Z. Randall Stroope, Heritage and HODIE

by
image accessed via zrstroope.com

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.

Read more

Britain’s Great “Song of Thanksgiving” from Its Great Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams

by
Image accessed via Wikimedia Creative Commons, Piccadilly Square pictured as supporters celebrate VE Day, May 08, 1945. Photo taken by Sgt. James A. Spence, during his service in World War II

Introduction:

What a great centerpiece to a concert centered around the theme of thankfulness! Vaughan Williams’1 15-minute-long work consists of a soloist, adult mixed choir, speaker, children’s choir, and orchestra and was commissioned by the BBC in late 1944 to be performed once the hoped-for and expected victory over the Axis powers was accomplished.

Here’s a description of the piece from the publisher of the sheet music, the Oxford University Press: “Originally entitled ‘Thanksgiving for Victory,’ ‘A Song of Thanksgiving’ is a powerful and moving work that celebrates the Allies’ victory in World War II. It was first recorded in 1944 while the war was still ongoing, but was not broadcast until victory had been achieved in May of the following year. Comprising seven movements, it sets texts from the Bible alongside words by Shakespeare and Kipling, lending the work a sense of timelessness and grandeur.”2

Isn’t it great that there was the will and the appetite after years of war and destruction to commission a piece of music to celebrate victory? There’s no information available on how much or whether Vaughan Williams was paid for the piece, and it’s rarely performed nowadays because it was written for a specific occasion. One reviewer on Amazon for a CD performance says, “Vaughan Williams’ ‘A Song of Thanksgiving’ is the greatest piece of music ever written that almost no one has heard.”

Read more

I have a new book! Karl Jenkins’ Mass for Peace

by

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.

 

LUX: The Dawn from on High

by

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.

Read more

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

by
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.”)

Read more

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

by
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.

Read more

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

by
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:

Read more

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

by
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!

Read more

Silvestri and Gjeilo Add a Twist to the Phoenix Story

by
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.”

Read more