Behind the Music

How Does One Selection on our Program, “Psalm 139,” Encapsulate a Whole Piece of Chorale History?

December 15, 2020October 14, 2019 by debisimons

So, so interesting, folks! There are three components: the text, the composer, and the dedicatee.

First, the text, a psalm from the Jewish Bible/Christian Old Testament that celebrates God’s omniscience and omnipresence. I have been fascinated with the way the composer, Will Baily, used just a few lines from this psalm. Familiar as I am with the passage, I had never really thought about the specific meanings of some of the words. Working on the song has made me look a little more closely. For instance, what are the “wings of the morning”? Honestly, that question had never occurred to me before. Most commentators say that they’re the sunbeams that stream up from the horizon as the sun rises; indeed, a number of translations use the phrase “wings of the dawn.” Those wings are going to take the speaker to “the farthest sea” or, in many versions, “the uttermost parts of the sea.” There’s a rich visual here: the sun rises in the east; the sea (which for the ancient Israelites would be what we call the Mediterranean Sea) is to the west. So the imagery has the speaker flying, literally, at the speed of light from the east horizon at dawn as far west as the eye can see, but God is there before him. And if the speaker feels overwhelmed by the darkness, he can be reassured that it is no barrier for God. I was reminded of a phrase from the Christian New Testament: “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” (I John 1:5 NIV)

Meet the Artists Behind Our Premiered Commission–Silvestri and Veros

November 10, 2021October 7, 2019 by debisimons

For over seven years I’ve been writing background posts for the Cherry Creek Chorale’s concert selections. It’s been a great experience all around, with the special privilege of learning about, and in some instances contacting, living composers. I was able, for instance, to contact John Rutter via his Facebook page with a question about the reasons for his many commissions from America, and he graciously responded. That was a thrill, to be sure.

This past Tuesday night provided another thrill when the lyricist for our newly-commissioned piece, “-RADIANCE-,” did a Skype call with us. Charles Anthony Silvestri has developed a career over the past 20 years as a provider of “bespoke” lyrics. (I love that word! It means “custom made.” The only other context in which I’d heard it was that of an English suit, one tailored to the individual’s measurements.) What a wonderful experience for me to sit with some dozen or so other Chorale members who were able to come early and listen to this man talk about his work and ask him questions. At one point our conductor mentioned that Silvestri seemed to be in his studio. Not his writing studio, you understand: his painting studio. Not only does he have a career as a lyricist and poet, not only is he a full-time professor of Medieval and Renaissance history at the University of Kansas, but he also paints in the styles of the same periods about which he teaches. (And makes his own paint!) If any living person deserved the title of “Renaissance Man,” well . . .

Of course our main questions for him centered around his collaboration with Santiago Veros for our own piece. It was very much of an ongoing process as he described it, with the two of them communicating back and forth. Veros had given Silvestri the title, so the word “radiance” was a must-have in the lyrics. For a composer the experience of writing music to fit the words of a text that is already written, especially by someone who has died, is a far different experience from the ongoing process that can occur with a living author.

Is Candide Really Candid?

December 15, 2020September 17, 2019 by debisimons

This is one of those posts in which I could go on and on and on. I could talk about the original novel Candide by the 18^th-century French satirist Voltaire, or the character of Candide in the novel, or the musical in its many iterations overseen by Leonard Bernstein, from which our selection is taken. I’ll try to hit each of these areas just a little.

So, to answer my rather silly question in relation to the above: No. Candide is not candid, but Candide is. Little grammatical joke there.

Voltaire’s novel is not in the least candid; that is, it is not naïve, gullible, sincere, or innocent. We use the word today in a slightly different sense; if you say to someone, “I’m going to be candid with you,” you usually mean “I’m going to say something tactless to you.” But you can see how this idea derives from the original definition. If you’re very frank and open yourself you’ll tend to be that way with other people. The novel itself, however, is biting, bitter and sarcastic, full of truly awful events. Even for modern readers, steeped in horror movies and violent video games, it doesn’t make for pleasant reading. (I personally could barely get through the synopsis on Wikipedia.)

Three Lovely but Bittersweet Autumn-Themed Songs

August 23, 2024August 26, 2019 by debisimons

Ah, autumn! On the one hand it’s the start of crisp, invigorating fall weather and the new school year; on the other it’s the end of summer and the inevitable slide towards winter. I’ve always loved fall, but as a gardener I also mourn the end of the growing season, trying to comfort myself with the refrain, “Next year!”

Three pieces of film/stage music capture this two-sided aspect of autumn: “The Summer Knows” from Summer of ’42 (1971), “Les Feuilles Mortes”/”The Autumn Leaves” from the post-WWII French film Les Portes de la Nuit (The Gates of the Night), and “September Song,” originally written for the 1936 Broadway musical Knickerbocker Holiday and later used in the 1950 film September Affair.

What three strands produced our selection “Friendship” by K. Lee Scott?

December 15, 2020August 20, 2019 by debisimons

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Ecclesiastes 4:12 says, “A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Certainly there are at least three cords, or strands, of friendship that have characterized the relationship of composer K. Lee Scott with the Cherry Creek Chorale and especially with one of its members, Ron Lester.

Ron has been a member of the chorale for over 15 years, first joining us because he was looking for variety and fun in the music being performed as well as a certain amount of flexibility in rehearsal attendance due to his work schedule. (I wonder what other chorales he looked at! Our rehearsal schedule is pretty demanding, to my mind at least.) He ended up serving on the board in various capacities and feeling such a part of the group that when he and his wife Ann started estate planning, he says, “We thought it would be a lot more fun to give a gift to the Chorale now and be a part of that gift.”

Blue Bird Thoughts

December 15, 2020May 2, 2019 by debisimons

I’ve written about bluebirds before, when I asked why Uncle Remus had a bluebird on his shoulder in the song “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” and I revisited that image when I talked about “Over the Rainbow.” Now I want to re-revisit the topic in a short post about the short piece “The Blue Bird” by Charles V. Stanford with lyrics by Mary Coleridge. I probably can’t add anything to the musical analysis given below by a professional, so I’ll confine myself to some info on the author of the text and also about the composer.

Who’s Sylvie, and Why Is She Carrying Water?

July 25, 2023April 30, 2019 by debisimons

Slaves working in a cotton field. From Tupelo by John H. Aughey.

Well, Sylvie, or Silvy, or Silvie, may have been a real person, a slave woman on a plantation being implored by someone in the fields to bring him a drink. Or she may have been the aunt of the man who popularized the song. Let’s start with him, the great black folk and blues singer Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, who performed throughout the first half of the 20^th century, making recordings, holding concerts, and hosting his own radio program for a brief time. He came to the attention of the father/son team of John and Alan Lomax, who traveled the South during the 1930’s recording folk music on “portable aluminum discs” for the Library of Congress. He also spent a fair amount of time in prison for various offenses, including a stabbing, and his nickname was apparently assigned to him there:

Does the song “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down” make any sense?

February 2, 2023April 22, 2019 by debisimons

Ersel Hickey.jpg — Ersel Hickey, image accessed via Wikipedia.

This cheerful, seemingly simple song is far from simple and not even all that cheerful. I’ll have to admit up front here that my rabbit trails petered out before any definitive conclusions were reached. But here’s what I was able to come up with:

Let’s start out with the original nursery rhyme about a crooked man and his various crooked accoutrements:

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,
(or, in some versions, he had a crooked smile,)

He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;

He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

Was the Song “Singin’ in the Rain” Written for the Movie “Singin’ in the Rain,” or Vice Versa?

October 11, 2023April 2, 2019 by debisimons

Singing in the rain poster.jpg — Image accessed via Wikipedia

I had watched the entire movie Singin’ in the Rain at some point many years ago, and my memory of it was spotty. I remembered Gene Kelly’s description of his childhood and early career: “Dignity. Always dignity,” and of course the title song, and that the whole plot centered around the advent of talkies and the demise of silent movies. I also had this vague notion that the song had something to do with smiling in the face of adversity, sort of along the same lines as “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head.” (Rabbit trail alert: Of course I had to look up “Raindrops” and watch the clip of its occurrence in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for Sundance to take the time for this little romantic bike-riding interlude with Etta Place, his schoolteacher girlfriend, since he and Butch are on the run from the law, but there it is. Maybe someone decided that the story had been going on too long without any fun stuff. The song itself doesn’t advance the plot directly, but the director wanted something to go with the scene, and Burt Bacharach, who was writing the score, apparently had the first line in his head and wanted to use it. You can shoehorn the lyrics into the plot of the story somewhat, but it takes effort. I will point out, by the way, that this scene includes no rain. Sheesh.) But back to “Singin’,” which isn’t about adversity at all. Gene Kelly’s character is simply in love. He’s just said goodnight to his new girlfriend Kathy, and he’s so happy that he’s perfectly willing to dance through the storm. No angst at all is involved.

What Are the Main Water Images in “Wade in de Water”?

June 14, 2021March 26, 2019 by debisimons

Black spirituals are true folk songs that were passed down by word of mouth over many years, with various versions being developed, before they were eventually written down. The texts reflect this variety, as there’s no one “official” version. The arrangement I’m using as a reference for the spiritual “Wade in de Water” has stripped-down lyrics, so that’s what I’m using as the for this commentary. Even with the limited text used, though, there’s still a lot to say! (Betcha you couldn’t have guessed that one.) Bear in mind that a lot of commentary on any type of folk song is at least partly supposition and hypothesizing, as we don’t have access to the authors. We don’t even know their names.