Program Notes: “Cry Out in Song”

Recorded March 9 & 10, 2024; published Saturday March 23, 2024

Program Order:

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Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir …….. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

1. Sinfonia e Coro
2. Aria con Corale (featuring Darrell J. Jordan, baritone)
3. Coro
4. Aria con Corale (featuring Stephen Rumph, tenor)
5. Coro

Featuring:

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For a Breath of Ecstasy ……………………………… Michael John Trotta (b. 1978)

1. Wealth Enough for Me
2. Peace Flows Into Me
3. Who Gave My Soul to Me
4. For You I am Still
5. Spend All You Have on Loveliness
6. And I For You
7. Let Me Love

Featuring:

Dawn Posey, violin
Kimberly Rosenberg, violin/viola
Lauren Hall, viola
Laura Kramer, cello
Janet Putnam, oboe

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Program Notes

This concert seeks to highlight the emotive power of the human voice to express two very different kinds of “crying.” On the one hand, the cantata Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir (“From the Depths, Lord, I Cried To Thee”) by Johann Sebastian Bach, features a voice crying out in anguish, wallowing in human frailty and imperfection. In contrast, John Michael Trotta’s For a Breath of Ecstasy depicts cries of joy, laughter, and song from a voice that is simultaneously empowered by love and alive with wonder.

Most of the surviving cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (more than 300) are
from later in his career and were written in Leipzig during his tenure working at a
Lutheran school and four sister churches. These later cantatas were written for
specific days of the church calendar, and typically each cantata’s various movements were embedded within the Lutheran church service. Bach’s Leipzig output shows the influence of Italian opera, with arias and “speech-like” singing that required trained soloists. In contrast, Bach’s early cantatas are unique in his output as they were written in a “motet” style, imitating the contrapuntal achievements of Renaissance composers and are favorites among modern choral performing organizations.

Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir is one of these rare early works, written
between 1708-1709 while Bach worked at the Divi Blassi church in Mühlhausen.
The text for Aus der Tiefen comes from Psalm 130, and Bach likely wrote it as
part of a penitential memorial after a large fire destroyed part of the town. Bach
chose to set the first three movements in a particularly somber tone. The first
movement features the title text, and Bach aptly crafted a descending motive with a
low melodic range as the chorus cries out for mercy from the depths. The second
movement features two newly composed rhythmic lines juxtaposed against a slow
sustained pre-existing tune, a common compositional practice held over from the
Renaissance era. The bass soloist’s text is from Psalm 130, whereas the choir’s slowmoving line contains music and verses from a hymn that any Lutheran churchgoer would have recognized. In the third movement, Bach continues the dark mood in the distant key of F minor with a long descending line “Meine seele harret” (“My soul waits), and the relentless dissonances illustrate the sorrow and anguish that is at the core of Psalm 130. In contrast, the fourth movement represents a shift to a more hopeful tone; it features a tenor soloist and the choir once again sings a
chorale tune. The tenor aria features a dance-like meter and lilting rhythmic line,
and the choir’s hymn verse highlight’s God’s healing power. The final movement
is a compositional wonder with multiple musical lines overlapping to create an incredibly exciting and complex fugal passage. The text speaks to the belief in
redemption through Jesus, and absent are the descending and mournful melodic
contours of the first movement, and instead Bach weaves together a magnificent
array of lively and energetic motives.

Michael John Trotta’s For a Breath of Ecstasy draws all of its texts from “Love Songs,” an anthology celebrating the American poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933). Each of Teasdale’s seven poems that Trotta selected for this work invoke love and companionship in some capacity, and nearly all of them mention singing or music. Trotta chose to arrange his composition into a musical palindrome, where the first and last movements contain nearly the same music, as does the second and sixth movements and the third and fifth movements, respectively. The first and last movements both open with an expansive oboe melody against a backdrop of flourishes from the strings. The choir then echoes the tuneful song, breaking out of their narrow melody into an expansive and high-range unison cry of joy. In the second and sixth movements, the texts employ metaphors from the natural world. In the second movement, after a peaceful opening Trotta selects a slow-moving melody for the sopranos and altos accompanied by a rhythmic tenor and bass line. Trotta reprises the same treble melody in the sixth movement but this time to a backdrop of syncopated strings. The third and fifth movements are both for reduced choral forces, and the texts of both movements examine the act of giving: in the former, the low voices sing of what one gives and receives in a relationship, whereas in the latter the treble voices sing universally of what life has to offer.

Only the fourth movement, written for a cappella voices, features music that is not
repeated in any other movement, and thus represents a musical turning point or line of symmetry. For this pivotal movement Trotta selects the most intriguing text of the entire work. The poet describes that in past relationships they sang songs, but this time is different: for the first time the poet is so overcome that their songs are silent, and Trotta captures this stillness with slow moving lines, narrow melodic ranges, and open harmonies. It seems Teasdale is telling us perhaps love is not measured by what we give, but by how thoroughly we give ourselves. Although Trotta repeats much of the same music in the last three movements, the texts of the second half of the piece have less to do with one’s own experience of love, and instead engage more with what one has to give back to the world. In the fifth movement where the musical journey first starts to retrace its path, the fragmented title of the larger work is now a complete idea: “For a breath of ecstasy give all you have been or could be.”

1. Wealth Enough For Me

I have no riches but my thoughts,
Yet these are wealth enough for me;
My thoughts of you are golden coins
Stamped in the mint of memory;

And I must spend them all in song,
For thoughts, as well as gold, must be
Left on the hither side of death
To gain their immortality.

2. Peace Flows into Me

Peace flows into me
As the tide to the pool by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
It will not ebb like the sea.

I am the pool of blue
That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies—
You are my deepening skies;
Give me your stars to hold.

3. Who Gave My Soul to Me

I gave my first love laughter,
I gave my second tears,
I gave my third love silence
Through all the years.

My first love gave me singing,
My second eyes to see,
But oh, it was my third love
Who gave my soul to me.

4. For You I Am Still

I sang my songs for the rest,
For you I am still;
The tree of my song is bare
On its shining hill.

For you came like a lordly wind,
And the leaves were whirled
Far as forgotten things
Past the rim of the world.

The tree of my song stands bare
Against the blue —
I gave my songs to the rest,
Myself to you.

5. Spend All You Have on Loveliness

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children’s faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

6. And I For You

The moon is a curving flower of gold,
The sky is still and blue;
The moon was made for the sky to hold,
And I for you;

The moon is a flower without a stem,
The sky is luminous;
Eternity was made for them,
Tonight for us.

7. Let Me Love

Until I lose my soul and lie
Blind to the beauty of the earth,
Deaf though the shouting wind goes by,
Dumb in a storm of mirth;

Until my heart is quenched at length
And I have left the land of men,
Oh, let me love with all my strength
Careless if I am loved again.

~~Program notes by Ben Luedcke

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Credits:

Bellevue Chamber Chorus

Ben Luedcke, Artistic Director: https://bellevuechamberchorus.org/about/

March 2024 Chorus Personnel:

Soprano: Maria Bayer, Julia Bezems, Kristine Bryan, Debra Defotis, Jenn Evora, Kristine Gilreath, Melissa Malouf, Kathy McMillan, Katherine Threlkeld, Jane Wasell

Alto: Toma Aliyeva, Elena Camerini, Claire Gajary, Rachel Keo, Arisha Kulshrestha, Anita Lenges, Pratha Muthiah, Karin Swenson-Moore *, Kristen Wright

Tenor: Patrick De Leon *, Andrew Desmond, Imran Goychayev, Melanie Grube, Michael Grube, Jim Leininger, Yan Smolyak, David Varner, Jamie Walch

Bass: Bill Baxter, Allan Chartrand, Dennis Defotis, Mark Liebendorfer, Gabriel Malouf, James McTernan, Fabien Mousseau, Eric Mullen, Jeff Pierce, John Schleg

Guest Artists: