Lynne Morrow's reflections on December's "Starry Night" program
To kick off the 40th anniversary of PEV and my final season, I wanted to prepare some of my favorite holiday music, one last time with the group. So most of the gems on our December program have been in our previous concert seasons.
I chose the Poulenc Christmas Motets because they were some of the first chamber choral music I sang in high school. Berkeley High had an amazing Music Department! It’s also one of the great and beloved seasonal works of the 20th century, and PEV has performed it several times over the years.
Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia may not seem an obvious holiday choice – it’s a setting of Auden poems in praise of the patron saint of music, St. Cecilia. But the feast day of St. Cecilia is November 22 (also Britten’s birthday!), so that’s close enough for me to include this wonderful work on our holiday program. I have very fond memories of singing the Hymn to St. Cecilia one-on-a-part in my vocal quintet, Modus Novus. This gave each member the opportunity to balance solo singing with ensemble singing. Both were required to make the piece hang together. The joy of conducting the Hymn as a choral piece is the ability to craft the individual choral lines and the solos into a coherent whole.
I was lucky to be the assistant conductor of PME when I was working on my Master’s degree. My thesis included an analysis of Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth). Musically, it is lush and romantic, written 16 years before Schoenberg created his famous 12-tone method of composition. Yet it is also chromatic and quite complex. In fact, the chorus for which Schoenberg wrote it in 1907 could not sing it! His extension of functional harmony was so complete that those choral singers could not understand it. For the work’s eventual premiere in 1911, Schoenberg had to write a chamber orchestra accompaniment that followed the choral lines. (PEV will, of course, perform it as Schoenberg originally intended, a cappella!) Looking back from 2019, we can hear how this piece emerges from Romantic period harmonies, and its romantic music gestures are quite emotional. Its chromatic and occasionally thorny aspects follow the portions of the poem that mention savage horses and flaming swords of Righteousness. Intense! The text alludes to the birth of Christ, invoking shepherds and the Angels, singing of “Peace on Earth." Simply glorious, and an apt message for our times.
Running through the concert are three Ave Marias, one of which was written for us by local composer Sanford Dole. Ave Maria is prayer to the Virgin Mary, about to give birth to Jesus. In our program, each Ave Maria precedes a song telling the story of the birth of Jesus:
Biebl’s Ave Maria, sung by the men, precedes the Schoenberg, which opens with the shepherds in the fields.
Michael Head’s Ave Maria, sung by the women, will precede Poulenc’s quartet of motets about Christmastide.
Dole’s Ave Maria, premiered by us in 2009, comes before William Dawson’s Behold the Star, a spritely spiritual about the Star of Bethlehem.