Felix Mendelssohn was born to a Jewish-German family but was baptized in the Lutheran church at age seven. A musical prodigy and prolific composer from his early years, Mendelssohn made his first public performance at nine years old and was a published composer by age thirteen. He is credited with the 19th-century musical revival of another great Lutheran composer, J.S. Bach (all but forgotten after his death in 1750), whose own setting of the classic chorale tune Jesu, meine Freude greatly influenced this piece by Mendelssohn. In a letter to a friend, Mendelssohn wrote  about this work: “If there is a resemblance to Bach, I can’t help that, because I have written as I felt the need to, and if the words have led to an association with old Bach, so much the better.”

Jesu, meine Freude, meines Herzens Waide, Jesu, meine Zier! Ach wie lang, ach lange,
ise dem Herzen bange
und verlangt nach dir!
Gottes Lamm, mein Bräutigam,
außer dir soll mir auf Erden
nichts sonst Liebers werden.

Johann Franck

Jesus, my joy,
my heart's pasture,
Jesus, my treasure!
Ah, how long, ah long
has my heart suffered
and longed for you!
God's lamb, my bridegroom,
besides you on earth
nothing shall be dearer to me.

Translation ©Pamela Dellal

Madrigals were one of the most important forms of secular vocal music in Renaissance Europe. They were crucially differentiated from earlier types of choral music of the time in that they were through-composed, meaning that the pieces continuously featured both new music and new text rather than having repeating sections of the same music with new text. This feature gave composers ample opportunity to show off their compositional prowess in complex and intricate multi-layered musical puzzles that often left the text lost to its higher valued music. Given this context, it is surprising to hear the relatively transparent setting by Orlando Gibbons on this text, which tells the legend of the swan who supposedly is silent throughout its life until it sings a sorrowful song just prior to its death. Gibbons’s setting of this text, with its famous dissonant text painting on the word “death,” became one of his most beloved works and one of the most well-known vocal works of the entire Renaissance. It has inspired many re-settings of the same text to new music by composers of the last century, including this one by Black American composer Adolphus Hailstork which was written in his university studies but only recently premiered. Hailstork studied organ and voice, amongst other disciplines, and has composed music across a wide variety of genres that include both vocal and instrumental music; his setting uses Gibbons’s text and imitates his style as seen through a modern (though tonal) viewpoint.

The silver Swan who living had no note,
When death approached unlocked her silent throat;
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sang her first and last, and sung no more:
"Farewell all joys! O death come close mine eyes,
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise."

The early 19th-century saw an emergent middle class with more free time than previous non-aristocratic generations, which came with a deep appetite for consuming culture at home in whatever forms were available to them. Mendelssohn naturally catered to this hunger for approachable, charming, and light musical bites with a series of short lyrical piano words inventively titled Songs without words. Some of these pieces were given programmatic titles, such as his beloved Spring Song or Venetian Gondolier’s Song, but most were simply depictive in nature without aiming to tell a specific story or set a specific text as their title might suggest. Many of Mendelssohn's Songs without words became among the most popular salon works of the Romantic era, and thus became subject to another common practice of arrangement. In a time before recordings, arrangements helped make music accessible for families which may not otherwise get to hear it, and thus string quartet versions of music like this piece could fulfil the dual purpose of edification and enjoyment.

Gabriel Fauré was one of the last great French romantic composers, whose life spanned musically from Chopin to twentieth century atonality. He is beloved for his majestic and serious melodies, especially in his vocal music. While his most famous choral piece, his unusually orchestrated Requiem, was written during his musical height and maturity, the Cantique de Jean Racine was one of his earliest successes which earned him the first prize of a competition held at his music school when he was only nineteen. The title reflects the source of Fauré’s text, which comes from a religious text adapted by the 17th-century French dramatist and playwright Jean-Baptiste Racine. This early work shows many of the hallmarks of the mature style Fauré would become known for, including sweeping yet restrained melodies and darkly reverent harmonies. 

Verbe égal au Très-Haut, notre unique espérance,
Jour éternel de la terre et des cieux,
De la paisible nuit nous rompons le silence:
Divin Sauveur, jette sur nous les yeux.

Répands sur nous le feu de Ta grâce puissante;
Que tout l'enfer fuie au son de Ta voix;
Dissipe le sommeil d'une âme languissante
Qui la conduit à l'oubli de Tes lois!

Ô Christ! sois favorable à ce peuple fidèle,
Pour Te bénir maintenant rassemblé;
Reçois les chants qu'il offre à Ta gloire immortelle,
Et de Tes dons qu'il retourne comblé.

Word of the Highest, our only hope,
Eternal day of earth and the heavens,
We break the silence of the peaceful night;
Saviour Divine, cast your eyes upon us!

Pour on us the fire of your powerful grace,
That all hell may flee at the sound of your voice;
Banish the slumber of a weary soul,
That brings forgetfulness of your laws!

O Christ, look with favour upon your faithful people
Now gathered here to praise you;
Receive their hymns offered to your immortal glory;
May they go forth filled with your gifts.

Twentieth century American composer Samuel Barber trained as both a composer and baritone at the famed Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. His setting of Sure on this shining night comes from a collection of four songs for high voice and piano published in 1938, the same year in which the piece he would become most famous for, his Adagio for Strings, was first premiered in its version for string orchestra. The choral arrangement of Sure on this shining night was created by Barber in 1961 after becoming enshrined as Barber’s most famous art song. The text comes from the poem “Descriptions of Elysium” written by Pulitzer prize-winning American poet and novelist James Agee, with whom Barber would also collaborate on his iconic Knoxville: Summer of 1915.

“The lyrics for Tundra were written by my frequent collaborator, poet Charles Anthony Silvestri. I asked Tony to write a text based on the title and photos of a part of my native Norway that is very dear to me, the Hardangervidda mountain plateau. It’s pretty close to where my father grew up, in the mountains between Oslo and Bergen.

Hardangervidda is quite barren and intensely beautiful — it is easy to feel that you are treading on sacred land, which Tony describes so evocatively in his text:

Wide, worn and weathered,
Sacred expanse
Of green and white and granite grey;
Snowy patches strewn,
Anchored to the craggy earth,
Unmoving;
While clouds dance
Across the vast, eternal sky.“

– Ola Gjeilo

“The premiere recording of The Rose is featured on my Winter Songs album (Decca Classics, 2017), performed by the Choir of Royal Holloway and 12 Ensemble.”

The lily has a smooth stalk,
Will never hurt your hand;
But the rose upon her brier
Is lady of the land.

There’s sweetness in an apple tree,
And profit in the corn;
But lady of all beauty
Is a rose upon a thorn.

When with moss and honey
She tips her bending brier,
And half unfolds her glowing heart,
She sets the world on fire.

– Ola Gjeilo

Ola Gjeilo is one of the most frequently performed composers in the choral world. An accomplished pianist, improvisations over his own published choral pieces have become a trademark of his collaborations. Although Norwegian by birth, it is perhaps Ola’s adopted country of America that has influenced the composer’s distinctive soundworld the most, evolving a style that is often described as cinematic and evocative, with a lush, harmonious sound.

Ola grew up in a musically eclectic home listening to classical, jazz, pop and folk, a broad background he later incorporated into his classical composition studies at The Juilliard School, the Royal College of Music in London, and currently as a Southern California-based freelance composer. He is especially inspired by the improvisational art of film composer Thomas Newman, jazz legends Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny, glass artist Dale Chihuly and architect Frank Gehry.

Ola is an exclusive Decca Classics artist, and his Decca choral albums include “Ola Gjeilo”, “Winter Songs” & “Dreamweaver”, featuring Tenebrae, Voces8 and the Choir of Royal Holloway, as well as the solo piano albums “Night” & “Dawn”. His global streams have now surpassed 230 million.

Florence Price is recognized as the first Black woman to have one of her compositions performed by a symphony orchestra when her Symphony in E Minor was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933. An accomplished pianist, organist, and educator, Price studied at the New England Conservatory and completed a diverse catalogue of over three hundred instrumental and vocal works over a career that spanned the first half of the 20th century. Despite her successes, shifting tastes and undeniable racial and gender based prejudices resulted in her work becoming all but forgotten until a large collection of her manuscripts were discovered in her abandoned summer home in 2009. Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint for string quartet showcases her carefully crafted yet deeply felt style, juxtaposing simple folk tunes (like the Negro spiritual “Calvary” featured in this movement) set into a complexly wrought classical setting.

“This piece was written for the Sonic Timelapse Project; a collaborative choral art commissioning project created as a response to the global COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of gathering content from the emotional landscape of choral communities in Canada and beyond.

I created the text using written reflections submitted by Canadian choral conductors early in the pandemic, however, the expression of this work can easily apply to a broad emotional landscape entirely separate from the COVID-19 pandemic experience.”

– Laura Hawley

Laura Hawley is a Canadian composer, conductor, pianist, and educator known for her creative musical leadership and artistic programming, community engagement, distinctive compositional style, and passionate advocacy for Canadian choral art.

Laura has been steeped in choral art since childhood, and her output demonstrates an ongoing interest in writing for all artists from the developing chorister’s voice to the professional choral ensemble. Her works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded by many fine choirs including Canadian Chamber Choir, Pro Coro Canada, New Dublin Voices, Elektra Women’s Choir, Vancouver Youth Choir, Cantiamo Choirs, and Toronto Children’s Chorus. She has been Composer-In-Residence with Cantiamo Choirs of Ottawa, Halifax Camerata Singers, and, currently, with Vancouver Chamber Choir.  Laura’s works are published by Oxford University Press, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Rhythmic Trident Music Publishing, Cypress Choral music, Silent Dawn Music Publishing, and on www.laurahawley.ca.

As well as being a composer, Laura is also a leader in the Canadian choral scene as artistic director of Da Camera Singers (Edmonton), conductor of ChandraTala (Edmonton), and founding conductor of the Diocese of Edmonton Children’s Choir. She was pianist/singer with the Canadian Chamber Choir from 2018-2022, and co-founded the Sonic Timelapse Project in 2020. In 2015 she founded Hypatia’s Voice Women’s Choir of Ottawa. Laura has also taught theory, conducting, and composition at the university level.

Ms. Hawley holds an ARCT from the Royal Conservatory of Music and completed a BMus and MA at University of Ottawa. She has studied piano with Arlene MacNay and Sandra Webster, conducting with Wayne Toews, the late Prof. Morihiro Okabe, Michael Zaugg, and Lone Larsen, composition with Stephen Gellman, Ugis Praulins, and Prof. Allan Bell, and voice with Elizabeth Turnbull.

“Evening Prayer from 2010 was my first choral work incorporating instrumental improvisation, with solo improv passages for the tenor sax (or alternative instrument).

Having grown up with my father being a good amateur saxophonist, and more recently collaborating with Phoenix-based Ted Belledin doing entire sax/piano duo concerts together that are unplanned and improvised, I wanted to find a way to combine our playing with the Chorale.

It was the final piece written for the group during my 2009-2010 residency with them, and the Chorale’s recording of the work is the final track of their 2012 Northern Lights album.”

Watch, O Lord,
with those who wake,
or watch or weep tonight,
and give your angels charge
over those who sleep.

Tend your sick ones,
O Lord Jesus Christ;
rest your weary ones;
bless your dying ones;
soothe your suffering ones;
pity your afflicted ones;
shield your joyous ones;
and all for your love’s sake.

Amen.
– Ola Gjeilo

“The Ground is based on a chorale from the last movement of my Sunrise Mass (2008) for choir and string orchestra. The chorale, beginning at Pleni sunt caeli in that movement is the culmination of the Mass, and it’s called The Ground because I wanted to convey a sense of having ‘arrived’ at the end of the Mass; to have reached a kind of peace and grounded strength after the long journey of the Mass, having gone through a lot of different emotional landscapes.

I wanted to make a version that could be performed independent of the Mass and one that was also more accessible in terms of instrumentation, with a piano & optional string quartet accompaniment.”

– Ola Gjeilo

It must have been exhausting to have been the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His father, composer and court violinist Leopold Mozart, was constantly parading both Wolfgang and sister Nannerl to the world in an attempt to capitalize on the surprising youthful musical aptitude of the siblings as well as aristocratic Europe’s fascination with child prodigies. In between grueling travel, near-death illnesses, and several performances per day, Wolfgang somehow found time to compose – each of the early works heard on this program come from one of his many trips away from his native Salzburg. These exuberant, vivacious works belay none of the weary circumstances the Mozart family frequently found themselves in; much to the contrary, they are the breaths of fresh air with barely a hint of conflict for which Mozart quickly became so beloved. The string quartet as a genre was still in its infancy when Wolfgang tackled it seriously for the first time as a teenager visiting Italy. Latin masses, on the other hand, were already one of the oldest and most established musical genres of the time when Mozart set about to compose his first complete mass at age 12 in Vienna. In each case, Wolfgang went about the task with what we now recognize as his characteristic freshness of perspective, terrific depth of wit, and endless beautiful melodies, bringing to the listener unforgettable and immensely enjoyable musical experiences.

Kyrie
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Gloria
[Glory to God in the highest]
And peace on earth to men of good will.
We praise you, we bless you,
We worship you, we glorify you.
We give you thanks
for your great glory.
Lord God, King of Heaven,
God the Father Almighty.
Lord only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father.
You who take away the sin of the world,
Have mercy on us.
You who take away the sin of the world,
Hear our prayer.
You who sit at the right hand of the Father,
have mercy on us.
For you alone are holy,
you alone are Lord,
you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ.
With the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father, Amen.

Credo
[I believe in one God]
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God.
Begotten, not made,
of one being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven.

By the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified
under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the
right hand of the Father;
he will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of Life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son;
with the Father and the Son
he is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the
prophets.
I believe in one holy catholic
and apostolic Church.
I acknowledge one baptism
for the forgiveness of sins;
I look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Sanctus
Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of Hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory,
Hosannah in the highest.

Benedictus
Blessed is he who comes
in the name of the Lord,
Hosannah in the highest.

Agnus Dei
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,
have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,
have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,
grant us peace.

Translation ©Pamela Dellal