LUX: The Dawn from on High

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Introduction to the work and its composer Dan Forrest

Image accessed via Pixabay.

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.

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What Are the Multiple Layers of Meaning in “I Got Shoes”?

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PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay.com–these heavy, waterproof work boots would have been great for working in the South Carolina rice fields!

I guess we’ll start with a version of that puzzle you’ve probably seen in which you’re asked to pick the item that doesn’t belong with the rest. Here’s one:

Which one of the following does not belong with the others?
Binoculars, eyeglasses, goggles, handlebars, jeans, pliers, scissors, shoes, tweezers
Answer: The word “shoes” is the only “pair” that actually has 2 separate pieces.
(I didn’t get this one right, picking “jeans.”)

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Was “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” a real person?

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Original sheet music cover accessed via Wikipedia; no, this isn’t the actual Jeanie.

Poor Stephen Foster! He wrote a romantic song about his wife and it’s been turned into endless jokes. I’ve managed to find at least four “genie/hare” references just in old Bugs Bunny cartoons alone. And everyone knows how unbelievably awful the TV series “I Dream of Jeannie” was. (Yes. It was. No ifs, ands or buts about it.)

So, where to begin? That’s a frequent question in these posts. Let’s start with the hair, since it’s such a feature of the woman in the song. To say nowadays that someone has “light brown hair” isn’t exactly a compliment. It sounds blah, doesn’t it? Instead you’d probably say “dirty blonde,” although why that’s considered a flattering description is beyond me. Someone might have “ash blonde” hair that has no hint of red in it, but rarely would you say “ash brown,” even though that would just be a somewhat darker shade. On the other side of the spectrum you might call someone a “strawberry blonde,” but until I did some googling I’d never seen the term “strawberry brown.” It exists, though, as a light reddish brown. Kinda pretty, actually.

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What’s the “Beautiful City,” and why does it have 12 gates?

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The New Jerusalem. Armenian manuscript by Malnazar and Aghap’ir in New Julfa bible, 1645; accessed via Wikimedia Commons.

There are so many areas of interest implicit in this brief arrangement of several Black spirituals that I hardly know where to begin. I’ll start with encouraging you to read my post “How Did We Get African-American Spirituals?” Got that? Okay, let’s move on to this specific arrangement that includes texts from “Oh, What a Beautiful City” and “In Bright Mansions Above” as well as fragments from other sources. The words from these are melded seamlessly and beautifully, with the slower, quieter phrases from “Mansions” providing the bridge, or contrasting middle section, for the piece. And of course, since the actual spirituals dating from before the Civil War are all anonymous, anyone can do anything with them. Even if we did know authors’ names the copyright would long ago have expired.

So you may have thought when you read the title of this post that the answers were pretty obvious, and indeed they are to some extent. The “beautiful city” is, of course, heaven, and the “12 gates” are the “pearly gates” mentioned in the book of Revelation, the last book in the Christian New Testament. In fact, let’s just stop here for a moment and read the actual description:

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Robert Frost and Randall Thompson’s Frostiana (with other rabbit trails along the way)

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Robert Frost in 1941; image accessed via Wikipedia

Introduction

This will be very long for a blog post/article but too short for a whole separate book, so note the Table of Contents box above that you can use as needed or desired. My goal here is to focus primarily on Randall Thompson’s Frostiana, looking at the circumstances of its composition and the seven poems individually that comprise it, but with plenty of info about Robert Frost the man and poet and also a bit about a couple of other composers who have set Frost’s poetry to music. An individual video is included for each song, with a full performance of the Thompson suite at the end. Other bonus videos are included!

Let me start by explaining my own history of singing music set to texts by Robert Frost.  As a member of the Cherry Creek Chorale here in the Denver area I’ve sung “The Pasture” by Z. Randall Stroope, “The Road Not Taken” and “Choose Something Like a Star” from Frostiana by Randall Thompson, and “Sleep” by Eric Whitacre, which started out its life as a setting of Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Then, as a grand finale to all this Frost-y stuff (sorry), I’m getting to sing the entire Frostiana in May of 2022 with my group. If you’re reading this before May 6-7 2022, you can follow the link above to visit the choir’s website and attend the concert. It’s going to be g-r-e-a-t!

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Silvestri and Gjeilo Add a Twist to the Phoenix Story

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Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

The lyrics to this piece come from the contemporary poet Charles A. Silvestri, who “specializes in providing bespoke poetry for choral composers.” Rather like a custom tailor, I guess. He has written the lyrics for a number of pieces by the Norwegian choral composer Ola Gjeilo and says of this one that “The fiery sky at sunset was an inspiration for this poem about a phoenix preparing for rebirth.. . . Ola had asked me for several poems relating to the theme of rebirth, and I gave him this twist on the usual theme.”

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What does “campground” refer to in the spiritual “Deep River”?

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“Deep River,” like “My God Is a Rock,” belongs in the category of slow, quiet spirituals. These songs of despair and hope were sometimes forbidden by slaveowners or overseers, while more up-tempo songs were actively encouraged as being helpful to keep the work going.
Why do the words say, “I want to cross over into campground”? I’ve noticed before that “campground” doesn’t really fit the rhythm very well. And for me, the image conjured up is that of tents, campfires, and lots of children running around. Almost like a refugee camp. (The fact that I have promised myself that I will never, ever again sleep on the ground in a tent might color my perceptions a bit.) Someone else might think of Civil War soldiers’ camps. Why would persecuted people want to escape to something so . . . unrestful?

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What’s the “rock” in “Elijah Rock”?

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This seems like a pretty simple question, doesn’t it? But let me tell you, it isn’t! I’ve done lots of trolling the internet looking for answers and come across some pretty convoluted ideas, but there seems to be one answer that makes the most sense. The facts that there are several versions of the lyrics and the ideas seem somewhat truncated mark this as a genuine folk song, passed down orally for a number of years.

Before I get to the various meanings for “rock,” here are some ideas that do seem clear. “Comin’ up, Lord,” has to refer to Elijah’s being taken up to Heaven in a fiery chariot. One of the choruses in Mendelssohn’s Elijah also vividly depicts that event. Interesting to compare that composer with his background of wealth, privilege and refinement with the unknown slave who first came up with this spiritual and whose hands were roughened from cotton bolls and back was scarred from the whip. Could the two of them have found common ground if they had ever met? I truly think they could.

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Lynn Ahrens’ Wonderful Career with Musical Words

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Ragtime.jpg
Cover of cast recording, accessed via Wikipedia and used here in accordance with fair use guidelines.

What would you say about a career that started with a chance encounter in an advertising company’s break room and has since spanned over 50 years? I’d call it remarkable, and that term certainly applies to Lynn Ahrens, who was 22 years old and bored silly with her secretarial job in 1970. So she started bringing her guitar to work with her to break up the monotony by singing and playing over her lunch hour. One of the company’s executives walked by and heard her. He had gotten involved with an educational project called “Schoolhouse Rock” and thought she might be able to write a song for it. She ended up writing several songs for the series, with the first being “The Preamble.” (These three-minute animated shorts originally ran from 1973-1984, but the pilot was produced in 1971, about the time that Ahrens got her big break.) As she says in an interview, “It was dumb luck—being in the right place at the right time with the right person passing by.” (“’Schoolhouse Rock’ interview: songwriter/singer Lynn Ahrens”) The songs she wrote and sang for that project got her out of the secretarial pool and into creative work. (If you’re reading this and you don’t know what a secretarial pool is, well, you’re just too young.) She went on to a career as a copywriter, as a freelance TV writer, a jingle writer, a television producer of many network shows for young people (including a stint at “Captain Kangaroo,” one of my childhood faves), and ultimately a musical theater writer. But, as she says, “It all started there.”

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