Thomas Rust’s work tonight as our Associate Artistic Director–without him we would have only had half of a concert prepared for you tonight, and I am so grateful for his artistic leadership. Our entire Executive Committee contributes greatly to Lux’s successes as an organization, and does so on a completely volunteer basis. One member in particular I’d like to thank in these notes is Ciaran Cain, our Director of Finance. Ciaran does the “boring” work that firstly, keeps our nonprofit status in working order, but secondly, is the backbone of the practical logistics we do every month. Without Ciaran and all of the wonderful folks on our Executive Committee, these concerts and much more simply couldn’t happen. It’s deeply heartening to tangibly see and feel the fruits of the community we’ve built through and around Lux.

That community certainly doesn’t stop with our executive committee: our singers, other musicians, and supporters like you contribute meaningfully to the community that we continue to build every day, from singers who run social media to supporters volunteering as front of house staff. The privilege of this position to create human connections is not lost on us, and we’re deeply grateful for the opportunity to do so at a time when connection seems particularly hard to come by for so many in our day-to-day lives. If you enjoy tonight’s concert and are able to do so, please make a donation to help us continue this work. Your donations ensure Lux’s future ability to present concerts and projects just like this, and much more. We have our sights set on expanding our educational programming, improving compensation for our incredible performers, and much more. We continue to need your support as we embark on these very exciting endeavors.

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. In addition, if you’re interested in becoming a financial partner by more fully funding our educational programs or sponsoring a concert, please speak to us after the concert or contact us here. We would love for you to be a part of our work!

Please don’t forget to say hello after the concert! Whether this is your twentieth Lux concert or your first (of many, I hope!), we really 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 glad you’re here.

—Robby Napoli, artistic director

Timeline

Tap/click to jump to relevant notes

Hill

We Bloomed in Spring
Barber

Mary Hynes
Wagner

Hope
Tin

All That Could Never Be Said
Tin

The Saddest Noise
Shaw

and the swallow
Britten

Concord
Murrill

O mistress mine
Plakidis

In Memoriam
Intermission
15 minutes

Billings, arr. Rimkus

Africa
Howells

Requiem

Edie Hill (b. 1962)

We Bloomed in Spring

About the work

The Philadelphia-based choir The Crossing speaks best to the ways composer Edie Hill’s strengths come alive in her setting of this text: “We love to sing We Bloomed in Spring because of Edie’s…accord with rhetoric; how conversations shift, how our inner dialogue has its own story.” We Bloomed in Spring was written in 2014, dedicated “to Philip Brunelle and Plymouth Congregational Church in appreciation for the generous gift of space to teach the Apprentices of the Schubert Club Composer Mentorship Program.” Hill packs quite a lot of musical rhetoric into a bite-sized piece: Some of our own favorite moments include the very opening, which literally “blooms” open from a grounded unison middle-C, soon undermined by metric instability caused by hemiola, as the tenors (and then altos) sing of seasons of suffering. On top of these, we hear the rhetorical skill mentioned by The Crossing as Hill repeats “but our souls, dear,” and “I will just say this,” almost as if the words are coming to the speaker in real-time. As she rounds off the piece, Hill invokes the introduction’s blooming theme once more on the word “we” before finally landing, almost floating, in D-flat major–a relatively distant key from our starting point of C minor, yet only a half-step away on a keyboard.

Text

We
bloomed in Spring.

Our bodies
are the leaves of God.

The apparent seasons of life and death
our eyes can suffer;

but our souls, dear. I will just say this forthright:
they are God
Himself,

we will never perish
unless He
does.

Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582), trans. Dan Ladinsky (b. 1948)

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

1. Mary Hynes

from Reincarnations

About the work

“Mary Hynes” comes to us as the first of three pieces in Samuel Barber’s beloved Reincarnations. That title refers to Irish poet James Stephens’s best attempt at representing the Gaelic of 19th-century poet Anthony Raftery. Stephens’s recollection of Gaelic was spotty, and so rather than calling them translations, he dubbed them “Reincarnations” of Raftery’s poetry. As a teenager, Barber developed affinity for Irish culture in connection with his heritage, and was fond of setting Irish texts like these. He began his work on Reincarnations at 26 years old while in an Austrian mountain village, completing the first (this piece), “Mary Hynes,” the next year in 1937. Though the set was published in 1942, it seems it was not premiered until 1949 by an octet in the Juilliard Summer Concert Series. It is sometimes said that this movement was almost omitted from the premiere due to its musical difficulty, though as so often happens with these types of stories, this claim has proven hard to verify

The original Gaelic text for “Mary Hynes” was inspired by a legendary woman who was considered the most beautiful in all of Ireland. (One legend has it that eleven men asked her hand in marriage in just one day.) In setting this text, some singers may assert that Barber set out to write a piece as difficult to sing as it was to woo its main character. The piece fires off like fireworks at its beginning, excitedly bursting forward to tell of the speaker’s new love, surely at first sight. Barber repeats the first half of this poem twice with similar musical settings before a masterful reflection of the poem’s shift in perspective: As the texture thins and the harmonic rhythm slows, we nearly feel a sense of “zooming out” at the same time the choir sings not of one beautiful woman, but of the idyllic landscape seen from the hill over Thoor Ballylee. Slowly, though, we pan back in to see Mary Hynes, the “Blossom of Branches” walking towards us while the piece’s last phrases, and Hynes, drift effortlessly by.

Text

She is the sky of the sun,
She is the dart
Of love,
She is the love of my heart,
She is a rune,
She is above
The women of the race of Eve
As the sun is above the moon.

Lovely and airy the view from the hill
That looks down Ballylea;
But no good sight is good until
By great good luck you see
The Blossom of the Branches walking towards you
Airily.

James Stephens (1880-1950)

Han Wagner (b. 1999)

Hope

Performance details

Anya Trudeau, alto soloist

About the work

We’re excited to premiere this piece by our friend and colleague, Han Wagner, who has sung with us for years and is also our Director of Operations. Han has a wide range of musical experience: he is an active chorister in the Washington, D.C. area, studied music education and taught music in public schools for a number of years. As a composer, Wagner has received commissions from local secondary schools and has written music for all age groups, from young school singers to Lux.

In Hope, Han sets one of Emily Dickinson’s most loved poems, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” The piece begins with a striking inverted chord with some dissonance, almost as if to emphasize the aspirational tenets of the idea of hope. The music unfolds to introduce a primary theme which weaves in and out of the texture for the first time as the second sopranos describe the soul singing “ the tune without the words…” Han taps into a deep sense of evolving throughout the piece as we wind from key center to key center and make unabashed use of triplets throughout. After spotlighting the treble voices and then tenors and basses, who bring us to a new key area, we get the primary theme again, this time on the words “be the storm.” The basses take up the text as we lead back to the original key of the piece, which feels as if it leads to the final three iterations of the primary theme, this time on the word “never,” before a soloist utters alone, “in extremity.”

Text

“Hope” is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet—never—in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of me.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830-1886)

Christopher Tin (b. 1976)

9. All That Could Never Be Said

from The Lost Birds

About the work

The next two pieces on the program are excerpts from Christopher Tin’s multimovement work, The Lost Birds. Tin is most known in choral music for the composition of Baba Yetu, a highly celebrated and joyful setting of The Lord’s Prayer in Swahili, which was originally written for the video game Civilization IV, released in 2005. On the heels of the piece’s success, Tin’s debut album earned him a second GRAMMY award (the first was for Baba Yetu), and his sophomore album also debuted at #1 on Billboard’s classical charts. His music synthesizes many genres, leading to collaborations with Lang Lang, Danielle de Niese, Lara Downes, Danny Elfman, and more.

The Lost Birds was first released on recording in September, 2022, in collaboration with VOCES8 and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Self-described as an “Extinction Elegy,” Tin wrote the 12-movement piece for choir and orchestra as a memorial for the loss of the passenger pigeon to extinction, “and the loss of other species due to human activity.” To pay tribute to these birds, whose extinction occurred during the 19th-century, Tin used texts from that very era. Tin writes, “As bird, fish, animal, and insect populations crash around us, we increasingly find ourselves in a silent world–one in which the songs of birds are heard less and less. We hope that the silence can be filled by more voices speaking up on behalf of these lost birds–for their sake, and for ours.”

About this movement, All That Could Never Be Said, the composer writes:

With a simple melody inspired by children’s songs, “All That Could Never Be Said” is a setting of Sara Teasdale's poem "In the End". Showcasing her signature pairing of nihilism and pastoral beauty, the poem is an exploration of regret: it suggests that the consequences of our inaction are final and absolute. There are no second chances to speak up or to act, and all our missed opportunities will be lost to us until we're reunited with them in death.

In the context of extinction, it mirrors the concept of 'tipping points' in environmental science—thresholds that, should we cross them, will be irreversible.

My setting re-imagines the text as a simple children's melody, recasting the entirety of The Lost Birds as a fable. And just like in the story of "The Grasshopper and the Ant", the moral of the story is that our inaction in the face of slow extinction will ultimately doom us.

Text

All that could never be said,
All that could never be done,
Wait for us at last
Somewhere back of the sun;

All the heart broke to forego
Shall be ours without pain,
We shall take them as lightly as girls
Pluck flowers after rain.

And when they are ours in the end
Perhaps after all
The skies will not open for us
Nor heaven be there at our call
[After all that was never done.]

Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

Christopher Tin (b. 1976)

2. The Saddest Noise

from The Lost Birds

About the work

From the composer:

“The Saddest Noise" is a setting of Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Saddest Noise, the Sweetest Noise”. It begins the story of The Lost Birds in spring: the season of birth and renewal, and a time of year when bird songs flood the skies. But what is ordinarily a joyous sound is now riddled with sorrow, as the songs of the remaining birds remind us of the ones we've already lost.

Dickinson’s reflections on the birds’ songs—at once tuneful, but tainted with melancholy—inspired my musical language for The Lost Birds. Heavily influenced by the vernacular of the 19th-century, the work is both pastoral and romantic, with lyrical melodies and soaring strings. But for all its romanticism and loveliness, there remains a sense of loss that permeates the music: for though the melodies we can still hear are sweet, it is the ones that are lost which we truly wish to hear.

Text

Between the March and April line—
That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
Almost too heavenly near.

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows,—
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night’s delicious close.

It makes us think of all the dead
That sauntered with us here,
By separation’s sorcery
Made cruelly more dear.

It makes us think of what we had,
And what we now deplore.
We almost wish those siren throats
Would go and sing no more.

An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear,
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows,—
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night’s delicious close.
[The saddest noise I know.]

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830-1886)

Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)

and the swallow (psalm 84)

About the work

With and the swallow, Caroline Shaw sets an adapted version of Psalm 84, a biblical text that is especially well-known to choral musicians thanks to Brahms’s setting of it in the central movement of his Ein Deutsches Requiem. While Brahms took a lilting, pastoral approach to the text, Shaw brought a sense of tender humanity that is quintessential to her composition style. The piece was commissioned by the Nederland Kammerkoor, and premiered in 2017 as part of Lincoln Center’s White Lights Festival, “150 Psalms.”

In this unique and stunning setting, Shaw uses a mix of textures, including speech-like rhythms, silence, a lingering on words and ends of phrases, hums, and subtle, gradual shifting from one neutral vowel to another. Shaw tells the story of the text in every aspect of her music, but in this piece, texture looms large: listeners may notice a consistent sense of lagging behind, following, or even searching as the first half of the piece depicts a yearning for home. (While the psalm speaks of a spiritual home, Shaw says she had in mind also the plight of refugees, particularly those in the Syrian refugee crisis.)

The piece begins with an essentially double-choir texture, harkening back to the antiphonal multi-choir music of the renaissance and early baroque. What could be “choir one” chants in homophony, while “choir two” sings the same text, heavily augmented and drawing out the chords of the first phrase, almost as if lagging beneath choir one’s homophonic texture, which soon melts into hums. Choir one’s hums are interrupted by an increasingly urgent choir two, immediately echoed in canon by choir one. Sopranos cry out over the busying texture until the treble voices hum softly, singing a melody which, in canon, seems to wander, longing for that beloved home. The tone shifts then when the birds find their respective homes and nests, giving a renewed energy and a hopeful resolve to Shaw’s music. After weaving through an inspiring tonicization to a distant F major, we return home to G-flat major, this time not yearning despondently for a distant home, but arriving at last at a valley of cool springs.

Text

how beloved is your dwelling place, o lord of hosts
my soul yearns, faints
my heart and my flesh cry
the sparrow found a house,
and the swallow, her nest,
where she may raise her young...
they pass through the valley of bakka,
they make it a place of springs,
the autumn rains also cover it with pools

Psalm 84, adapted

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

2. Concord

from Choral Dances from Gloriana

About the work

“Concord” is the second of six Choral Dances from “Gloriana”. The ground-breaking Benjamin Britten first wrote these dances for the second act of an opera, Gloriana, commissioned for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953. Fourteen years later, Britten was again called upon by the royal family, this time to write music for the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall at London’s Southbank Centre. What, then, could be more appropriate, than repurposing music written for her majesty’s coronation? It’s easy to imagine that this usage was doubly satisfying for Britten: Gloriana was poorly received, but this new format brought new merit to the largely unchanged music borrowed from his opera.

Concord is a simple, reverent musical setting of a beautiful and equally simple text. Both music and poetry reflect the ways in which people working together strengthen and need each other. To that end, Britten has completely married the sopranos and tenors, who sing in exact unison octaves for the entirety of the piece. This then also marries altos and basses in textural function, becoming solely responsible for the harmonic context of the soprano and tenor melody. The texture of this piece though is not just homophonic–it is also syllabic, meaning one note is assigned per syllable of text. Britten breaks from this texture only once at the very end of the piece, giving “not one, but two” notes moving upwards just as our couple successfully reaches, together, the ripest fruit.

Text

Concord, Concord is here
Our days to bless
And this our land, our land to endue
With plenty, peace and happiness.

Concord, Concord and Time
Concord and Time, each needeth each:
The ripest fruit hangs where not one
Not one, but only two, only two can reach.

William Plomer (1903-1973)

Herbert Murrill (1909-1952)

1. O mistress mine

from Two Songs from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night"

About the work

From Britten, we move to his contemporary and colleague, Herbert Murrill, who even brought Britten’s partner, Peter Pears, to perform at Bletchley Park while Murrill served in the Intelligence Corps during World War II. Murrill, the son of a cork merchant, grew up around musical friends, eventually becoming a boy chorister before studying music at the Royal Academy of Music. An organist and Head of Music at BBC, Murrill’s compositions are fewer and further between than the likes of Britten. As a composer, he is primarily known in Anglican circles for his Canticles in E major. Murrill’s affinities included Ravel and Stravinsky’s tamer music, both mildly censored by English harmonic conservatism of the time. Still, Murrill stayed connected to these influences, even writing a jazz opera in 1930. This harmonic language can be seen at blinding speed in the first of his Two Songs from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”.

O Mistress Mine follows a conventional texture for British choral writing of the time—a homophonic text-setting, almost free from “the tyrannies of conventional bar-groupings,” in the words of Greg Murray, and set in a traditional simple form. While Murrill’s love for impressionism can be most seen in the second song of this set (which we are not performing this evening), it comes through in this first piece as well, especially in the surprise G major chord in his “what is love?” theme, sung once near the halfway point of the piece and again before its ending.

The piece’s divisi is dense, beginning in, and rarely departing from, an 8-part texture. Murrill eschews diatonicism early on, shifting from G minor to D major as soon as the fifth measure. Though the piece is fairly short, Murrill’s dynamic pacing is vast and shifts often across the mixed-metered text setting. He writes in a pseudo-rondo form which winds from key to key in rapid succession. While the harmonies are dense and technical, the magic of this piece lies in the excited instability found in the jerky-yet-speechlike rhythms and constantly shifting tonal center. We certainly find these musical elements to serve as a poignant representation of the childlike excitement, maybe even desperation, of being in love.

Text

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true-love's coming,
⁠That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
⁠Journeys end in lovers' meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
⁠What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
⁠Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Pēteris Plakidis (1947-2017)

In Memoriam

About the work

Composer Pēteris Plakidis noted of his own compositional style, “When I used only seven notes instead of the usual twelve, I felt as if I had gone outside into the fresh air…Pure diatonics, even if sounded all at once, even if played as clusters…seem to be full of air.” In Memoriam serves as a perfect example of this phenomenon in his music, which creates a nearly-floating sensation for the listener. Plakidis, like many of Latvia’s most well-regarded musicians, began his training at the Emīls Dārziņš secondary school of music before beginning undergraduate studies in composition at Jāzeps Vītols State Conservatory (now the Latvian Academy of Music). Plakidis established himself early on as a strong presence in Latvia’s classical music community, becoming musical director for the Latvian National Theatre before even finishing undergraduate studies. He mentored countless composers at the Latvian Academy of Music, first as a tutor in 1975, and then a professor in 1991, a year before being named the “People’s Artist”.

In Memoriam, written during his third year of professorship at the Latvian Academy, is scored for 9-part choir: SSSAATTBB. This three-part soprano divisi is paramount to the texture of this beautiful setting of a text by fellow Latvian, Bronislava Martuževa, who published under the name of her relative Eva Mārtuža to bypass Soviet repression. We close the first half of the program with music that starts much like our opening piece: The third sopranos drone an F, from which first and second sopranos reveal a beautifully lilting melody which seems to flit heavenwards, as the text suggests. Suddenly, the remaining singers enter, almost as if to ground the soaring sopranos with rich, low-seated chords which affirm the key of B-flat minor. The three soprano parts weave beautiful, soaring lines above the lower voices’ undulating from B-flat minor to F major like birds flying over calming waves. Plakidis’ music, as with many Latvian composers, is deeply connected to nature: Here, the sopranos literally mimic the birds which flutter and soar in the first section until a “warm, long-awaited rain” arrives, when the ‘fluttering’ theme is moved lower to the altos as the birds “soak in downy nests.” Plakidis imbues the piece not only with the text-painting of nature, but with the sense of both calm and excitement one feels in a soft summer rain, a sense that Plakidis may have felt while approaching Martuževa’s “Bridge of souls.”

Text

All that is good flies heavenwards to gain a lasting home there.
Above your house the rain pours down all o'er your flow'r-strewn homestead.
Warm, long-awaited rainstorm comes.
Birds soak in downy nests,
So still, so dry your earthy home.
Bitter jasmine makes your pillow,
And you no longer have the need for doorways there or windows.
Above the flow'ry roof pure night, a bird sings on the grave-cross.
Soil of the homeland hums and cracks.
Bridge of souls.

Latvian original: Bronislava Martuževa (1924-2012), translated to English by Lilija Zobens (b. 1950)

Intermission 15m

Ended

William Billings (1746-1800), arr. Sarah Rimkus (b. 1990)

Africa

Performance details

Quartet: Melodia Mae Rinaldi, Lucas Arzayus, John Mullan, David Breen

About the work

Africa is an arrangement by Sarah Rimkus of the Sacred Harp tune of the same name, written in the US in the 18th century. While Sacred Harp singing stylistically includes a bright placement and chest-voice-dominant registration, Rimkus arranges here for a more modern Western Classical choral sound. She says of the piece: “This arrangement reimagines the piece by early American composer William Billings, featured in the Sacred Harp songbook. The wide chord voicings and joyful melodies of the American classic are expanded through the use of warm harmonies, added polyphony, and short quartet and soli passages. William Billings is known as the first American choral composer and wrote such emotive works as Chester and his canon When Jesus Wept. He additionally taught in singing schools in New England throughout his life.”

A notable tenet of the style of Sacred Harp songs is that the melody was often included in the tenor part, rather than the soprano. The heritage of this tradition goes as far back as the Western Renaissance—the tradition of including the melody in the highest voice part came primarily with the popularization of Lutheran hymnody in an effort to make worship further accessible by putting the melody in the most easily-heard part of the texture. While the melody resides first with the tenor of our opening quartet, it shifts in the second verse to the soprano as the choir joins in. The third verse sees a sort of canon, where the melody returns in the tenor (harmonized by basses) and is echoed by sopranos (harmonized by altos). After tenor and soprano soloists take up the theme, we get a newly ornamented harmonization of the tune–Rimkus here notes “warmly” next to her ‘fortissimo’ direction in the score to remind us that we are bringing this more than 200-year-old tune into our modern sound. The piece closes with a final reminder of Billings’s original tune, with the quartet singing over a tonic drone from the choir.

Text

Now shall my inward joys arise,
And burst into a song.
Almighty love inspires my heart
And pleasure tunes my tongue.

God on his thirsty Zion hill
Some mercy-drops has thrown,
And solemn oaths have bound his love
To shower salvation down.

Why do we then indulge our fears,
Suspicions, and complaints?
Is He a God, and shall His grace
Grow weary of His Saints?

Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

Herbert Howells (1892-1983)

Requiem

Performance details

Movement 2
Trio: Austin Nikirk, soprano; Anya Trudeau, alto; John Logan Wood, tenor

Movement 4
Collin Power, baritone soloist; John Mullan, tenor soloist

Movement 6
John Mullan, tenor soloist; Corbin Philips, baritone soloist; Austin Nikirk, soprano soloist

About the work

Herbert Howells is a giant in a saturated field of modern-era Anglican choral composers, thanks not just to his impressively large oeuvre, but also to his distinctive style. Howells’s writing was so trailblazing, in fact, that theorists analyzing his works have conceived of a “Howells Scale” based on Howells’s harmonic language. (The scale is made up of a major scale with a raised fourth and lowered seventh scale degree.) Even with the usage of his signature scale, though, Howells was known for his usage of sometimes mind-bending modal mixture throughout his music. Howells also taught composers at the Royal College of Music, where his pupils included Paul Spicer (who took a special interest in Howells’s legacy after his death) and Imogen Holst, among others.

Howells’s Requiem is heavily associated with the death of his son, Michael, which was an understandably traumatic and influential event in Herbert’s life. Michael contracted polio during a family holiday in September of 1935, and tragically died only three days later in London. Many works were written under the shadow of Michael’s death, almost as a means of processing his deep loss. It was once thought that the Requiem, a service for the dead, was written in memory of Michael, having been written around this time of Howells’s life, but this has since been disproven: The piece was actually written three years before the 9-year-old Michael’s passing. Howells did, though, increasingly associate the Requiem with his lost son, soon borrowing a good deal of material from the work to produce his Hymnus Paradisi, written in 1935 and performed 15 years later for the Three Choirs Festival.

The Requiem was not performed for many years after it was written. This may be because the pieces Howells associated with his son remained deeply personal and he rarely allowed them to be performed. He was also susceptible to critical influence, and the reaction to his Second Piano Concerto had caused him to hide all works but one-movement anthems for a time. Hymnus Paradisi’s premiere only came at the behest of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Ultimately, nearly fifty years passed before the Requiem’s premiere, which was eventually given by John Poole and the BBC Singers in 1980. The piece, which was originally intended for the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, was finally published the following year by Novello. It has since been recognized as one of the finest and most moving pieces of Western choral writing.

Though titled with the name of the service for the dead, Howells’s Requiem does not strictly follow the standard liturgical service, unlike the Fauré’s Requiem before Howells and the Duruflé, whose Requiem was modeled after Fauré’s in many facets. While these French Romantics mostly used liturgical texts, Howells’s personal choices of text reflects something maybe closer to Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, making heavy use of devotional psalms and scriptural passages.

Like much of Howells’s music, the Requiem reflects his harmonic innovation in a time of British harmonic conservatism: while much of Anglican choral music was looking back to the Austro-German tradition of Romantic functional harmony, Howells continued to write long, unfolding melodies, weaving echoes of the Renaissance into modernized modal, chromatic, often dissonant and ambiguous harmonies. These more dense harmonic moments are often reserved for the Latin movements of the piece, whereas the settings of devotional psalms are more harmonically simple and transparent in their conceit. Again recalling Fauré’s Requiem, described by Fauré himself as something of a “tranquil lullaby” for the dead and dying, Howells’s setting invokes a similar contemplation. Still infused with grief, Howells’s introspection swells to moments of radiant light thanks to his use of high tessitura, major modes, and expertly-placed dissonance.

1. Salvator mundi

Text

O Saviour of the world,
Who by thy Cross and thy precious Blood hast redeemed us,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.

Medieval English

2. Psalm 23

Text

The Lord is my shepherd: therefore can I lack nothing.
He shall feed me in a green pasture: and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.
He shall convert my soul: and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness, for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
thy rod and thy staff comfort me.
Thou shalt prepare a table before me against them that trouble me:
thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall be full.
But thy loving kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

3. Requiem aeternam I

Text

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Funeral liturgy

Translation

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.

4. Psalm 121

Text

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh even from the Lord: who hath made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: and he that keepeth thee will not sleep.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel: shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord himself is thy keeper: he is thy defense upon thy right hand;
So that the sun shall not burn thee by day: neither the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: yea, it is even he that shall keep thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in: from this time forth and for evermore.
(I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: from whence cometh my help.)

5. Requiem aeternam II

Text

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
Et lux perpetua luceat is.

Translation

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.

6. I heard a voice from heaven

Text

I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, write:
From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord,
Even so saith the Spirit:
For they rest from their labours.

Revelation 14:13

Howells: Requiem

Program

From the director

Timeline

We Bloomed in Spring

1. Mary Hynes

Hope

9. All That Could Never Be Said

2. The Saddest Noise

and the swallow (psalm 84)

2. Concord

1. O mistress mine

In Memoriam

Intermission 15m

Africa

Requiem

1. Salvator mundi

2. Psalm 23

3. Requiem aeternam I

4. Psalm 121

5. Requiem aeternam II

6. I heard a voice from heaven

Performers

Soprano

Alto

Tenor

Bass

Donors