Program Notes: Mozart's Requiem

CLASSICS 2023/24

MOZART’S REQUIEM WITH PETER OUNDJIAN

PERFORMED BY YOUR COLORADO SYMPHONY

PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor

COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS, DUAIN WOLFE, director

YULIA VAN DOREN, soprano

DIANA MOORE, mezzo-soprano

ISAIAH BELL, tenor

ANDREW GARLAND, baritone

Friday, March 22, 2024 at 7:30pm

Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 7:30pm

Sunday, March 24, 2024 at 1:00pm

Boettcher Concert Hall

FAURÉ Pavane, Op. 50

DEBUSSY Nocturnes

Nuages (Clouds)

Fêtes (Festivals)

Sirènes (Sirens) —

CLASSICS 2023/24

MOZART Requiem Mass in D minor, K. 626

I. Introitus - Requiem

II. Kyrie

III. Sequenz

Dies irae

Tuba mirum

Rex tremendae

Recordare

Confutatis

Lacrimosa

IV. Offertorium

Domine Jesu

Hostias

V. Sanctus

Sanctus

Benedictus

VI. Agnus Dei

VII. Communio

CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 55 MINUTES INCLUDING A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION

FIRST TIME TO THE SYMPHONY? SEE PAGE 19 OF THIS PROGRAM FOR FAQ’S TO MAKE YOUR EXPERIENCE GREAT!

PHOTO: DALE WILCOX

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor

Recognized as a masterful and dynamic presence in the conducting world, Peter Oundjian has developed a multi-faceted portfolio as a conductor, violinist, professor and artistic advisor. He has been celebrated for his musicality, an eye towards collaboration, innovative programming, leadership and training with students and an engaging personality. Strengthening his ties to Colorado, Oundjian is now Principal Conductor of the Colorado Symphony in addition to Music Director of the Colorado Music Festival, which successfully pivoted to a virtual format during the pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021.

Now carrying the title Conductor Emeritus, Oundjian’s fourteen-year tenure as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony served as a major creative force for the city of Toronto and was marked by a reimagining of the TSO’s programming, international stature, audience development, touring and a number of outstanding recordings, garnering a Grammy nomination in 2018 and a Juno award for Vaughan Williams’ Orchestral Works in 2019. He led the orchestra on several international tours to Europe and the USA, conducting the first performance by a North American orchestra at Reykjavik’s Harpa Hall in 2014.

From 2012-2018, Oundjian served as Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra during which time he implemented the kind of collaborative programming that has become a staple of his directorship. Oundjian led the RSNO on several international tours, including North America, China, and a European festival tour with performances at the Bregenz Festival, the Dresden Festival as well as in Innsbruck, Bergamo, Ljubljana, and others. His final appearance with the orchestra as their Music Director was at the 2018 BBC Proms where he conducted Britten’s epic War Requiem.

Highlights of past seasons include appearances with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Iceland Symphony, the Detroit, Atlanta, Saint Louis, Baltimore, Dallas, Seattle, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. With the onset of world-wide concert cancellations, support for students at Yale and Juilliard became a priority. In the 2022/2023 season, Oundjian conducted the opening weekend of Atlanta Symphony, followed by return engagements with Baltimore, Indianapolis, Dallas, Colorado and Toronto symphonies, as well as a visit to New World Symphony.

Oundjian has been a visiting professor at Yale University’s School of Music since 1981, and in 2013 was awarded the school’s Sanford Medal for Distinguished Service to Music. A dedicated educator, Oundjian regularly conducts the Yale, Juilliard, Curtis and New World symphony orchestras.

An outstanding violinist, Oundjian spent fourteen years as the first violinist for the renowned Tokyo String Quartet before he turned his energy towards conducting.

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

DUAIN WOLFE, founder and director, Colorado Symphony Chorus

Three-time Grammy winner for Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Recording, and Best Opera Performance, Duain Wolfe is Founder and Director of the Colorado Symphony Chorus.

This year marks Wolfe’s 40th season with the Colorado Symphony Chorus. The Chorus has been featured at the Aspen Music Festival for nearly three decades. Wolfe recently retired as Director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus after 28 years. He has collaborated with Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, and Sir George Solti on numerous recordings including Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, which won the 1998 GRAMMY® for Best Opera Recording. Wolfe’s extensive musical accomplishments have resulted in numerous awards, including the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Denver, the Bonfils Stanton Award in the Arts and Humanities, the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline, and the Michael Korn Award for the Development of the Professional Choral Art. Wolfe is Founder of the Colorado Children’s Chorale, from which he retired in 1999 after 25 years. For 20 years, Wolfe also worked with the Central City Opera Festival as chorus director and conductor, founding and directing the company’s young artist residence program, as well as its education and outreach programs. Wolfe’s other accomplishments include directing and preparing choruses for Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, the Bravo! Vail Festival, the Berkshire Choral Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Grand Teton Music Festival. He has worked with Pinchas Zuckerman and Alexander Shelly as Chorus Director for the Canadian National Arts Centre Orchestra for the past 20 years.

COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS

The 2023/24 Colorado Symphony concert season marks the 40th season of the Colorado Symphony Chorus. Founded in 1984 by Duain Wolfe at the request of Gaetano Delogu, then the Music Director of the Symphony, the chorus has grown into a nationally respected ensemble. This outstanding chorus of volunteers joins the Colorado Symphony for numerous performances each year, to repeated critical acclaim.

The Chorus has performed at noted music festivals in the Rocky Mountain region, including the Colorado Music Festival, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, where it has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Dallas Symphony, under conductors Alan Gilbert, Hans Graf, Jaap van Zweden, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Fabio Luisi. For over twenty five years, the Chorus was featured at the world-renowned Aspen Music Festival, performing many great masterworks under the baton of conductors Lawrence Foster, James Levine, Murry Sidlin, Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, and Robert Spano.

Among the eight recordings the Colorado Symphony Chorus has made is a NAXOS release of Roy Harris’s Symphony No. 4. The Chorus is also featured on a Hyperion release of the Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem and Stephen Hough’s Missa Mirabilis. Most recently, the Colorado Symphony and Chorus released a world-premiere recording of William Hill’s The Raven

In 2009, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the chorus, Duain Wolfe conducted the chorus on a three-country, two-week concert tour of Europe, presenting the Verdi Requiem in Budapest, Vienna, Litomysl and Prague; in 2016 the chorus returned to Europe for concerts in Paris, Strasbourg and Munich featuring the Fauré Requiem. In the summer of 2022, the Chorus toured Austria, performing to great acclaim in Vienna, Graz and Salzburg. Colorado Symphony

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS

Duain Wolfe, Founding Director and Conductor

Mary Louise Burke, Principal Associate Director and Conductor

Taylor Martin, Associate Director and Conductor

Jared Joseph, Conducting Intern

Hsiao-Ling Lin and ShaoChun Tsai, pianists

Eric Israelson, Chorus Manager

Barbara Porter, Associate Chorus Manager

SOPRANO

Andrews, Lottie

Ascani, Lori

Atchison, René

Black, Kimberly Blum, Jude

Bowen, Alex

Brauchli, Margot

Burns, Jeremy

Burr, Emily

Causey, Denelda

Coberly, Ruth

Coberly, Sarah

Collins, Elizabeth

Collins, Suzanne Collums, Angie

Cote, Kerry

Dakkouri, Claudia Dobreff, Mary

Eck, Emily

Emerich, Kate

Ewert, Gracie

Gaskill, Andria

Gile, Jenifer

Gill, Lori

Glazier, Taylor

Graber, Susan

Harston, Rachel

Headrick, Alaina

Hittle, Erin

Jones, Kaitlyn

Jorden, Cameron

Kennedy, Lauren

Kermgard, Lindsey

Kinnischtzke, Meghan

Kraft, Lisa

Kushnir, Marina

Lang, Leanne

Look, Cathy

Linder, Dana

Machusko, Rebecca

Mattingly, Isabella

Maupin, Anne

Montigne, Erin

Moraskie, Wendy

O’Nan, Jeannette

Peterson, Jodie

Pflug, Kim

Porter, Barbara

Rae, Donneve

Ropa, Lori

Ruff, Mahli

Sewell, April

Sladovnik, Roberta

Stegink, Nicole

Tate, Judy

Timme, Sydney

Von Roedern, Sue

Walker, Marcia

Wall, Alison

Wise, Rebecca

Wuertz, Karen

Young, Cara

Zisler, Joan

ALTO

Adams, Priscilla

Arthur, Liz

Berganza, Brenda

Chatfield, Cass

Clauson, Clair

Conrad, Jayne

Cox, Martha

Darone, Janie

Davies, Debbie

Deck, Barbara

Dobson, Kezia

Dutcher, Valerie

Fairchild, Raleigh

Friedman, Anna

Gayley, Sharon Golden, Daniela Groom, Gabriella

Guittar, Pat

Haxton, Sheri Hoopes, Kaia Hoskins, Hansi

Isaac, Olivia

Jackson, Brandy

Janasko, Ellen Kaminske, Christine

Kern, Charlotte

Kim, Annette

Kolstad, Annie

LeBaron, Andrea

Levy, Juliet

London, Carole

Long, Tinsley

Maltzahn, Joanna McWaters, Susan

Nordenholz, Kristen Nyholm, Christine Owens, Sheri

Parsons, Jill Pringle, Jennifer Rehme, Leanne Rudolph, Kathi

Scarselli, Elizabeth Schnell, Wendy Stevenson, Melanie

Thaler, Deanna Thayer, Mary Tiggelaar, Clara Trubetskoy, Kimberly

Virtue, Pat Wandel, Benita Worthington, Evin

York, Beth

TENOR

Babcock, Gary

Bowman, Ryan

Carlson, James

Davies, Dusty

Dinkel, Jack

Fuehrer, Roger

Gale, John

Gordon, Frank

Guittar, Forrest

Hodel, David

Ibrahim, Sami

Johnson, Trey

Jordan, Curt

Kolm, Kenneth

Milligan, Tom

Moraskie, Richard

Muesing, Garvis

Nicholas, Timothy Rangel, Miguel

Richardson, Tyler Roach, Eugene

Rosen, David

Ruth, Ronald Seamans, Andrew

Shaw, Kyle

Sims, Jerry

Stohlmann, Phillip

Thompson, Hannis

Waller, Ryan

Witherspoon, Max

Zimmerman, Kenneth

BASS

Adams, John

Brown, Sean

Carlton, Grant

Friedlander, Robert

Glauner, Dave

Gray, Matthew Grossman, Chris

Griffin, Tim

Hammerberg, Nic

Hesse, Douglas

Highbaugh, David

Hume, Donald

Hunt, Leonard

Israelson, Eric

Jackson, Terry

Jirak, Thomas

Johnson, Matthew

Jones, John

Joseph, Jared Lingenfelter, Paul McDaniel, Jakson Mehta, Nalin Molberg, Matthew

Morrison, Greg Nuccio, Gene Phillips, John Pilcher, Ben Potter, Tom

Pullen, Jacob

Quarles, Kenneth Richards, Joshua Scoville, Adam Skillings, Russell Smedberg, Matthew Steele, Matt

Struthers, David Swanson, Wil

Virtue, Tom

West, Mike

Zax, Jeffrey

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

YULIA VAN DOREN, soprano

A dedicated interpreter of repertoire off the beaten path, RussianAmerican soprano Yulia Van Doren has thoughtfully cultivated a unique career as one of the foremost concert singers of her generation. Particularly recognized for her work in Baroque repertoire, Ms. Van Doren has been presented as a guest artist by a majority of the premier North American orchestras and festivals, has the distinction of being the only singer awarded top prizes in all US Bach vocal competitions, and is featured on two GRAMMY®-nominated opera recordings with the Boston Early Music Festival.

Other career highlights include leading roles in a variety of diverse repertoire, including the world premiere of Shostakovich’s Orango with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, directed by Peter Sellars and released on Deutsche Grammophon; the modern revival of Monsigny’s Le roi et le fermier at Opera de Versailles, the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center; Monteverdi concerts in Venice with Sir John Eliot Gardiner; Scarlatti’s rarely-performed opera Tigrane at Opera de Nice; Handel’s Acis and Galatea with the Radio Kamer Filharmonie at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and with Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin in Macau, marking the first Handel opera performance in the Chinese region; a variety of eclectic 20th-century repertoire as the featured soprano of the 2013 Ojai Music Festival; several world premieres at Carnegie Hall; and nationally-televised performances at the Cartagena International Music Festival with soprano Dawn Upshaw, a cherished career mentor. Ms. Van Doren made her European debut singing the historicallynotable Hungarian premiere of Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Passionate about cross-arts collaboration, she has been a frequent soprano soloist for renowned choreographer Mark Morris since 2007, singing many national and international performances with his company including Dido and Aeneas, Acis and Galatea, and Morris’ iconic L’Allegro; and in 2019 Ms. Van Doren became the first opera singer to perform at the Essaoira World Music Festival, one of Africa’s largest music festivals, in a guest appearance with Moroccan Gnawa superstar Hassan Hakmoun.

Born in Moscow, Ms. Van Doren was raised in the United States in a music-filled household in which she and her seven younger siblings were taught by their Russian mezzo-soprano mother and American jazz pianist father. After spending her high school years working full-time in professional musical theater, she switched focus to classical singing and attended New England Conservatory. Her graduate degree from Bard College Conservatory was generously supported by a Soros Fellowship, and postgraduate study in Paris by a Beebe Fellowship. She is an Astral Artist Laureate.

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

DIANA MOORE, mezzo-soprano

English mezzo-soprano Diana Moore is being lauded on both sides of the Atlantic for her “emotional depth” (The Guardian), “thrilling” technical bravura (Gramophone), and “rich, evocative sound” (San Francisco Chronicle). She enjoys a varied and international career of opera, oratorio, and concert performances, and is a popular soloist at many major music festivals.

Ms. Moore’s charismatic vocal quality and training place her firmly within the fine heritage of English mezzo-sopranos. She is committed to celebrating the music and musicians of her homeland and has built a reputation as a leading exponent of English song. In 2007, she devised Kathleen Ferrier — Her Life, Letters & Music, to honor that legendary English singer. The program has been endorsed by the Kathleen Ferrier Society, and a recent review called it “one of the most moving and captivating evenings I’ve spent.”

Ms. Moore’s tall and graceful stature has made her the ideal trouser-role performer on the opera stage. With conductor Nicholas McGegan and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Moore performed the role of “Medoro” in Handel’s Orlando in an acclaimed American tour at the Ravinia Festival, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, and Tanglewood Festival. The New York Times praised her “smooth toned” and “compassionate” performance while the Chicago Classical Review raved that she “made a delightfully shameless seducer in the trouser role of Medoro.” She has also performed the role at Göttingen, Sweden’s Drottningholm Court Theatre, with the English Concert, and in San Francisco.

Other Handel roles include the title role in Rinaldo at Göttingen International Handel Festival, VlaamseOper, the National Theatre in Prague, and Versailles; Sesto in Giulio Cesare (Göttingen); and Armindo in Partenope with the Early Opera Company. The London Times commented that, “As Partenope’s true love, Diana Moore briefly fooled me into believing that she too was a man, so natural and elegant did she look in her suit... a perfectly lovely performance.”

Last season Moore made her debut with the Houston Symphony in a performance of Handel’s Messiah. Further bookings in the 2019-20 season were with Colorado Symphony (Beethoven Symphony No. 9), Bremen Philharmonic (Mahler’s Rückert Lieder), and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Munich Philharmonic (both Messiah).

Other engagements of note include performances with conductor Nicholas McGegan of Vivaldi’s Juditha Triumphans (Holofernes) with Philharmona Baroque Orchestra, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony along with selections from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn with Royal Northern Sinfonia; Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at Royal Albert Hall and Winchester, Ely, Gloucester, and York Minster Cathedrals; Bach’s Mass in B Minor and St. Matthew Passion, Handel’s La Resurrezione, Mendelssohn’s Paulus, and an all-Vivaldi program with The King’s Consort; St. Matthew Passion with Trevor Pinnock and the English Consort; a tour of Haydn masses in Switzerland with John Eliot Gardiner; Beethoven’s Mass in C with the Salzburg Camerata and Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été with the Northern Sinfonia, both under Sir Roger Norrington; and a performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. She has performed Messiah with The English Concert/Harry Bicket, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under Patrick Dupré Quigley, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra with Paul Goodwin conducting.

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

ISAIAH BELL, tenor

Isaiah Bell performs across North America as a tenor (notably Rufus Wainwright’s Hadrian at the Canadian Opera Company, The Barber of Seville with Vancouver Opera, Mark Morris’s production of Curlew River at B.A.M.) and complements that practice with composing and writing. He combines all three disciplines in his solo chamber-opera/cabaret-theatre show The Book of My Shames, a co-creation with director Sean Guist around Isaiah’s words and music. The piece, which has been described as “impossibly beautiful” and a “comic, wrenchingly personal tour-de-force”, has been presented by opera companies and orchestras across Canada. It continues to tour.

Recent and upcoming projects include Acis and Galatea with Richard Egarr and Philharmonia Baroque at the Tanglewood and Caramoor Festivals, Handel’s Messiah with the Edmonton Symphony and Colorado Symphony, Haydn’s Creation with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the world premiere of La Reine-garçon at Opéra de Montréal, Mendelssohn’s Elijah at Carnegie Hall, and Lysander in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Des Moines. He also returns to collaborations with conductor Nicholas McGegan and the Calgary Philharmonic.

ANDREW GARLAND, baritone

Andrew Garland has performed recitals at Carnegie Hall, the New York Festival of Song, the Ravinia festival, Vocal Arts DC, Marilyn Horne Foundation, The Bard Festival, The Cleveland Art Song Festival, Camerata Pacifica, Andre-Turp Society Montreal, Voce at Pace, Huntsville Chamber Music Guild, Fanfare in Hammond, LA, Cincinnati Matinee Musicale, Cincinnati Song Initiative, Tuesday Morning Music Club, American Pianist Awards, The Phillips Collection, Vocal Arts DC, college campuses around North America, and venues in Italy, Croatia, Greece and Turkey.

He has premiered works by Jake Heggie, William Bolcom, Stephen Paulus, Steven Mark Kohn, Eric Nathan, Edie Hill, and Gerald Cohen, and had works written for him by Lee Hoiby, Tom Cipullo, Thomas Pasatieri, and Gabriela Frank.

He has performed in concert with the Atlanta Symphony, Boston Baroque, Handel and Haydn, Boston Youth Symphony, National Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Washington Master Chorale at the Kennedy Center, National Chorale at Lincoln Center, Colorado Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Houston Symphony, UMS Ann Arbor, and the Takács, Dover, Amernet, and Deadalus String Quartets. He has performed leading opera roles at Seattle Opera, New York City Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Cincinnati Opera, Minnesota Opera, Arizona Opera, Hawai’i Opera Theatre, Opera Colorado, Boston Lyric, Dayton, Fort Worth Opera, The Bard Festival, Opera Saratoga, and others. Garland is a member of the voice faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder and is a mentor with Bel Canto Boot Camp.

Andrew (Andy) bicycles year-round and for the past 30 years has raised funds for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute through the Pan Mass Challenge.

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

GABRIEL FAURÉ

Pavane, Op. 50

Gabriel Fauré was born on May 12, 1845 in Pamiers, Ariège, France, and died on November 14, 1924 in Paris. His Pavane was composed in 1887 and premiered on April 28, 1888 in Paris, conducted by Charles Lamoureux. The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoon, two horns and strings. Duration is about 7 minutes. This piece was last performed by the orchestra May 11-13, 2018, with Ken-David Masur conducting.

Fauré originally composed his Pavane in 1887 as a purely orchestral work for Jules Danbé, conductor of the Opéra-Comique and director of the Conservatoire concerts. There is no record, however, that Danbé performed the work, and Fauré came up with another plan for it. On September 29, 1887, he wrote to Countess Elisabeth Greffulhe, “Robert de Montesquiou [the model for Proust’s Baron Charlus and an ‘aristocrat, scholar, aesthete and dandy,’ as he was described in an exhibition about him at the Musée d’Orsay], whom I have had the great fortune to meet in Paris, has most kindly accepted the egregiously thankless and difficult task of setting to this music, which is already complete, words that will make our Pavane fit to be both danced and sung. He has given it a delightful text in the manner of Verlaine: sly coquetries by the female dancers, and great sighs by the male dancers that will singularly enhance the music. If the whole marvelous thing with a lovely dance in fine costumes could be performed, what a treat it would be!” Fauré, however, did not see his Pavane staged until 1919, when he included it in the one-act divertissement for Monte Carlo Masques et Bergamasques, though the score was earlier performed, with voices, at Charles Lamoureux’s concert in Paris on April 28, 1888. The chorus is rarely heard now in performances.

The pavane was a 16th-century court dance from Padua (“Pava” in the local dialect, hence “pavane”) of a stately, processional nature. Carried across the Alps, the form reached its highest point of artistic perfection in the works of the Elizabethan virginalists and then fell from favor. As the riches of ancient music began to be uncovered in the late 19th century by pioneering musicologists, interest among composers in such old forms as the pavane was stirred. SaintSaëns included an example of the genre in his opera Etienne Marcel of 1879, and a few years later Fauré contributed his interpretation of the early dance, marking it with his characteristic blend of yearning sensuality and cool classicism that Marcel Proust described as “a mixture of lechery and litanies.” The piece is in a three-part form, with the return of the haunting opening flute melody following a stern middle section. In 1903 Debussy, who, as man and musician, knew whereof he spoke, said, “The play of the graceful, fleeting lines described by Fauré’s music may be compared to the gesture of a beautiful woman without either suffering from comparison.”

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

Nocturnes for Orchestra and Women’s Chorus

Claude Debussy was born on August 22, 1862 in St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, and died on March 25, 1918 in Paris. He composed Nocturnes in 1897-1899; it was premiered on October 27, 1901 in Paris, conducted by Camille Chevillard. The score calls for three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, strings, and, in the last movement, women’s chorus. This piece was last performed by the orchestra November 13-15, 2018, conducted by Scott O'Neil.

“One stormy day in 1897, as Debussy was crossing the Pont de la Concorde in Paris with his friend Paul Poujaud,” wrote the composer’s biographer Léon Vallas about the background of the Nocturnes, “he told him that on a similar kind of day the idea of the symphonic work Nuages [‘Clouds’] had occurred to him: he had visualized those very thunder-clouds swept along by a stormy wind; a boat passing, with its horn sounding. These two impressions are recalled in the languorous succession of chords and by the short chromatic theme on the English horn.” Debussy went on to explain to Poujaud that Fêtes (“Festivals”) had been inspired by a recollection of merry-making in the Bois de Boulogne, with noisy crowds watching the drum and bugle corps of the Garde Nationale pass in parade. The finale (Sirènes —“Sirens”), which includes women’s chorus though they sing without text, derives from L’Homme et la Sirène by Henri de Régnier, a symbolist poet and close associate of Mallarmé. (It was Régnier who approached Mallarmé with Debussy’s request to base a work on his Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune.) The title of the entire cycle — Nocturnes — and the idea for its tone-color painting may have been taken from the work of James McNeill Whistler, the American-born artist who lived in Paris and London for most of his life and whose best-known work, a portrait of his mother, was formally entitled by him Arrangement in Gray and Black, No. 1.

Debussy began the Nocturnes in 1897 but then took two years to finish them. On September 16, 1898 he wrote to the publisher Georges Hartmann that these three orchestral pieces were giving him more trouble than all five acts of the opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He wanted to follow the sensation created in 1894 by his Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune with an equally intriguing orchestral work, but one that would also fulfill his grand, avant-garde view of the art. “I love music passionately, and because I love it I try to free it from the barren traditions that stifle it,” he proclaimed. “It is a free art, gushing forth — an open-air art, an art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea! It must never be shut in and become an academic art.” Even after Hartmann published the work in 1899, Debussy continued to refine his vision by touching up the orchestration in his personal copy of the score for years thereafter. Those changes were incorporated into the definitive version of the work issued in 1930.

Debussy himself caught the delicate blending of reality and imagination in the poetic description of his Nocturnes he provided for the premiere on October 27, 1901: “The title Nocturnes is intended to have here a more general and, more particularly, a more decorative meaning. It is not meant to designate the usual form of a nocturne, but rather all the impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests.

“Clouds: the unchanging aspect of the sky and the slow and solemn march of clouds fading away in gray tones slightly tinged with white.

“Festivals: vibrating, dancing rhythm, with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of a procession (a dazzling, fantastic vision) passing through the festive scene and becoming blended with it; but the background remains persistently the same: the festival with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the universal rhythm of things.

“Sirens: the sea and its endless rhythms; then amid the billows silvered by the moon, the mysterious song of the Sirens is heard; it laughs and passes.”

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)

Requiem Mass in D minor for Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Baritone Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra, K. 626

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, and died on December 5, 1791 in Vienna. He left the Requiem incomplete at his death, and, in the version heard at this concert, it was completed by his pupil Franz Süssmayr, to whom he had given detailed instructions. The work was premiered on December 14, 1893 in the Vienna suburb of Wiener-Neustadt. The score calls for two basset horns [alto clarinets], two bassoons, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, organ and strings. Duration is about 48 minutes. This piece was last performed by the orchestra October 13-15, 2017, with Jun Märkl conducting.

In early July 1791, while he was busy composing The Magic Flute, Mozart received a letter testifying to the glories of his music and alerting him that he would be having a visitor with a proposal on the following day. The letter was unsigned. The visitor, “an unknown, grey stranger,” according to Mozart, appeared on schedule and said that he represented the writer of the letter, who wanted to commission a new piece — a Requiem Mass — but added the curious provision that Mozart not try to discover the patron’s identity. Despite the somewhat foreboding mystery surrounding this venture, Mozart was in serious financial straits just then and the money offered was generous, so he accepted the commission and promised to begin as soon as possible. The Magic Flute was pressing, however, and he also received another commission at the same time, one too important to ignore, for an opera to celebrate the September coronation in Prague of Emperor Leopold as King of Bohemia — La Clemenza di Tito, based on one of Metastasio’s old librettos — that demanded immediate attention.

Mozart worked on the Requiem as time allowed. From mid-August until mid-September, he, Constanze and his pupil Franz Süssmayr, who composed the recitatives for Tito, were in Prague for the opera’s premiere. When they returned to Vienna, Schickaneder pressed Mozart to put the final touches on The Magic Flute, which was first staged on September 30th. Mozart’s health had deteriorated alarmingly by October — he complained of swelling limbs, feverishness, pains in his joints and severe headaches. On November 17th, with the Requiem far from finished, he took to his bed. He became obsessed with the Requiem, referring to it as his “swan-song,” convinced that he was writing the music for his own funeral. He managed to complete only the Requiem and Kyrie sections of the work, but sketched the voice parts and the bass and gave indications for scoring for the Dies irae through the Hostias. On December 4th, he scrawled a few measures of the Lacrymosa, and then collapsed. A priest was called to administer extreme unction; at midnight Mozart bid his family farewell and turned toward the wall; at five minutes to one on the morning of December 5, 1791, he died, six weeks shy of his 36th birthday. He never knew for whom he had written the Requiem.

Constanze, worried that she might lose the commission fee, asked Joseph Eybler, a student of Haydn and a friend of her late husband, to complete the score. He filled in the instrumentation that Mozart had indicated for the middle movements of the piece, but became stuck where the music broke off in the Lacrymosa. Franz Xaver Süssmayr, to whom Mozart had given detailed instructions about finishing the work, took up the task, revising Eybler’s

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

orchestration and supplying music for the last three movements. Süssmayr recopied the score so that the manuscript would show one rather than three hands, and it was collected by the stranger, who paid the remaining commission fee.

The person who commissioned Mozart’s Requiem was Count Franz von Walsegg, a nobleman of musical aspirations who had the odious habit of anonymously ordering music from established composers and then passing it off as his own. This Requiem was to commemorate Walsegg’s wife, Anna, who had died on February 14, 1791. The “grey stranger” was Walsegg’s valet, Anton Leitgeb, the son of the mayor of Vienna. Even after Mozart’s death, Walsegg went ahead with a performance of the Requiem, which was given at the Neukloster in the suburb of Wiener-Neustadt on December 14, 1793; the title page bore the legend, Requiem composto del Conte Walsegg. A few years later, when Constanze was trying to have her late husband’s works published, she implored Walsegg to disclose the Requiem’s true author. He did, and the score was first issued in 1802 by Breitkopf und Härtel.

It is difficult, and perhaps not even advisable, to dissociate Mozart’s Requiem from the circumstances of its composition — the work bears the ineradicable stamp of otherworldliness. In its sublimities and its sulfur, it appealed mightily to the Romantic sensibility of the 19th century, and continues to have a hold on the imagination of listeners matched by that of few other musical compositions. Manifold beauties of varied and moving expression abound throughout the work. The words of Lili Kraus, the Hungarian pianist associated throughout her career with the music of Mozart, apply with special poignancy to the wondrous Requiem: “There is no feeling — human or cosmic, no depth, no height the human spirit can reach — that is not contained in his music.”

©2024 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

I. INTROITUS (Chorus and Soprano)

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, Rest eternal grant them, O Lord; et lux perpetua luceat eis. and let perpetual light shine upon them. Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion, There shall be singing unto Thee in Zion, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem. and prayer shall go up to Thee in Jerusalem. Exaudi orationem meam. Hear my prayer. Ad te omnis caro veniet.

Unto Thee all flesh shall come.

II. KYRIE (Chorus)

Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy. Christe eleison. Christ have mercy. Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy.

III. SEQUENZ

1. Dies irae (Chorus)

Dies irae, dies illa

This day, this day of wrath solvet saeclum in favilla, shall consume the world in ashes, teste David cum Sibylla. so spake David and the Sibyl. Quantus tremor est futurus,

Oh, what great trembling there will be quando Judex est venturus when the Judge will appear cuncta stricte discussurus! to examine everything in strict justice!

2. Tuba mirum (Soloists)

Tuba mirum spargens sonum

The trumpet, sending its wondrous sound per sepulchra regionum, across the graves of all lands, coget omnes ante thronum. shall drive everyone before the throne. Mors stupebit et natura, Death and nature shall be stunned cum resurget creatura when all creation rises again judicanti responsura. to stand before the Judge. Liber scriptus proferetur, A written book will be brought forth, in quo totum continetur, in which everything is contained, unde mundus judicetur. from which the world will be judged. Judex ergo cum sedebit, So when the Judge is seated, quidquid latet apparebit, whatever is hidden shall be made known, nil inultum remanebit. nothing shall remain unpunished.

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?

What shall such a wretch as I say then?

Quem patronum rogaturus, To which protector shall I appeal, cum vix justus sit sicurus? when even the just man is barely safe?

3. Rex tremendae (Chorus)

Rex tremendae majestatis,

King of awesome majesty, qui salvandos salvas gratis, who freely saves those worthy of salvation, salva me, fons pietatis! save me, fount of pity!

4. Recordare (Soloists)

Recordare, Jesu pie,

Recall, dear Jesus, quod sum causa tuae viae, that I am the reason for Thy time on earth, ne me perdas illa die. do not cast me away on that day. Quaerens me, sedisti lassus, Seeking me, Thou didst sink down wearily, redemisti crucem passus; Thou hast saved me by enduring the cross; tantus labor non sit cassus. such travail must not be in vain. Juste judex ultionis, Righteous judge of vengeance, donum fac remissionis award the gift of forgiveness ante diem rationis. before the day of reckoning. Ingemisco tamquam reus, I groan like the sinner that I am, culpa rubet vultus meus, guilt reddens my face, supplicanti parce, Deus. Oh God, spare the supplicant.

Qui Mariam absolvisti

Thou, who pardoned Mary et latronem exaudisti, and heeded the thief, mihi quoque spem dedisti. hast given me hope as well.

Preces meae non sunt dignae, My prayers are unworthy, sed tu bonus fac benigne, but Thou, good one, in pity ne perenni cremer igne. let me not burn in the eternal fire. Inter oves locum praesta Give me a place among the sheep et ab hoedis me sequestra, and separate me from the goats, statuens in parte dextra. let me stand at Thy right hand.

5. Confutatis (Chorus)

Confutatis maledictis,

When the damned are cast away flammis acribus addictis, and consigned to the searing flames, voca me cum benedictis. call me to be with the blessed.

Oro supplex et acclinis, Bowed down in supplication I beg Thee, cor contritum quasi cinis, my heart as though ground to ashes: gere curam mei finis. help me in my last hour.

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

6. Lacrymosa (Chorus)

Lacrymosa dies illa

Oh, this day full of tears qua resurget ex favilla when from the ashes arises judicandus homo reus; guilty man, to be judged: huic ergo parce Deus. Oh Lord, have mercy upon him. Pie Jesu, Domine, Gentle Lord Jesus, dona eis requiem. grant them rest. Amen. Amen.

IV. OFFERTORIUM

1. Domine Jesu Christe (Chorus and Soloists)

Domine Jesu Christe, rex gloriae, Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory, Libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum deliver the souls of the faithful departed de poenis inferni from the pains of hell et de profundo lacu. and the bottomless pit. Libera eas de ore leonis, Deliver them from the jaws of the lion, ne absorbeat eas tartarus, lest hell engulf them, ne cadant in obscurum; lest they be plunged into darkness; sed signifer sanctus Michael but let the holy standard-bearer Michael representet eas in lucem sanctam, lead them into the holy light, quam olim Abrahae promisisti as Thou didst promise Abraham et semini ejus. and his seed.

2. Hostias (Chorus)

Hostias et preces tibi, Domine, Lord, in praise we offer to Thee laudis offerimus, sacrifices and prayers, tu suscipe pro animabus illis, receive them for the souls of those quarum hodie memoriam facimus: whom we remember this day: quam olim Abrahae promisisti as Thou didst promise Abraham et semini ejus. and his seed.

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

V. SANCTUS

1. Sanctus (Chorus)

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Holy, holy, holy, Dominus Deus Saboath! Lord God of hosts!

Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in excelsis! Glory to God in the highest!

2. Benedictus (Soloists and chorus)

Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in excelsis! Glory to God in the highest!

VI. AGNUS DEI (Chorus)

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world, dona eis requiem. grant them rest.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world, dona eis requiem sempiternam. grant them eternal rest.

VII. COMMUNIO (Soprano and Chorus)

Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, May eternal light shine upon them, O Lord, cum sanctis tuis in aeternam, with Thy saints forever, quia pius es. for Thou art good.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, Lord, grant them eternal rest, et lux perpetua luceat eis. and let perpetual light shine upon them.