I’m pleased to announce that I’ve finished a new book, this one on the Mass for Peace/Armed Man Mass by the contemporary British composer Karl Jenkins. This work is still hugely popular 20+ years after its premier. I would encourage you to order a copy whether or not you anticipate a performance by your group. The material is fascinating in and of itself. I thoroughly enjoyed working on it. Go here to purchase it.
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.
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.”)
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.
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:
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!
The poem by James Agee has inspired several composers to set it to music. In this post I discuss two of the versions, but first I have to talk about the text itself.
WARNING: INTENSE LITERARY ANALYSIS FOLLOWS!
Here’s the rather puzzling text:
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.”
“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.
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.