Celebration Concert Human & Divine

Transcription

1 Sisters of Benet Hill Monastery 50th Jubilee Celebration Concert Human & Divine Sunday, June 12, honoring the past...celebrating the present...embracing the future Sisters of Benet Hill Monastery 3190 Benet Lane ~ Colorado Springs ~ CO 80921~ (719) ~

2 If you enjoyed today s performance or wish to show your support for our mission, a donation basket is located at the entrance to the chapel. You may also make a gift in our wishing well in the dining room at the reception, or by credit card in the Gift Shop. Gifts of any amount are welcome. All giving is blessed. We thank you! 2

3 JUBILEE MESSAGE FROM THE PRIORESS We gather today to celebrate the completion of our Jubilee Year. We have honored the past by visiting a number of places in Colorado from the San Luis Valley to north Denver and many places in between. God s presence was celebrated as we reconnected with members from these different communities as part of our Jubilee celebrations. Our pilgrimage has brought healing and reconciliation to all. Eagerly embracing our hopeful future, we trust that God will reveal, in His time and in His grace, all that our future holds. Each day we gather to pray the Psalter. In the ancient traditions of our monastic lives we sing the psalms in praise of God s many wonders. The old saying, to sing is to pray twice seems to fit this music ensemble we are about to embrace. Although we will not be singing, our souls will be soaring with the delights of the resonating sounds played by this stringed concert. So let go of all that troubles your heart and allow yourself to be present to this experience of the Human and Divine. Let go and let beauty happen to your soul. Thank you for being with us. Please come back to join us again. ~ Sister Clare Carr, OSB, Prioress 3

4 PROGRAM HUMAN AND DIVINE Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) Eine Kleine Nachtmusik: II. Romanze Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ( ) Silouans Song Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) Holberg Suite: II. Sarabande Edvard Grieg ( ) Adonai, for Cello & Strings Tanya Anisimova (b. 1966) Serenade for Strings: III. Elegie Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( ) Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) 4

5 MESSAGE FROM THOMAS WILSON Music is the essential human language. Science tells us that nothing aligns our brains like music. Music helps us think, feel, thrive and contemplate. For those on the path in search of God, nothing connects us better to the greater meaning of our place in the universe. Music is our world and the next. Music is all of us. The music we will experience today is a bridge to meditation and understanding. The stark contemplation of Arvo Pärt, the timeless proportion and genius of Mozart, the sparse musical landscape of Anisimova, the passionately human voices of Grieg and Tchaikovsky, all create a path for us to wander and a soundscape in which to lose ourselves. Pärt s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten is our beginning and ending point, bringing us full circle. Our program today is presented without applause. Even with so many of us gathered together, there is no need to be conscious of anyone or anything but your own thoughts. Wander in this music. Wander to places you ve never considered. At the end of the program, after the sound of the final chime is completely gone and we have sat a brief moment in silence, we can take this experience with us in silence. ~ Thomas Wilson, Music Director, Chamber Orchestra of the Springs 5

6 PROGRAM NOTES Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten (1977) Arvo Pärt (pronounced pairt ) was born in Estonia in Although at that time Estonia was an independent republic, the Soviet Union took control of it in 1940, and stayed, except for a brief period under the Nazis, for the next 54 years. Pärt s musical education began at age 7, and by 14 or 15 he was writing his own compositions. While studying composition at the Tallinn Conservatory it was said of him that: He just seemed to shake his sleeves and notes would fall out. However, there were very few influences from outside the Soviet Union at this time, except a few illegal tapes and scores. After his transitional third symphony, Pärt fell into a deep despair, lacking the musical faith and will-power to write even a single note. His response to this impasse was to immerse himself in early music, to go in effect back to the very roots of western music. He studied plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the emergence of polyphony in the Renaissance. At the same time he began to explore religion and joined the Russian Orthodox Church, perhaps indicating that the crisis was spiritual in nature, rather than simply musical. The music that began to emerge after this period Pärt described as tintinnabular : as like the ringing of bells. The music is characterized by simple harmonies, often single unadorned notes, or triad chords which form the basis of western harmony. These sound like ringing bells, hence the name. The Tintinnabuli are rhythmically simple, and do not change tempo. The influence of early music is clear. Another characteristic of Part s later works is that they are frequently settings for sacred texts. Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten emerged in 1977 which is fairly early in the development of his tintinnabular style, but has most of the recognizable features. It was written in response to the death of the British composer Benjamin Britten in This was prior to his eventual emigration to Austria in 1980 and with the Soviet Union still controlling and dictating what was acceptable. It would have been difficult for Pärt to find recordings or scores for Britten s music which he described as having unusual purity. With the death of Britten, Pärt s hopes of a meeting with this kindred spirit were dashed. Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten begins with three beats of silence. You might say that all music does this, but in Cantus it is in the score, it is programmed into the music and is integral to the structure of it. Silence in music is a great source of creative tension. For the performer it is a paradox - how does one perform silence? Then pianissimo, and very slowly a bell is struck. Three times it rings out and dies away, and it continues to be rung almost all the way throughout the piece, mostly in groups of three, gradually getting louder. The other instruments, 1st and 2nd violins, viola, cello, and double bass enter one at a time. They are each playing the same melody - a simple descending A minor scale - but each is playing it progressively slower in the ratio 1:2:4:8:16, so that the double basses are playing at 1/16 of the speed of the 1st violins. This is an old form called a mensuration canon, which was popular in Renaissance music. The first violins start at the upper limit of their range, playing the first note, then repeatedly descending through the A minor scale, adding a note each time. The melody seems, at first tentatively, and them more confidently 6

7 to probe downwards into the lower registers. Each instrument begins softly, but by stages increases until at the end they are all playing fortissimo. Each voice except the violas is split into two (and at times four) parts with one playing the A minor scale, and the other providing a sort of anchor by playing only notes from an A minor chord. This produces a sort of spiraling effect, with pulses of tension and release. Each voice, then, is questing downwards, but it is not a blind search. Each is seeking a particular note which forms part of an A minor chord. The violins, having started first, are the first to reach their note, and having reached this point they simply play that note continuously until the end. As the other instruments find their pitch the effect is like the finishing of a jigsaw puzzle. At about the same time as the violas find their note, the bell lapses into silence. There is a definite, strong sense of completion when the double basses find the low A that completes the final chord, resolving the last dissonance. And so we reach a point where each of 6 voices (the cellos are still paired) playing at full volume, an A minor chord at a very low pitch, which continues for 30 beats. Then suddenly on the first beat of the last bar beat the bell is struck very softly, too low to be heard above the roar of the strings. Simultaneously the strings stop, so that we hear the bell softly ringing and dying away into silence once more. Arvo Pärt s biographer suggests that how we live depends on our relationship with death: how we make music depends on our relationship to silence. The quest has begun, each voice begins searching downwards, repeatedly pushing lower and lower, seeking something. The result is a sonorous tapestry, swirling with color and unexpected conjunctions of tension and relaxation, which result not from the whim of the composer, but come from the structure of the canon itself. And then one by one each voice finds the pitch it has been seeking, sustains it until the end. The spiritual life is like this. We search around looking for answers to the big questions. And then suddenly the music stops - or almost. And so we return to silence, once again written into the score. But this is not the silence of the absence of sound. It is the silence that is sound, and the sound is silence. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ( ) Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1787) II.Romanze The jewel-like serenade Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) is one of Mozart s most familiar and frequently played works. Given the remarkable amount of information that has come down to illuminate the nooks and crannies of Mozart s career, it is ironic that so famous a work should leave us so much in the dark. Why Mozart wrote it, and for whom, remain a mystery. No mention of it survives in his voluminous correspondence, and we find no contemporary accounts of its performance. It comes from a year 1787 when little is known about Mozart s life, and no one is sure why Mozart suddenly wrote so gentle and charming a piece of music. All that we really know is that Mozart broke off work on the second act of Don Giovanni to write this serenade; the manuscript is dated August 10. 7

8 PROGRAM NOTES It stands as something of an anomaly in his oeuvre, since the myriad incidental orchestral pieces in his catalogue serenades, divertimentos, cassations, notturnos, and so on almost all date from his early years in Salzburg, where they were routinely commissioned to serve as entertainment music at specific social gatherings. This serenade, however, is no youthful work; it was written six years after Mozart moved from Salzburg to Vienna. Another mystery: sharp eyes may have noticed that Mozart s catalogue listing includes two minuet-and-trio movements, though only one figures in the score as we know it. Evidence bears out that Mozart s entry was accurate: a page is missing from the manuscript at the point where the second movement that is, the first Minuetand-Trio would have stood. It was already gone when the work was first published, in 1827, on which occasion the publishing firm of J. André claimed that their edition was made after the original score. If anybody finds that missing page sliding about in a desk drawer, please let us know. Two centuries later, the origins of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik remain mysterious. It is odd that there should be such riddles connected to a work that sounds so delightfully unproblematic. At first hearing, as well as for the one-thousandth time, no music sounds simpler than Eine kleine Nachtmusik. But this is a sophisticated simplicity, which Mozart could achieve only after completing some of his most complex works. Mozart knew how to limit himself to the bare essentials and to say the most with the fewest possible notes. The second movement Romanze marked Andante is a stately rondo with two contrasting episodes. It is warm-hearted, with some worried rustlings midway through proving no more than a brief interruption of the genial emotional climate. For anyone new to Classical music, there is no better place to start. The music student trying to grasp the elements of classical forms (sonata, minuet, and rondo) could hardly find clearer examples. And even the seasoned music lover and the professional musician must marvel again and again at a perfection that almost defies description. Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) Silouan s Song (1991) Arvo Pärt s formal musical training began after World War II at the Tallinn Conservatory, where there was little access to modern Western music except through pirated scores and illegally smuggled recordings. His first compositions were met with stern disapproval by the Soviet authorities, leading to an emotional crisis in his life. He came to reject his earlier embrace of Modernism and turned to exploring medieval plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the sacred music of the Russian Orthodox Church. Silouan s Song is a good illustration both of his commitment to the Russian Orthodox tradition and to his mature style, which he calls Tintinnabuli, from the Latin word for bells. Timelessness is a central theme of the hauntingly beautiful Silouan s Song. 8

9 The work reflects Pärt s personal religious and philosophical convictions. It is dedicated to the Greek Orthodox Abbot Sophrony ( ), who served in his youth as an aide to a barely literate but saintly monk named St. Silouan ( ). Silouan lived a life of abstinence, contemplation and humility. Pärt s homage to Silouan is prayerful. Although the works are composed for strings only, critic Jeremy Grimshaw calls it a text because the meditatively recitational flow of the piece betrays the rhythm of an unspoken but underlying text, one that is encapsulated by the evocative phrase, My soul yearns after the Lord. My soul yearns for the Lord, and I seek Him in tears. How should I not seek Him? When I was with him my soul was glad and at rest, and the enemy could not come nigh me. But now the spirit of evil has gained power over me, harassing and oppressing my soul, so that I weary for the Lord even unto death, and my spirit strains to God, and there is naught on earth can make me glad. Nor can my soul take comfort in anything, but longs once more to see the Lord, that her hunger may be appeased. I cannot forget Him for a single moment, and my soul languishes after Him, and from the multitude of my afflictions I lift up my voice and cry: Have mercy upon me, O God. Have mercy on Thy fallen creature. Edvard Grieg ( ) Holberg Suite for String Orchestra (From Holberg s Time), Op. 40 (1844) II. Sarabande Andante A miniature masterpiece of musical historicism, Grieg s five- movement Fra Holbergs Tyd ( From Holberg s Time in the composer s native Norwegian) is a tribute to the Baroque suite genre and its enduring vitality. Composed in 1884, it celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ludvig Holberg, a Danish- Norwegian playwright, thus invoking the lifespan of three prominent baroque composers born a year after Holberg in 1685: Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Domenico Scarlatti. None of these particular composers styles are used as a model, for this is not a work of pastiche; rather, Grieg uses the Baroque forms of Prelude, Sarabande, Gavotte, Air and Rigaudon (all French dances, with the exception of the standard introductory Prelude) as vessels for a sound world very much his own. The work was well received when the composer played it at the Bergen Holberg celebration in December 1884; so well, in fact, that a few months later he transcribed the music for string orchestra. Grieg cast the movements of his charming suite in the musical forms of the 18th century, but filled them with the spirit of his own time and style. There are also bursts of Romantic virtuosity and delicate folk themes as the dance movements preserve much of this folk flavor, with the Sarabande more joyous than is customary providing a long lyrical line that masks the innate three-quarter time of this dance form. Indeed the whole suite has a lightness of touch comparable to Tchaikovsky s ballet music, making it a perfect partner for that composer s Serenade for Strings. The suite remains one of the most frequently performed works for string orchestras. 9

10 Tanya Anisimova (b. 1966) Adonai, for Cello & Strings (2006) PROGRAM NOTES The Washington Post has described cellist Tanya Anisimova as a highly focused artist graced with spiritual authority and an easy mastery of her instrument and her original music as melodious, mystical, and deeply emotional. Tanya Anisimova gained international recognition in 2001 when she released a CD with her own transcriptions of J.S. Bach s Six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. After listening to her recording cellist Janos Starker called her an Everest climber a high class cellist with a strong and inventive musical mind. Anisimova has since built a successful career performing, composing and recording. Ms. Anisimova graduated cum laude from the Moscow Conservatory and received her Artist Diploma from Boston University and her Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from Yale University. She won First Prize at Concertino Prague International Competition, All-U.S.S.R. String Quartet Competition, and she is a top prize winner at Min-On International Competition in Tokyo and First Shostakovich International Competition in St. Petersburg. Through her original compositions, her numerous transcriptions and improvisations with her own vocal accompaniment cellist and composer Tanya Anisimova has reached a growing audience. In 2005, she premiered her own Quintet-Concerto for violoncello and string quartet with the St. Petersburg Quartet in Washington, D.C. In June, 2006 she performed seven concerts in Moscow, including the Russian premiere of the Quintet-Concerto with the Prokofiev Quartet and the world premiere of her concert piece Adonai for cello and string orchestra with the Russian Chamber Orchestra. In May, 2007, Tanya returned to Moscow at the invitation of the Moscow State Philharmonic Society to perform her cello concerto with the Moscow Conservatory Orchestra and toured France, Russia, Iceland and Germany performing her new compositions. Recent highlights include sold-out recitals at Carnegie Hall in New York, International Port Fairy Festival in Australia, a video performance of Bach s Chaconne, as well as performances of Shostakovich Concerto #1 in New Orleans and Tchaikovsky s Rococo Variations in Virginia Beach, Stage8 TV and The Red Door Series in Connecticut. Strad Magazine describes her music as deep, exploratory and richly rewarding. Composed in 2006 for her Moscow Conservatory Professor Igor Gavrysh, Adonai celebrates the divine origin of a human soul. It is inscribed with the following scriptures: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last Revelation of St. John; In the beginning there was Adonai and the Power was with Adonai and the Power was Adonai. It was with Adonai in the beginning as it is with him now. Genesis 10

11 Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( ) Serenade for Strings, Op. 48 (1880) III. Elegie: Larghetto elegiaco Though Tchaikovsky was a solidly romantic composer, one of his idols was Mozart, whom he once referred to as the Christ of music. Indeed, Tchaikovsky wrote that a performance of Don Giovanni he attended at the age of 10 was what introduced him to the power of music to express deep emotion. So it is no surprise that in September of 1880, at the same time he was working on his thunderous 1812 Festival Overture, Tchaikovsky decided to write an orchestral serenade that would serve as an homage to Mozart s own serenades. Inspired, he completed the work relatively quickly and appeared much more satisfied with it than its sister composition, the overture. As he wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, The overture will be very showy and noisy, but will have no artistic merit because I wrote it without warmth and without love. But the Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from inner compulsion. This is a piece from the heart. Later he told von Meck, I am violently in love with this work and cannot wait for it to be played. It was premiered in St. Petersburg in 1881 and met with instant success. The Serenade for Strings is not a truly classical piece in its musical content -- it is as romantic as any of Tchaikovsky s other works, and unlike Mozart s serenade for a small group of strings, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Tchaikovsky s serenade requires a full string choir to do justice to its sonorities. But though it does not sound precisely like Mozart, Tchaikovsky intended his work to be classical in form and spirit. This, he wrote to von Meck, is my homage to Mozart; it is intended to be an imitation of his style, and I should be delighted if I thought I had in any way approached my model. The third movement, Élégie, is built upon an ascending scale motive in a rich introduction that leads to the main theme one of the composer s loveliest melodies. Although the term Élégie may give the connotation of lament, the use of the major rather than minor mode lends itself more to a feeling of nostalgia rather than sadness. The outer, framing sections have a darker mood that is lightened somewhat in the middle section. This movement is musically similar to - and in fact, anticipates - the second movement of Tchaikovsky s own Pathétique Symphony. For the return to the opening material, the strings are muted to produce a delicately veiled tone. In the coda, the proceedings climb resolutely up to serene harmonies as the dynamics gradually reach their softest point of expression (marked pppp ). 11

12 Sisters of Benet Hill Monastery MARK YOUR CALENDAR: Chamber Concert Series SONGS FOR SEPTEMBER: REMEMBRANCE AND REFLECTION with Soprano, Katherine Johnson Sunday: Sept. 11, 2016 ~ 2:30 pm SOUND TRAVELS with Trio Vivante Sunday: Nov. 6, 2016 ~ 2:30 pm LA GRANDE STRINGS with Hausmusik String Quartet Sunday: Feb. 12, 2017 ~ 2:30 pm TIME AND ETERNITY with Parish House Baroque Sunday: March 12, 2017 ~ 2:30 pm Special Price ~ Today Only $65 ($80 value) for all 4 Concerts Tickets: Adult: $20 Seniors/Students: $15 Subscribe to all 4 Concerts! Adult: $70 (Subscription offer ends Sept. 11, 2016) Purchase Tickets online at: Benet Lane ~ Colorado Springs ~ CO 80921~ (719) ~