Sydney Mukasa, choral conducting, October 10, 2021

Robert Blocker, Dean

Sydney Mukasa choral conducting Master of Music/Degree Recital October 10, 2021 | 5:00pm | Marquand Chapel

Frank Martin 1890–1974

Songs of Ariel I. Come unto these yellow sands II. Full fathom five thy father lies III. Before you can say ‘Come’ and ‘Go’ IV. You are three men of sin V. Where the bee sucks there suck I for acapella choir

Gabriel Jackson b. 1962

Yes, I am your angel (2016) for acapella choir

Igor Stravinsky 1882–1971

Dumbarton Oaks (1937-38) I. Tempo guisto II. Allegretto III. Con moto for chamber orchestra

Johannes Brahms 1833–1897 arr. Russell Adrian

Shicksalslied Op. 54 for choir and orchestra

Choir Sopranos: Maura Tuffy, Sarah Grube, Yiran Zhao, Mia Rolland, Laura Clapp Altos: Jane Meditz, Lila Meretzky, Annli Nakayama, Gloria Yin, Rhianna Cockrell Tenors: Michael Lukin, Matthew Reese, Ryan Rogers, Alex Whittington, Luke Stringer, Nate Widelitz Basses: Blake Bruchhaus, Mattias Lundberg, Benjamin Ferriby, Louis Sokolow, Benjamin Beckman Orchestra Flute: Elvin Schlanger Oboe: Rachel Ahn Clarinet: Lloyd Van’t Hoff Bassoon: Matthew Matheny Horn: Xin He, Franco Ortiz Timpani: Jacob Gutierrez Violin I: Michael Ferri*, Riana Heath, Wei Zhu Violin II: Yasmine Fu, Sophia Steger, Herdís Guðmundsdóttir Viola: Rosemary Nelis, Chris Rogers-Beadle, Serena Hsu Cello: Stephen Perkyns, Thomas Hung Bass: Zachary Merkovsky, Matthew Peralta

*concertmaster

Texts and Translations Songs of Ariel from Shakespeare’s The Tempest I. Come unto these yellow sands (Act I, Scene II)

IV. You are three men of sin, whom Destiny (Act III, Scene III)

Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Curtsied when you have and kiss’d, The wild waves whist – Foot it featly here and there, And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.

You are three men of sin, whom Destiny, That hath to instrument this lower world And what is in't, -- the never-surfeited sea Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island Where man doth not inhabit; you 'mongst men Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad: And even with such-like valour men hang and drown Their proper selves. You fools! I and my fellows Are ministers of fate: the elements Of whom your swords are temper'd may as well Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish One dowle that's in my plume; my fellow-ministers Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt, Your swords are now too massy for your strengths, And will not be uplifted. But, remember -For that's my business to you, -- that you three From Milan did supplant good Prospero; Expos'd unto the sea, which hath requit it, Him, and his innocent child: for which foul deed The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have Incens'd the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures, Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso, They have bereft; and do pronounce, by me Lingering perdition, -- worse than any death Can be at once, -- shall step by step attend You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from– Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls Upon your heads, -- is nothing but heart-sorrow, And a clear life ensuing.

Hark, hark!

(Bow-wow !)

The watch dogs bark; Bow-wow !)

Hark, hark!

I hear the strain of strutting Chanticleer Cry, “Cock-a-diddle-dow”.

II. Full fathom five thy father lies (Act I, Scene II)

Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: (Ding-dong.)

Hark! now I hear them (Ding-dong, bell.)

III. Before you can say, "Come" and "Go” (Act IV, Scene I)

Before you can say, "Come" and "Go", And breathe twice, and cry, "So, so," Each one, tripping on his toe, Will be here with mop and mow, Do you love me, master? No?

V. Where the bee sucks there suck I (Act V, Scene I)

Where the bee sucks there suck I In a cow-slip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry.

On a bat's back I do fly After summer merrily, Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Yes, I am Your Angel from Eņģelis by Kārlis Vērdiņš, translated by Ieva Lešinska Yes, I am your angel, driven out of heaven tonight to wrap a weary shrivelled apple for you, an apple passed so many times from one pair of greedy hands to another.

Sale tonight: fresh fruit at a discount, dead flesh by instalment.

Don’t tell anyone, I am your angel, David shaped by Michelangelo; if my hands were kissed tonight, their porcelain knuckles would tinkle; “Your sky is the “colour of eyes”, you’d wheeze, ever the poet.

I wonder how much you’d get selling my parts at the flea market?

Wincing from a bottle of gin mixed with black-currant jam, drunk in a dimly-lit room full of dead bodies, and shared with a stranger picked up at a bar; he’d babble boozily about tanks, and upon leaving he’d snatch your wallet.

An angel behind every counter tonight, aren’t their smiles broader than the contract requires; the shift is over, in a flutter of wings, they take off to their half-empty rooms: a naked bulb, a stove in the corner, cool cradling hands, a kiss on that sweet, curly-haired head.

The gent behind you is busy counting his money. He’ll buy all the plums and bananas, he’ll buy the supermarket perhaps, and I’ll be included; he’ll set me on a shelf behind glass, dust me off with a horsehair brush, polish heaven with a strip of plush.

Stop shouting, stop bragging. Quick, take the cucumbers out of your pockets, ask to be taken home; don’t fret, write a poem.

Shicksalslied from Hyperions Shicksalsled by Friedrich Höderlin Shicksalslied

Song of Destiny

Ihr wandelt droben im Licht Auf weichem Boden, selige Genien!

Glänzende Götterlüfte Rühren Euch leicht, Wie die Finger der Künstlerin Heilige Saiten.

You wander above in the light on soft ground, blessed genies!

Blazing, divine breezes brush by you as lightly as the fingers of the player on her holy strings.

Schicksallos, wie der schlafende Säugling, atmen die Himmlischen; Keusch bewahrt In bescheidner Knospe Blühet ewig Ihnen der Geist, Und die seligen Augen Blicken in stiller, Ewiger Klarheit.

Fateless, like sleeping infants, the divine beings breathe, chastely protected in modest buds, blooming eternally their spirits, and their blissful eyes gazing in mute, eternal clarity.

Doch uns ist gegeben Auf keiner Stätte zu ruhn; Es schwinded, es fallen Die leidenden Menschen Blindlings von einer Stunde zur andern, Wie Wasser von Klippe Zu Klippe geworfen, Jahrlang ins Ungewisse hinab.

Yet there is granted us no place to rest; we vanish, we fall the suffering humans blind from one hour to another, like water thrown from cliff to cliff for years into the unknown depths.

Translation copyright © by Emily Ezust, from the LiederNet Archive -https://www.lieder.net/

Program Notes Songs of Ariel Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-1974) composed the acapella set Songs of Ariel in 1950, twenty-eight years after his only other surviving acapella choral set, the enduringly popular Mass for Double Choir. Martin takes Shakespeare’s play The Tempest as a textual basis for this set, and Martin would also go on to set The Tempest for his only full opera, Der Sturm. In the context of Shakespeare’s drama, the character of Ariel is a spirit bound to serve the magician, Prospero. Ariel’s colorful songs and monologues throughout the play are used to quite theatrical and virtuosic effect in Martin’s setting. The Act III monologue set in the fourth movement provides the dramatic center of the work, portraying Ariel’s fiery castigation of the men that had betrayed Prospero. The work was dedicated to Felix de Nobel and the Netherlands Chamber Choir, who premiered the piece with a professional ensemble of sixteen singers. Musically, the harmonic language is often triadic, but shifts tonality quite quickly, and makes brief forays into twelve-tone technique that exemplify Martin’s characteristically chromatic harmonic sense.

Yes, I am your Angel British composer Gabriel Jackson (b.1962) wrote Yes, I am your Angel in response to a commission from the Philidelphia-based choral ensemble, The Crossing. The work would become a part of a collection called the Jeff Quartets, presented as a 2016 memorial concert for the ensemble’s late co-founder, Jeffrey Dinsmore. The text is a translation of the Latvian poem Eņģelis by Kārlis Vērdiņš, translated by Ieva Lešinska. The poem itself had been written in response to Allen Ginsburg’s A Supermarket in California. Both poems take a view from above of a supermarket, through the eyes of a spirit guide who comments on modern society’s follies – namely capitalist greed.

Gabriel Jackson’s loosely tonal harmonic language, often exploring quarter and quintal harmony, gives a bright, shimmering quality to the setting, despite the often ironic and bittersweet undertones of the text. The choral texture is homophonic, but lilts playfully in constantly shifting meter.

Dumbarton Oaks Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) composed Dumbarton Oaks between 1937-1938, after having received a commission from Robert and Mildred Bliss, generous patrons of the arts, to write a piece for the celebration of their thirtieth wedding anniversary. The commission was organized by Nadia Boulanger, who conducted the 1938 premiere in the music room at the Bliss’ Dumbarton Oaks estate in D.C. Scored for flute, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, and strings, the work is in three movements, (Tempo giusto, Allegretto, Con moto), that overall carry a light and energetic mood. The first movement introduces very virtuosic passages for winds and horns especially, simultaneously layering short, very rhythmic motives between the parts. The middle section’s fugato in the strings, started off by the violas, is also particularly striking as a neo-baroque compositional technique. The writing in the second movement is quite airy, passing around melodic fragments unpredictably in the orchestra, despite an easy-going pulse. Finally, the third movement marches on over an eighth note staccato ostinato in the cellos and basses. Unlike the first two movements, it charges to a triumphant finish.

Stravinsky took inspiration from J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, and fashioned a work for chamber orchestra that fuses some of Bach’s contrapuntal sensibility with Stravinsky’s own characteristic experimentation with rhythm and orchestration.

Shicksalslied Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) began composing Shicksalslied while visiting a friend, Albert Dietrich, in the summer of 1868. In Dietrich’s personal library in Wilhelmshaven, Brahms found the text, Hyperions Shicksalslied, in a novel of Friedrich Hölderlin’s poetry. Brahms was immediately captivated by the poem, and set out to compose a choral-orchestral work on the text. However, he was not immediately able to complete his setting, for lack of satisfaction with his composition’s ending.

The project was abandoned for a few years, and Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody was composed in the interim.

Eventually, Brahms came upon a satisfying conclusion to Shicksalslied in 1871, likely at the suggestion of Hermann Levi, who conducted the premiere. The work ultimately was structured in a ternary form; Adagio (Eb major) – Allegro (C minor) – Adagio (C major). The work begins with a lush orchestral introduction that brews with a fateful gravitas, guided by the constant pounding of the timpani. After its climatic summit, the texture soon gives way to a chorale-like melody that emerges in the treble voices.

The full choir then joins with the orchestra to paint a picture of idyllic serenity, aided by romantic harmony and soaring melodic phrases. The middle Allegro section of the work is dramatic and stormy, relating to the poem’s depiction of humanity’s desperate struggles on earth. A dark and imposing melody emerges from the chorus as tremolos and arpeggios in the strings surge and break like waves crashing to shore. Quite characteristic of Brahms is also his use of rhythmic displacement, or hemiola, to create rhythmic angst or uncertainty in the Allegro. The conclusion of the work with an orchestral postlude in a different key from its introduction is a curious choice for its time, and offers a cryptic commentary on the morbid and mysterious nature of the poem’s conclusion. ~Sydney Mukasa