The story behind the Whitacre/Plitmann “Five Hebrew Love Songs”

June 21, 2024August 28, 2023 by debisimons

The German town of Speyer, where the Five Hebrew Love Songs was first performed. Image accessed via Pixabay.

Sometimes the genesis of a now-popular piece can be almost unbearably poignant in light of the present. Such is the case with the popular Five Hebrew Love Songs with music by Eric Whitacre and lyrics by Hila Plitmann. Both composer and lyricist have been extremely open about the meaning of the words. Here, for example, is a relevant paragraph from Whitacre’s website, describing how the songs came about in 1996 as the result of a request from the violinist Friedemann Eichhorn:

Because we were appearing as a band of traveling musicians, ‘Friedy’ asked me to write a set of troubadour songs for piano, violin and soprano. I asked [then-girlfriend] Hila (who was born and raised in Jerusalem) to write me a few ‘postcards’ in her native tongue, and a few days later she presented me with these exquisite and delicate Hebrew poems. I set them while we vacationed in a small skiing village in the Swiss Alps, and we performed them [Plitmann sang the soprano part] for the first time a week later in Speyer.

A Mysterious Text with Three Beautiful Settings and a Bonus: “Gaelic Blessing/Deep Peace”

March 30, 2023February 19, 2023 by debisimons

The miniature gem “Gaelic Blessing” written by John Rutter in 1978 has an interesting connection with the choral music scene in the US. How did that happen with an English composer and a Scottish text? It all started with one of those inexplicable human connections that can never be completely teased out.

John Rutter started his long relationship with America in 1974 when he was contacted by a church choir director, Mel Olson, in Omaha Nebraska, and asked to write a 20-minute piece for Olson’s Chancel Choir. How did someone from Omaha even know about John Rutter, then in the very early stages of his composing career? I don’t know for sure, but it seems possible that Olson had gotten hold of Rutter’s early Christmas music and liked it. Whatever the reason, Rutter was very pleased to get the commission and ended up writing his magnificent Gloria. As he said in answer to my inquiry when I wrote about that piece, “Other commissions from the USA just seemed to follow, to the point where I was able to look upon America as my second home.” And one of those commissions was for “Gaelic Blessing” in 1978, but this time it was the Chancel Choir that reached out for a piece they could dedicate to Olson. I haven’t been able to find a detailed description of Olson’s career, but I’m wondering if this was a farewell gift to him from that choir because he was leaving Omaha. He ended up at in California, where in 1985 he was involved in the initial performances of Rutter’s Requiem.

Dan Forrest Breathes Life into “the breath of life”

June 21, 2024January 26, 2023 by debisimons

the breath of life

The contemporary choral composer Dan Forrest had no way of knowing when he was contacted by the professional choir Bel Canto for a commission that he would write something audiences would associate with the COVID pandemic and the death of George Floyd. Since the premier took place in October 2019, though, the association was inevitable. The piece poignantly represents the truth that “There’s beauty and joy and wonder in every breath we take.”

William Butler Yeats’ Dreams of the Countess Kathleen and Her Blessed Spirit

February 8, 2023January 11, 2023 by debisimons

Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Blessed Damozel.jpg — “The Blessed Damozel” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti; image accessed via Wikipedia.

William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, was obsessed with Irish legends and the occult. The story behind his poem “A Dream of a Blessed Spirit” neatly encapsulates both ideas, since it concerns a mythic Irish character, the Countess Kathleen O’Shea, who sold all her goods and finally her soul to help her starving tenants. Because the Countess had given her soul for the good of others and not to enrich herself, God refused to let her be damned and instead brought her to heaven. Yeats also wrote a whole play about her, but it’s safe to say that it’s never performed these days. The poem, on the other hand, has provided the text for a lovely art song that is quite popular. My own group, the Cherry Creek Chorale in the Denver metro area, has programmed it several times. I found the words to be fascinating and puzzling:

In “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear,” What’s “It”?

November 28, 2022November 27, 2022 by debisimons

Image by b0red from Pixabay; I like this image because the angel isn’t doing anything not included in the biblical story.

I classify this carol along with “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” as having a very confusing title. In order to understand the meaning we’ll have to dive into a little grammar wonkery, with some biblical doctrine along the way.

Okay. Everybody got that? The lyrics were written by an American Unitarian Universalist minister, Edmund H. Sears, and, notably, they do not mention the actual birth of Christ at all. Let’s look at the first two lines of the carol itself:

It came upon a [or the] midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,

Did the lyricist of the famous song actually get to go “walking in a winter wonderland?”

November 18, 2022November 14, 2022 by debisimons

In a word: No. Why not? Because he was in a tuberculosis sanitarium. How weird and sad is that? Very.

So, back in the winter of 1934, 33-year-old Richard Smith was sitting in his room at the West Mountain Sanitarium after having a recurrence of his TB, trying to keep himself occupied by entering jingle contests for ad copy. (He actually won the Maybelline eye shadow contest with the slogan “The Eyes Have It.” Clever!) He could see children playing in the snow outside his window and was reminded of how much he’d enjoyed those same activities when he was growing up in the small town of Honesdale, Pennsylvania. A powerful nostalgia was at work here, but, given the actual wording of the song I think there was something else going on: he missed his wife, Jane, whom he’d married in 1930.

All the Ways the Storm Has Been Passing Over

September 17, 2022September 16, 2022 by debisimons

I’ve said this many times before and will say it again here: You just never know what you’re going to find when you start looking up information about a piece of music. My choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale here in the Denver area, is closing its October 2022 concert with the piece “The Storm Is Passing Over.” The composition credit is listed as “Charles Albert Tindley, arranged by Barbara W. Baker.”

So the obvious question was, “Who were these people?” Let me start with Tindley, a fascinating figure in American history who was born before the Civil War and ended up as the pastor of a 10,000-member mega church. And this was before mega churches were even a thing. A-a-a-a-a-nd, he’d been the janitor of that church to begin with. It’s a great, great story. Tindley was the son of a slave father and a free mother (how that happened I have no idea), considered to be free himself because of her. When his mother died he went to live with his mother’s sister in order to keep his free status. But he was expected to earn his keep, as it were, and was routinely “hired out,” never having the opportunity to attend school. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

How an Obscure Shaker Hymn Gave Elaine Hagenberg Her Start

February 16, 2026September 1, 2022 by debisimons

“The Ritual Dance of the Shakers,” Shaker Historical Society, public domain, image accessed via Wikimedia Commons

“I Will Be a Child of Peace” by Elaine Hagenberg offers an origins two-fer: the beginning of her career as a published choral composer/arranger and the source of the music itself. “Peace” was Hagenberg’s first published piece back in 2013. The piece has now been voiced for SATB, TTBB, and SSA. She must really like it!

The original song is a Shaker hymn:

“O Holy Father,” according to manuscripts, originated in 1851. [The manuscripts] attribute it to Alonzo Gilman of the community in Alfred, Maine. [Sister] Mildred said that in her youth the song was used very frequently “at the close of prayer services while we were on our knees.” The song is in 5/4 time. (Notes on Songs in the Film, Shakers)

Z. Randall Stroope, Heritage and HODIE

February 17, 2026August 24, 2022 by debisimons

A Rich Vein of Influence

The “Z” stands for “Zane.” Just in case you’re wondering.

Now that we have that out of the way we can get to the real stuff, notably the great compositional heritage embodied in the work of this very-active American composer. A look at his teachers and their teachers and their teachers shows a line going all the way back to the great French composer Gabriel Fauré, who lived from the mid-1800’s until the 1920’s and who in turn had been taught by none other than Camille Saint-Saëns. Wow. Ancestry.com should do a family tree on this.

Fauré had a long and varied career as a performer, composer, and teacher. The next step on the ladder of Stroope’s influences came from Fauré’s student Nadia Boulanger. It’s fair to say that while no one today is going to program a concert featuring her own works, she has permeated American music to a surprising degree, with pupils including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson, Quincy Jones and Burt Bacharach. Two pupils relevant to Stroope were Cecil Effinger and Normand Lockwood, both of whom became Stroope’s teachers and mentors.

LUX: The Dawn from on High

August 9, 2022May 4, 2022 by debisimons

Introduction to the work and its composer Dan Forrest

Dan Forrest published his first choral piece, an arrangement of the hymn “Sun of My Soul,” in 2001. He was 23 years old and working on a degree in piano performance at the time. Beckenhorst Press, a major sacred music publisher, accepted the work after several others had rejected it, little knowing that Forrest would end up as an assistant editor for the organization and as the primary accompanist for their demo recordings. While Forrest had done some arranging and composing in his high school and college years, he concentrated on the piano until, as he says, “Eventually I just got kind of tired of the piano, where you press a note and it dies.” (See the J. W. Pepper video below for the full interview.) He became more and more interested in vocal music, eventually earning his doctorate in composition. He’s also studied with a number of prominent American choral composers, among them Alice Parker, whom Forrest considers to be a foremost influence. He’s now much in demand as a composer, arranger, conductor, speaker and clinician and has left full-time teaching so that he can devote more time to his own writing.