The music for this concert represents all that is fun and fanciful in life – it reconnects us with our childhood feelings of excitement, free abandon and fairy tales!
I. Opening the concert are the Zigeunerlieder (or Gypsy Songs) of Brahms. Remember hearing the Brahms Lullaby when you were small? Well, this is that same Brahms. In much of his music, especially vocal, Brahms was influenced by folk song which contains a simplicity of melody and rhythm and whose poetry and style are in strophic (or verse-like) form. In the Zigeunerlieder, written around 1887, Brahms hoped to capture the spirit of Hungarian folk music without copying it. The words and melodies are based on Hungarian folk songs. He strove to produce artistic music by retaining only certain aspects of the gypsy music: the favorite Hungarian rhythm of 2/4 is used in all eight of the songs; imitation of gypsy instruments such as the cymbal and dulcimer; use of syncopation; and irregular rhythms. The music will be greatly enhanced by the “gypsy dancers” that you will see in their colorful costumes as Canterbury sings this exciting, fiery music!
II. Macbeth is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name. Verdi's version follows Shakespeare's play quite closely, but with some interesting changes. One of them is that instead of using three witches as in the play, there is a large female chorus of witches, singing in three part harmony.
Act I opens in Scotland in the 11th century. Groups of witches gather in a wood beside a battlefield. The victorious generals Macbeth and Banquo enter. The witches hail Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and foretell that he will be king "hereafter." The witches vanish, and messengers from the present King Duncan appear naming Macbeth Thane of Cawdor.
The scene changes. At their castle, Lady Macbeth reads a letter from her husband telling of the encounter with the witches. She is determined to propel Macbeth to the throne, and the tale continues to unfold with plotting, intrigue and murder.
III. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ cantata In Windsor Forest is adapted from his opera, “Sir John in Love” which is based on Shakespeare's “The Merry Wives of Windsor”. His operas rely heavily on the chorus. In the story, Sir John Falstaff arrives in Windsor very short on money. He decides, to obtain financial advantage, that he will court two wealthy married women, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. Falstaff decides to send the women identical love letters.
When the women receive the letters, each goes to tell the other, and they quickly find that the letters are almost identical. The "merry wives" are not interested in the aging, overweight Falstaff as a suitor; however, for the sake of their own amusement, and to gain revenge for his indecent assumptions towards them both, they pretend to respond to his advances.
Eventually, the wives tell their husbands about the many jokes they have played on Falstaff, and together they devise one last trick. They tell him to meet them by an old oak tree in Windsor Forest. They then dress several of the local children as fairies and get them to pinch Falstaff to punish him. Although he is embarrassed, Falstaff takes the joke surprisingly well when he finds out, as he sees it was what he deserved.
A young couple in the village, Fenton and Anne, arrive and admit that they love each other and have been married. Fenton chides the parents for trying to force Anne to marry men she did not love and the parents accept the marriage and congratulate the young pair. Eventually they all leave together, and Mistress Page even invites Falstaff to come with them: "let us every one go home, and laugh at this sport o'er by a country fire; Sir John and all".
IV. Handel composed this delightful English choral work, L’Allegro il Penseroso and his first setting of words by the poet John Milton, in 1740. He combined the texts of two of Milton’s shorter poems, L’Allegro and Il Penseroso. They are complimentary works, one celebrating the personality of ‘The Merry Man’ (the extrovert) and the other that of ‘The Thoughtful Man’ (the introvert). He saw the possibilities of using extracts from the poems as a kind of dialogue suited to the musical depiction of contrasting characters. He also introduced a new character, ‘Il Moderato’ or ‘The Moderate Man’, who advises against excess of merriment or melancholy and advocates a balance of both, governed by reason. Much of the charm of the work lies in the many images Handel draws from English life, both rural and urban.
V. P. D. Q. Bach is a fictional composer invented by musical satirist "Professor" Peter Schickele. In an extended joke that Schickele has used in a four-decade-long career, he performs (and composes) the "discovered" works of this forgotten member of the family of the great composer, J. S. Bach. P. D. Q. Bach seldom wrote original tunes; for the most part he stole melodies from other composers and rearranged them in often funny ways. Also, P. D. Q. Bach's music uses instruments not often used in orchestras, such as the tromboon, slide whistle and kazoo, as well as items not normally used as musical instruments. In the Knock, Knock Cantata you will experience some of the worst jokes you’ll ever hear (including those famous Knock, Knock jokes?) set to some of the worst music you’ll ever hear – of course, all in good fun! The combination of text and music is really hilarious – be listening for a famous Rodgers & Hammerstein tune that is incorporated into the mix! ENJOY!
VI. Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer, pianist and conductor of the early Romantic period. He composed an overture inspired by Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in 1826, intended for concert performance. In 1843, because of the fame of the overture, he was commissioned to write incidental music for a German stage production of the play. He added the Overture to it, and both were used in most stage versions through the nineteenth century. Among Mendelssohn's incidental pieces is his “Wedding March”, used most often today as a recessional in Western weddings.
“A Midsummer Night's Dream” is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare written sometime in the 1590s. It portrays the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, their interactions with the Duke and Duchess of Athens and with fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest.
VII. Charles Edward Ives was an American composer of modernist classical music. He is widely regarded as one of the first American classical composers of international significance. Ives combined the American popular and church-music traditions of his youth with European art music, and was among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality and tone clusters.. Sources of Charles Ives’ tonal imagery are hymn tunes and traditional songs, the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster. His works have dissonance, which comes from untrained voices singing a hymn together: not all on the same pitch, creating a cluster of tones instead of a single tone. In addition, Charles Ives' music has polyrhythm, which comes from untrained voices singing a hymn together: some voices were slightly ahead of the beat while others lagged behind. Finally, Charles Ives' music has polytonality which comes from two bands in a parade, each playing a different tune in a different key. The Circus Band is a march describing the Circus coming to town.