PROGRAM NOTES

portrays a tender season of beauty. The elegant words of Hildegard von Bingen hearken back to an image of Eden—a time of goodness and purity. After a slow and gradual ascent to the word “pacis” (peace), a brief moment of the peace theme gracefully reappears in the cello, concluding with serene, sustained tones.

- Elaine Hagenberg

Daybreak

REBECCA CLARKE

Long renowned for her chamber music and songs as well as for being on of the great viola players of her time, Rebecca Clark was also a brilliant composer of songs with string accompaniment, including two sets of folk-song arrangements. Clarke composed Daybreak around 1940 – she herself was not quite sure of the date, and there is no known external documentation for the piece – picking up two important strands in her oeuvre: the deep current of erotic longing that runs through so many of her vocal and choral pieces, and her use of composition models drawn from earlier English vocal music. In setting Donne’s yearning aubade, Clarke makes explicit reference to the Elizabethan consort song, both in her limpid, quietly aching vocal writing, and in her use of a strings (quartet) to evoke a consort of viols. In every other way, however, Daybreak is modern and unambivalent in expression, pointing towards Clarke’s wartime Chorus from Shelley’s ‘Hellas’ (1943), with its spectacular outcried and passionate intensity…this is not so much a morning-song as a morning-after song.

excerpts by Christopher Johnson

Seven O’Clock Shout VALERIE COLEMAN

Seven O'Clock Shout is an anthem inspired by the tireless frontline workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the heartwarming ritual of evening serenades that brings people together amidst isolation to celebrate life and the sacrifices of heroes. The work begins with a distant and solitary solo between two trumpets in fanfare fashion to commemorate the isolation forced upon humankind, and the need to reach out to one another. The fanfare blossoms into a lushly dense landscape of nature, symbolizing both the caregiving acts of nurses and doctors as they try to save lives, while nature is transforming and healing herself during a time of self-isolation.

When a composer has the rare opportunity to create for musicians they have gotten to know, the act of composing becomes an embrace tailored to the personality and capabilities of the musicians with elements of both challenge and appreciation. One such moment is dedicated to humanity and grace, as a clarinet solo written for Ricardo Morales, followed by a flute solo with both Jeffrey Khaner and Patrick Williams in mind, providing a transition into a new upbeat segment. Later, to continue tradition from the first commission the composer received from the orchestra, a piccolo solo dedicated to Erica Peel dances with joy.

After Sunset, from Three Moods of the Sea ETHEL SMYTH

Ethel Smyth was a twentieth-century British composer and a champion of women’s rights and female musicians. During her lifetime, she composed symphonies, choral works, and operas, and is most well-known for The March of Women, an anthem for women’s suffrage movement.

The fourth of eight children, Ethel showed a keen interest in music as a career. Her father, a major general in the Royal Artillery, was not supportive but Smyth studied privately and then attended the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany beginning in 1877. In 1889 she returned to London and continued to develop her talents in many different areas of composition, earning several distinguished awards and recognitions. Despite her talent and success, she struggled to find musicians to perform her works and to get her music published. Due to increasing hearing loss, Ethel gave up her music career, ultimately writing several biographies. Smyth died in England in 1944 at the age of 86. She was a strong political voice of the early twentieth century and remains a highly regarded female composer.

Three Moods of the Seas is written for solo voice, based on poems by Arthur Symons and demonstrates Smyth’s skill in setting poems to music. In the first movement, Requies, the accompaniment gives a lulling movement while the vocal line sits calmy above it. There is a slightly more tumultuous mood that soon returns to the original calm. The second movement, Before the Squall, depicts the rising wind. The final movement, After Sunset, is peaceful and calming.

It was suggested that a short work for a debut by multi-track recording could account for the ensemble performing together as if they were in the same room. One of the devices used to address this is the usage of Ostinato, which is a rhythmic motif that repeats itself to generate forward motion and in this case, groove. The ostinato patterns here are laid down by the bass section, allowing the English horn and strings to float over it, gradually building up to that moment at 7pm, when cheers, claps, clanging of pots and pans, and shouts ring through the air of cities around the world! The trumpets drive an infectious rhythm, layered with a traditional Son clave rhythm, while solo trombone boldly rings out an anthem within a traditional African call and response style. The entire orchestra ‘shouts’ back in response and the entire ensemble rallies Into an anthem that embodies the struggles and triumph of humanity. The work ends in a proud anthem moment where we all come together with grateful hearts to acknowledge that we have survived yet another day.

Valerie Coleman, composer

The Canticle of the Sun , Opus 123 AMY BEACH

Amy Beach was born to write music, began doing so when she was 4 years old and managed to win a substantial national reputation in her twenties, although women at that time were not really supposed to be composers. She composed, in a well-developed, largely selftaught late romantic style, in nearly all the standard classical forms, opera being the primary exception. Her work fell into neglect after her death but has been regaining the attention it deserves in the last quarter-century. She was a member first of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Boston and later of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York. Early in the century, a movement had begun in Oxford to renew in the Anglican church the Catholic traditions of the ancient past. The Church restored the ancient practice of singing the liturgy for the services and designed the rituals of worship to express the awe and mystery of the Christian faith. Choirs proliferated and there was a great demand for new liturgical music and anthems. During the