Towson University Music Composition Streaming Project

Center for the Arts Concert Hall

Friday, November 30, 2001

8:15 P.M.

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Gloria                                                          Craig Leland Sparks (b. 1978)

   Gloria in excelsis Deo
   Domine Deus
   Quoniam tu solus sanctus
 

Lee DuBose, alto (Domine Deus)
Sarah Hetherington, soprano (Quoniam)
Rod Hamilton, Kathryn Higdon, Kevin Hillock, percussion

(Text and note below)

Ligeia                                                          Michael Furniere (b. 1980)
 

Joseph Eckert, baritone
Angelica Divens, soprano
Tim Kuhl, timpani     Dave Marsalek, vibraphone
MIchael Furniere, guitar     Chad Heyer, double bass

(Text and note below)
 

LYING ABOUT THE BURNT CUSHIONS                Stephen Makofski
 

Stella Mantakos, narrator
Leah Moss, oboe     Bang Lang Do, piano     Tim Hoogerwerf, drumset
Louise Grasso, viola     Erika Bubnash, cello

(Text and note below)
 

Un Conte de Fées (A Faerie Tale)                      Beau Lochte(b. 1979)
 

Jessica Sydnor, clarinet     Katherine Fernandez, piano
Thomas Harold, percussion

(Text and note below)

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TEXTS, TRANSLATIONS, AND NOTES

Sparks    Gloria

Gloria
(Dominus vobiscum                     (The Lord be with you,
Et cum spiritu tuo oremus:)        and with Thy spirit, let us pray:)

Gloria in excelsis Deo.         Glory to God in the highest.
Et in terra pax                            And on earth peace
hominibus bonae voluntatis.         to all those of good will.
Laudamus te. Benedicimus te.      We praise thee. We bless thee.
Adoramus te. Glorificamus te.     We worship thee. We glorify thee.
Gratias agimus tibi                      We give thanks to thee
propter magnam gloriam tuam.    according to thy great glory.

Domine Deus
Domine Deus, Rex coelestis,          Lord God, Heavenly King,
Deus Pater omnipotens.                God the Father almighty.
Domine Fili unigenite,                   Jesu Christe.   Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son.
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei,                Lord God, Lamb of God,
Filius Patris.                                 Son of the Father.
Qui tollis peccata mundi,               Thou who takest away the sins of the world,
miserere nobis.                             have mercy upon us.
Qui tollis peccata mundi,                Thou who takest away the sins of the world,
suscipe deprecationem nostram.    receive our prayer.
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris,       Thou who sittest at the right hand of theFather,
miserere nobis.                              have mercy upon us.

Quoniam
Quoniam tu solus sanctus.               For Thou alone art holy.
Tu solus Dominus.                           Thou alone art the Lord.
Tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe.     Thou alone art the most high, Jesus Christ.
Cum Sancto Spiritu                         With the Holy Spirit
in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.              in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

                                                     (Translation by earthsongs)

After a three year hiatus, I was thrilled to write for choir again. In those three years, my interests shifted, and my music now incorporates an African influence. Gloria integrates this African influence with my roots in the Western art music tradition.

The first movement borrows from the traditions of West Africa. Always rooted by the bell rhythm sung in the bass, the harmonized melody evolves throughout the piece. The finale of the movement brings back three sections of the melody in the upper voices creating a hocketed sound.

In contrast, the second movement draws from South African choral traditions. This movement is simple and warm. Towards the end of the movement, the harmonies shift from the traditional to rich chords while maintaining the feeling of the South African choral style.

The final movement, in two sections, begins with a slow deliberate ritual. In the second, the energy that lie dormant in the first is let loose as the tempo shifts to send the piece reeling forward. The piece slowly spins out from a state of control to one of frenzy, finally arriving on the text "Jesu Christe!"

Craig Sparks

 

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Furniere     Ligeia
Based on a text by Edgar Allan Poe

I.

She came and departed like a shadow.
I saw that she must die.
She wrestled with the shadow.
She spoke these words-
I would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning
Of those quietly uttered words.

"Man doth not yield him to the angels,
Nor unto death utterly,
Save only through the weakness of his feeble will."

Requiem aeternam dona eis domine
Et lux perpetua, luceat eis

I crushed into dust with sorrow... Ligeia

II.

Rowena I led from the altar as my bride.
She was attacked with a sudden illness.
On the third night, she was prepared for her tomb.
I sat alone with her shroud,
I saw wild visions.
I struggled alone to call back the spirit ill hovering.
Vague sounds, assuing from the bed
She who had been dead,
Stirred time after time.
I can never be mistaken,
These are the full and wild eyes
Of the Lady Ligeia!
 

Edgar Allan Poe's Ligeia (1838) is dark, mysterious, morbid, and stirring.  Overall, it is a story about a man and his wife, the Lady Ligeia.  They are married and everything is perfect until she comes down with a sudden illness.  Their marriage bed soon becomes her deathbed and he is stricken with grief.  Years later, he remarries the Lady Rowena.  A similar affliction takes her life and he sits there staring at her lifeless body lying on the bed.  Under an opium-influenced hallucination, he thinks she is coming back to life.  Little by little she begins moving increasingly until she floats off the bed and morphs into the figure of his first wife Ligeia!

The baritone soloist acts as the narrator, and the chorus adds body and texture.  I went through the story many times, picking out the essential sentences that best conveyed the feel and intensity of the tale.  There is also a soprano solo in the middle of the piece, to be sung from the view point of Ligeia on her deathbed.  The vocal lines are in many case harsh and disjunct and present keen challenges to the singers, as well as the listener.  The instrumentation chosen adds to the shadowy essence of the piece. An instrumental break towards the middle, represents the turmoil and change after one wife dies, and the before the marriage of another.

Michael R. Furniere

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Makofski     LYING ABOUT THE BURNT CUSHIONS
Poem by Stella Mantakos

It's not the shape of your lips
or this red button
You've showed it to me before

begging for what is already yours
sitting there with your head shoved
through some irongate locked answer

with temples pressed in mirror-eyed wonder
waiting upon implosion to some god-like oneness
I can not explain it to you

Hope springs eternal and the pungent rot you wear
carry it here and tell me
Is it not beautiful?

When your mother said yes
I will carry it always-and she put your blinders on
and covered your bloodstained ears
and marched you off to build the statue
to cast some immortal shadow

whispered "the game - you try
life is nothing
we are when we can not speak
and so run with this till the sirens
with their halfmoon lips and lights
come singing their murderous songs to you"

The water has nothing - and so we do
it moves in circles - can you not see this
through the brainswitch
and out the veincord
in your dark hole
or lying about the burnt cushions
hanging on the lips
leaving the head
not addicted
just the process there of
and here is where he runs

Yes, out is a word with half-moon lips
Saturday - he sent a rocket through his head
threw some permenent smile
and drew vertical lines down his back and shoulders

I too saw the word
and with its irongate locked answer
pressed to the temples
forgot which button I was looking for
and dogeyed peered through the gate alone
 

LYING ABOUT THE BURNT CUSHIONS, in many aspects, is an outgrowth of past collaborations with Stella Mantakos. In previous works, Stella and I have incorporated spoken text. Our past projects were largely electronic music with live performers, among them drummer Tim Hoogerwerf.

This has been the first opportunity to blend my current music interests with my past frameworks of stucture and performance. Aside from setting the text, LYING ABOUT THE BURNT CUSHIONS includes elements of improvisation, a technique not present in my other current works.

Stephen Makofski

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Lochte     Un Conte de Fées (A Faerie Tale)
Poem by Maggie Beetz

Through this field of trees undaunting
His silence hears the fear of haunting
And everything around him taunting.
(The grass in a disheveled state).

She lies awake and screams for laughter,
The beginning mocks the end heís after
She smiles to see him running faster.
(And the dirt as soft as silk).

The wind pulls him in each direction,
The rain that falls destroys perfection,
She cries the beauty of rejection.
(And the bugs dance on soot).

The end he sees is getting nearer,
The mazeís open doors are clearer,
He falters by the opaque mirror.
(And the air is covered in smoke).

He approached to see a world colliding,
Faerie dust and flowers no longer hiding,
The end on its green heels sighing.
(And the waterís coming soon).
 

Un Conte de Fees is a surreal story about human relationship and a struggle for love that is never realized.  I chose to open the piece introducing each instrument one at a time, in a slow, mysterious manner, as if being reluctantly drawn into the imaginary world of faerie tale.  The poem is divided into six verses with the last line of each verse in parentheses, as an overview or higher understanding of the previous three lines.  In the music, I distinguish these parenthesized statements by altering the language from English to French, as well as adding an element of vocal improvisation.

The music offers further insight into the emotions of the characters through instrumentation, antiphony, and the idea of control.  The use of mixed chorus amplifies the back and forth nature of relationship.  The clarinet reinforces the women's line while the piano part represents the men's point of view.  After the opening theme in the clarinet, the piano enters spinning a web being controlled by the clarinetís melody.  The male is constantly on edge and always shifting direction, reassessing his plans to woo, while the female is always in control, observing from afar.  The men begin "she lies awake, . . ." but the women interrupt with "the beginning mocks the end he's after." Un Conte de Fees presents a journey into an imaginary world that holds real-world truths about the nature of human relationship.

Beau Lochte

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TOWSON UNIVERSITY CHAMBER SINGERS

Paul Rardin, director
Angelica Divens, ensemble manager
Yuan-Ling Ho, James Mayo III, sectional conductors
 

SOPRANO Angelica Divens Indah Hertanto Sarah Hetherington* Leah Inger* Meghan McGill

ALTO Kerry Bowman* Lee DuBose Yuan-Ling Ho Sara Speargas

TENOR Mathew Calewarts David Hill James Mayo III

BASS Brendan Cooper Joe Eckert Allen Kessell

*American Choral Directors Association, Towson University Chapter

The Chamber Singers is a 20-voice ensemble comprised of Towson University students including music performance majors, music education majors, and non-music majors. Since the ensembleís founding in 1993, the Chamber Singers have performed diverse music ranging from Brahms to Britten, Schütz to Swingle, and Victoria to Weill.

The Chamber Singers have earned recognition from nationally respected choral musicians. In 1997 the Chamber Singers won praise from renowned composer Libby Larsen for their premiere performance of Laural Kolkerís The Armenian Mother at the Baltimore Choral Arts Society Master Class in Composition. In 1998 they were invited to perform for Plymouth Music Series conductor Phillip Brunelle at a choral master class at Loyola College. Their 1998 CD Our Song in the Night includes music of Libby Larsen, Duke Ellington and Harold Arlen.

The ensemble performs frequently on and off campus. Local engagements have included concerts at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, St. Johnís Episcopal Church (Glyndon, MD), Christ Church (New Brunswick, NJ),  Ss. Philip and James Church, Charlestown Chapel, Taylor Chapel and Oak Crest Village, and Oriole Park at Camden Yards. They have appeared on campus at the annual MOSAIC concerts, and recently collaborated with the award-winning Towson University Early Music Ensemble in a performance of Heinrich Schützís Historia der Geburt Jesu Christi.

Paul Rardin is associate professor and director of choral activities at Towson University in Towson, Maryland, where he directs the University Chorale, Chamber Singers, Jazz Vocal Ensemble and Choral Society. He is also artistic director of the Chesapeake Chorale in Bowie, MD, and president of the American Choral Directors Association, Maryland/Washington DC chapter. Rardin received the D.M.A. in conducting and the M.M. in composition from the University of Michigan, where he studied conducting with Theodore Morrison, Jerry Blackstone and Gustav Meier, and composition with Leslie Bassett and George Wilson. He has also studied conducting with Helmuth Rilling. Since joining the Towson University faculty in 1993, Rardin has served as guest conductor and adjudicator for county, region, and state high school choral festivals and clinics throughout Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

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Perspective on the concert from the ensemble director

CANTICUM NOVUM

Why do we value "new songs"? What do these new choral works offer that doesn't already exist in the millions of choral works available to us today?

I believe that our student and alumni composers have offered us the following ingredients of excellent choral music:

Challenge to singer and listener
Our colleagues have stretched our ears, voices, and minds with their music. In singing this music for the first time, we have had to master complex melodies, improvise independently, and listen constantly to each other - and we are stronger, musically, for the effort.

In listening to this music for the first time, we are reminded that art may serve many functions aside from entertainment. These functions may include asking questions, evoking human emotions (including anger and fear, emotions not always associated with choral music), and exploring new and unfamiliar modes of expression.

Union of word and music
Setting a text to music requires understanding the text on many levels, and composing music that demonstrates this understanding. Craig's jubilant settings of the traditional Gloria text continue the centuries-old tradition of writing joyous music to this festive religious text; Beau's setting of "the rain that falls" with a descending melody (beginning very high, as if from heaven) is but one example of effective "text painting"; Michael takes Edgar Allen Poe's "wild visions" on a compelling ride of wide-ranging, frantic vocal glissandos (singing that slide between distant pitches); and Stephen uses a text-less chorus as a melodic agent of "sadness and acceptance" in an otherwise fractured and chaotic setting.

Musical integrity
That is, integration of musical ideas within a piece. All of the student works on the program demonstrate, sometimes in very sophisticated and subtle ways, growth and evolution from a single idea: a chord which becomes a melody that is sung forward, then backward (Stephen); a series of motives that appear individually and then simultaneously (Craig); a single interval (Mike) that acts to link much of the piece's melodic and harmonic material; and a melody (Beau) that recurs three times, each time carrying a new set of words and preparing a new response from the full chorus. These pieces are all highly "connected to themselves"; this musical integrity helps us to hear and process new sounds while hanging onto those already presented.
 

We value cantici novi because they educate and inspire. Our singers have learned about the compositional process and our composers have learned about the characteristics of the human voice; all of our ears have learned about the fears and joys of engaging, exploring, and  ultimately owning the new sounds presented here for the first time this evening.

Paul Rardin, Director of choral activities Towson University

Perspective on the concert from a faculty composer

Once again I am delighted to be part of a collaborative project involving a premiere performing ensemble and the student composers at Towson University.  As was the case in 1999, when the student composers were invited to write for the TU Symphonic Band, this most recent project represents the fruit of a series of discussions within our department centering on the importance of teaching independence and creative initiative to our students.   The CANTICUM NOVUMproject, initiated by Paul Rardin and the Chamber Singers, is one representation of how we are exploring alternatives to the common model of concerts in which students most often rehearse and perform works by people from other times and places.  For this project the music was composed, learned, and performed from within the student community itself.   We have asked the student performers to broaden their ears and musical technique in order to engage works by their peers--music that has been composed here and now and specifically for them.   The composers, who were charged with creating their music during the spring semester of 2001, completed the pieces and passed them on to the Chamber Singers to prepare during the fall semester.   Professor Rardin invited the composers to take part in rehearsals and to speak with the performers about the music and how these works came to be.  These meetings offered direct and meaningful connections between the composers and performers and demonstrated the value of making new music together.

I would like to thank composer Theophanos Dymiotes, who also worked with several of the composers as they completed these pieces.  I am grateful to Professor Rardin for his eagerness to commission the composers and I am quite proud of the students for how they have engaged and cared for this opportunity to create in one another's company.

William Kleinsasser,  Associate professor of composition

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DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC

The Department of Music enrolls approximately 300 students served by 25 full-time and over 40 part-time faculty.  This comprehensive music program offers a variety of concentrations in Bachelor and Masters degrees.  The NASM accredited program is housed in the Center for the Arts.  For further information please visit the Music Department Home page at http://www.towson.edu/music, or contact Mary Ann Criss, Assistant to the Chairperson, at (410) 830-2836, or mcriss@towson.edu.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dr. Mark Perkins
President, Towson University

Dr. Dan Jones
Interim Provost, Towson University

Dr. Maravene Loeschke
Dean, College of Fine Arts and Communication

Dr. Terry Ewell
Chairperson, Department of Music

Dr. William Kleinsasser
Professor of Composition

Mr. Theophanos Dymiotes
Professor of Composition

Mr. Dale Rauschenberg
Professor of Percussion

Ms. Mary Ann Criss
Assistant to the Chairperson, Department of Music

Ms. Susan Lidard
Administrative Assistant, Towson University

Ms. Louise Miller
Director of Marketing, College of Fine Arts and Communication

Ms. Sedonia Martin
Publicist, College of Fine Arts and Communication

Mr. Michael Dunne
Design & Publications

Ms. Marilyn Shultz
Associate Dean, College of Fine Arts and Communication

Mr. James Hunnicutt
Associate Assistant to the Dean, College of Fine Arts and Communication

Mr. David Mayhew
Director, Department of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction

Mr. Mickey Miller
Senior Project Manager, Department of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction