Issue 24 • Spring 2019
In This Issue: From the Incoming President-Elect Choral Evensong Sicut cervus
The Official Publication of the North Dakota Chapter
of the American Choral Directors Association www.ndacda.com | 1
North Dakota ACDA Leadership Mike Weber, president, North Dakota State University Cheryl McIntyre, president-elect, Jamestown High School Sheldon Weltz, treasurer
North Dakota Repertoire and Resources Committee Repertoire-Specific Coordinator: Tom Porter, University of Mary Men’s Choirs: Tom Porter Women’s Choirs: Charlette Moe, North Dakota State University Vocal Jazz: Mike Seil, Bismarck Legacy High School Showchoir: Brian Saylor, Bismarck High School Ethnic Music: Mary Pat Archuleta, Bismarck Century High School
Youth Coordinator: Sarah Barnum, Discovery Middle School Children and Community: Jacy Walker, Middle School/Jr. High:
Allyse Hoge, Valley Middle School Jessica Blair Stoppleworth, Wahpeton Middle School Senior High School: Phillip Voeller, Beulah Middle/High School
Collegiate Coordinator: Chris Redfearn, Valley City State University Youth College/University: Chris Redfearn Student Activities: Melanie Popejoy, University of North Dakota
Life-Long Coordinator: Sara Lichtblau, Fargo South High School Community Choirs: Sarah Barnum Music in Worship: Vicky Boechler, St. Mary’s High School, & Sara Lichtblau
Brent Rogers, Dickinson State University Editor and Designer, The Chorister brent.w.rogers@dickinsonstate.edu
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Contents The Farm Boy Who Didn’t Know He Could
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Dean Jilek, University of North Dakota Choral Evensong
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Christopher Redfearn, Valley City State University Sicut cervus
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Tom Porter, University of Mary
Visit NDACDA online at ndacda.com, or by clicking below.
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I
The Farm Boy
Who Didn’t Know He Could...
n 1998, I had the awesome experience of witnessing Dr. James Rodde conduct the University of North Dakota Varsity Bards. This group of 50+ men sang the Varsity Song with pride; crisp, clean actions; and sounds that were beyond what I had ever heard before. And now…I stand in his very place, 21 years later, as the director of choral activities at the University of North Dakota. My road to this position was long and varied and full of influential and inspiring people. I grew up on a farm right outside of Dickinson loving the life associated with it, working the fields, milking cows, and raising livestock. I had no idea what existed outside of farm life concerning music. My parents listened to polka and waltz on the radio coming home from church and I spent hours upon hours listening to KFYR 550 AM radio out of Bismarck while working on the farm. Back in the 1980’s, KFYR played continuous music with only a few interruptions from the news at the top of the hour and Paul Harvey at 3:00 p.m. Let me tell you, after sitting in a farm implement for 15 hours a day, I learned to sing harmony from hearing the same music replayed every four hours…the Beach Boys, Chicago, and Phil Collins, to name a few. I graduated from Dickinson Trinity High School with now my dear friend Jeanne Jankowski as my choir director. Her continuous belief in students and drive to help us be successful while learning difficult music influenced me to study music. I earned my degree in vo4 | The Chorister • Winter 2019
cal education with a minor in physical education from Dickinson State University. Dr. Elwood Brown, my primary voice teacher and choral director, showed me how to work with students who were involved in other activities. His flexibility with my football schedule made it possible for me study music without having to give up something else that I loved. His wit, sense of humor, and impeccable way of inspiring me in the vocal world has stayed with me and continues to connect me to the voice instruction found here in the northern region of the nation. I began my teaching career in the Hazen School District. It was during this time that I had my first “I want that” moment upon seeing Dr. Rodde and the Varsity Bards. More of these moments followed when I witnessed Dr. Geoffrey Boers’ (University of Washington, Seattle) passion for music and the inner workings o f a c om po s i ti on a nd Cha rl ie McCullough’s large music program at Grand Forks Central High School. These three sparked the desire to begin the journey to attain my goals. After Hazen, I taught K-5 elementary music in Mitchell, SD (where I also served as the voice of The Corn Palace). The great Charlotte Morey, in a single after-
noon, provided me the tools and materials I needed to be an effective elementary music teacher. I then returned to Dickinson Trinity as a teacher and learned the importance of building a positive rapport with the coaching staff and administration for recruiting purposes and support. I also realized the necessity of positive parental support to a successful program. From Dickinson Trinity, I moved on to NDSU to earn a master in choral conducting and literature. Dr. Jo Ann Miller and Dr. Michael Weber taught me how discipline and integrity build a solid music education program and gain respect from your
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colleagues and the community. Upon completing my masters, I landed at Roseville Area High School in Minnesota and the large program position I dreamed of a mere 6 years earlier, although it had seemed like a life-time. The words collaborative and selfless sum up the music department at Roseville. These qualities are essential to a high functioning and successful music program. The band, orchestra and choir teachers worked together to solve problems; we believed in and supported each other; and we all contributed to the needs of the students, the department, and the school. We didn’t take 6 | The Chorister • Winter 2019
each other for granted and worked with a sense of cooperation not competition. It was my auditioned mixed choir from Roseville that was selected to perform at the National ACDA conference. The choir’s hard work and support gave me this chance of a lifetime and helped me take the steps to earn my doctorate. Applying for graduate school is a full time job. It takes tireless hours of video recording, editing, practicing, interviewing, waiting and deciding. My first year of applying was crushing. I auditioned and interviewed at two top schools and was turned down by both. Looking back, it’s exactly what I needed at that
stage of my career and put me on the right path for my continued journey in music education. After my second year of auditions, the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Louisiana State University, and the University of North Texas (UNT) each offered me a spot in their doctoral programs. UNT was my choice and the experience there was incredible. While in Texas, I was greatly influenced by the flawless conducting of Dr. Jerry McCoy, the effective rehearsal techniques of Dr. Richard Sparks, and the unbelievable vocal pedagogy expertise of Dr. Stephen Austin. I was challenged to “be the music” and learned how to make my voice stronger and healthier than it had ever been before. My fellow doctoral classmates were amazing to work with and learn from. Once again, I found myself in an environment of collaboration and selflessness. As music educators, we must remember the influence we have on our students and on each other. Our continued hard work and selflessness truly gives our students, community, and colleagues the tools to make this world a better place to live. Whether through our performances, rehearsals, or our daily interactions, let’s be an inspiration to our choir members and fellow teachers. Musically,
Dean Jilek University of North Dakota NDACDA incoming President Elect
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E
Choral Evensong My Project for the Year
very year I try to accomplish a “choral project” as a choir director; something that will stretch my knowledge and abilities as a choral musician, a journey on which I can include my students. As many of you are aware, I am fond of extended works with choir and orchestra, and some years that is my project. An extended work is not only a mountain to climb for your performers, but they force you as a choral director to be at the top of your game. Some years, my project is a performance tour that requires an extended set list of pieces that fit into a theme or requirements of a performance venue. The project could also be a set or entire concert of music around a theme, country, or genre. When I was a doctoral student, my advisor went on sabbatical and studied the choral music of Argentina. When he returned, we performed an entire concert of that music at the 2012 National Collegiate Choral Organization conference in Fort Collins, Colorado. In any case, my project may have conducting gestures that need to be refined or practiced, melodic or harmonic analysis to be completed, and historical context to research in order to have a performance that edifies not only the audience but the performers as well. This year, being a glutton for punishment, I decided to take on two projects. Members of the VCSU Concert Choir are undertaking a performance tour to Italy in May, and the literature for the entire year has been chosen with an eye to8 | The Chorister • Winter 2019
wards preparing a one-hour concert set of unaccompanied music for the tour. The set included both sacred music appropriate for worship, as we are performing mass in St. Peter’s in Rome and St. Mark’s in Venice, but also a broad range of American favorites for audiences in secular concerts. We leave in one month, and I’m excited for the musical and cultural exchange that will occur on the trip.
However, it’s the other project that I’ll address in this article. For some time, I’ve been fascinated with Choral Evensong. It is a mostly sung version of Evening Prayer, featuring hymns, anthems, responsorial choral chant, and settings of two New Testament canticles, Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. The order of the service is in the first Anglican Book of Common Prayer of 1549, and it comprises elements of the old monastic services of Vespers and Compline. Composers have been writing settings of the canticles, (often under the title of “evening service”) chants, and anthems in a continuous choral tradition since that time. The roster of composers who have written music specifically for choral evensong include well-known English masters such as William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Orlando Gibbons, John Blow, Henry Purcell,
Charles Stanford, Hubert Parry, Edward Elgar, Herbert Howells, and Michael Tippett. Non-English composers, as old as Palestrina and as new as Arvo Pärt and Ēriks Ešenvalds have also written settings of canticles. The project was to provide a complete evensong service, to be performed at Gethsemane Episcopal Cathedral in Fargo during Lent. My group was the VCSU University Singers, a versatile 12-16-member chamber group that does a little bit of everything. As the tradition of the service really spoke to me, I chose “Tudor Evensong” as my theme. We sang anthems by Palestrina and William Byrd, performed the Dorian Evening Service by Thomas Tallis, preces and responses by William Smith (1603-45). The only exception was the chant by Matthew Camidge (1764-1844), who was
not a Tudor composer, but his chant would have fit right in. Normally, the officiant would have intoned the calls to worship and the responsory prayers. However, he was recovering from an illness and was not in top vocal shape, so the job fell to me. It was not something I was anticipating doing, but it was another aspect of the performance that I got to experience. In all it was a great project, and it allowed me to understand the difficulties and joys of preparing and performing this music. My students were on board from the beginning, and with the exception of the first day of reading chant (it is written in a shorthand that takes some getting used to) they were in great spirits. If you want to get an idea of what an evensong sounds like, I recommend you visit the BBC Radio 3 website. There are full re-
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cordings of evensong services from around the United Kingdom, and they rotate monthly. Many are new recordings, but occasionally there are “archive” recordings from the recent past. Here is the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tp7r I encourage you to find a “project” of your own in the upcoming year. Perhaps there is an extended work you have been itching to try. Maybe there is a genre of music that you have appreciated from afar but have not programmed. It could be that your project is to get your choir to sing divisi and have them perform one piece that is on your “bucket list.” Whatever it is, a “choral project” can help you to remain excited and focused in the choral art. If you are like me, it may also cause enough mental exertion to help you sleep really well at night. Best wishes to you as you work towards the end of another year in the best job around. Christopher Redfearn Valley City State University NDACDA Collegiate Coordinator
B
Sicut cervus
Teaching in the Choral Rehearsal
esides being one of the most beautiful and perfectly constructed choral pieces ever written, “Sicut cervus” by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is in itself a masterclass in choral singing. Written c. 1594 (the year that Palestrina died) and published in 1604, “Sicut cervus” is a liturgical motet using the Latin text of Psalm 42:1. Though certainly not the only late Renaissance choral work worth performing, “Sicut cervus” provides opportunities for musical growth in the areas of tone, application of text, phrasing, and understanding and executing dissonance. It’s All About the Tone Beauty of tone is central to all choral singing. “Sicut cervus” offers opportunities to develop pure, resonant tone, and clean blend and balance within the ensemble. Since the entire piece is sung at mp to mf dynamic levels, singers can focus on support, resonance, and placement rather than extreme dynamic changes. The polyphonic style provides individual melodic lines in each part that lend themselves to controlled, blended tone. The entire choir can (and should) sing unison lines before tackling individual parts. As an example, all sections sing the opening tenor line on the syllable “doo” (“d” at the beginning of each note): 10 | The Chorister • Winter 2019
“Sicut cervus” is through composed in three sections, so rehearsals can focus on one section at a time, all learning one part (I usually start with Tenor or Bass), then adding one voice (Soprano or Alto). From there it is an easy jump to two-part singing, always engaging the whole choir in the learning process in different pairings (SA on S and TB on T; ST on T and AB on B, for example). Until parts are secure and the choir has internalized the proper approach to tone and breathing, stay on the “doo” vowel. Expressing the Text
Liturgical Latin uses consistent and pure vowels. Introduce them with familiar sounds, such as a = ah as in father e = eh as in effort (also ae combination) i = ee as in each (often have to round the corners) o = aw as in ought u = oo as in moon For consonant sounds in this piece, everything is as in English with the following notes: r is flipped (you can also omit it in the word cervus, cheh-voos) s is always an s sound, not z (deh-see-deh-raht, not deh-zee-deh-raht) t is soft as in Italian c followed by e is a ch sound, cervus is ch qua is kwa Each of the phrases in the three sections of music has natural accentuation of text. In Latin the final syllable is almost always minimized. Begin each phrase with a crisp, rhythmic entrance, but dynamically a bit softer. Move to the important syllables (slight crescendo, or leaning into the syllable with a natural speech pattern) and then slightly taper dynamics to the final syllable as follows: Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum ita desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus Adding movement to this concept may help the choir internalize the motion to and from important syllables. With your palm facing your body and fingers facing sideways, move the hand out to important syllables and in on unimportant syllables, moving with a bit of weight and always steadily. One additional technique in teaching the text is to have students move final consonants to the next syllable, and to make them crisp and short. The parentheses below indicate two distinct adjacent consonant sounds. Note: in adjacent vowels other that “qua,” the second vowel begins with a clean glottal start rather than a glide, Deh-oos rather than Dehyoos. www.ndacda.com | 11
Sicu t(ih)cervu sdesidera ta dfonte saquarum ita desiderat anima mea a d(ih)te, Deus “Sicut cervus” contains expressive text painting, such as the melismas on “desiderat” and “aquarum” (you can imagine the water flowing), as well as the treatment of the phrase “ad te, Deus,” which is almost always an ascending line, as in rising to heaven. One other very effective word treatment is “anima,” which translates as soul. Begin the word rhythmically precise but a dynamic level softer, and allow the first syllable to subtly blossom, as an expansion of the soul. Learning Your Lines Since the phrases of “Sicut cervus” are relatively short and imitative, the choir can learn the concept of phrasing as they are mastering the approach to tone. One of the primary pitfalls of young singers is an improper concept of breathing; they often breathe too high/shallow and at inappropriate times, such as after every long note. Early in the learning process, have individual singers cross out an insignificant note in the middle of the phrase where they need to breathe (making sure others in the section are choosing different notes), and train them to breathe consistently at the crossed-out notes, with a relaxed, deep breath, lowering the larynx, for the duration of a half note. Even with two people carrying a part, this technique will provide a more seamless texture than allowing singers to “sneak” a breath between notes. Every phrase has shape and energy must be consistent from beginning to end of the phrase even when dynamics wax and wane to and from important syllables. While still in the “doo” stage of learning the melody, have singers subdivide every note value into legato eighth notes to help them to feel the ever-present pulse in the music. Sometimes in slower pieces, singers have a difficult time with rhythmic accuracy. To maintain accuracy throughout the phrase, have the choir sing staccato “doo” or “tee.” They will hear very quickly that entrances and movement during the phrase are not 100% accurate. The above two techniques can be combined (half on legato eighth note “doo,” half on staccato “tee”) to give the choir a sense rhythmic accuracy and a sense of line. Dissonance and Nuance There are two types of dissonance in “Sicut cervus,” textbook examples of 16th Century polyphony, passing tones and suspensions. Suspensions in Renaissance music are measured as dissonant intervals (2, 4, 7, 9) between an upper voice and the lowest sounding voice at the time. In the example below, the alto and then the soprano sing “g” as a consonant note, the bass note changes, making the 12 | The Chorister • Winter 2019
alto/soprano note dissonant (4th), and the alto/soprano resolve the note down by step to resolve the dissonance, creating an interval of a 3rd with the bass. Dissonance provides energy and motion in music, so the voice with the suspension can slightly lean on the suspension when the bass not moves to create the dissonance, and then relax with the resolution. Two other stylistic features of Renaissance music that work in tandem with dissonance are the treatment of dotted note/eighth note patterns during melismas and the anticipatory portamento. The dotted note patterns almost always include passing tones, and their treatment depends on the acoustic of the performance hall. If the performance hall is very live, singers can do a slight lift after the dotted notes for clarity (indicated by checks, below). If the acoustic is dry, singers should maintain sound through the dotted note, but can lighten the intensity of sound on the dot. In neither case should this be considered a breath mark for the singers. The anticipatory portamento is a wonderful stylistic component of Renaissance music and serves as a decorated resolution to a suspension. To execute it, singers do not lift on the tie or dot preceeding the a.p., but sing directly into the following note, which will appear as an eighth note with the same note following it. The eighth note itself is cut short and the following note begins with a glottal start, sort of a hiccup effect. The release of the eighth note is the critical feature of the style. While the notes, rhythm and text of “Sicut cervus� are not difficult for a high school choir to undertake, the layers of nuance and expression provide endless opportunities for the development of technique and musicianship. Taking the time to sing beautifully and stylistically appropriate is a wonderful learning opportunity, and can be paired with cross curricular discussion of Renaissance art, history, architecture, and sociology. Tom Porter University of Mary NDACDA Men’s Choir R&R Chair
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Photo: Sts.14 Peter Paul Ukranian Orthodox Church, Belfield ND. Photo credit: courthouselover (Flickr) | The&Chorister • Winter 2019