Chorale and Choir: The Dawn Is Not Distant—Choral Works Celebrating Night and Morning
Boston Conservatory Chorale and Choir present the annual fall concert, traditionally taking place at Family and Friends Weekend. Following more than a year of virtual music-making, this concert is the first to feature both full ensembles in person since February 2020. Chorale and choir share works exploring nighttime and the literal and figurative dawn. Chorale’s program includes contemporary works by British baritone and composer Roderick Williams and Venezuelan composer Modesta Bor, as well as beloved choral favorites by Claudio Monteverdi, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Samuel Barber. Choir performs traditional repertoire by Franz Schubert and Gabriel Fauré, as well as selections by contemporary composers Joan Szymko, Christine Donkin, and Jake Runestad.
Nathan Reiff, music director
Joe Turbessi, piano
The public is invited to watch the livestream. The in-person performance in Seully Hall is only open to the Berklee community (students, faculty, staff) and invited guests.
Program Information
Repertoire
CHORALE
SAMUEL BARBER: “Sure on This Shining Night”
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: “See the Chariot at Hand”
MODESTA BOR: “Aquí te amo”
CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI: “Sfogava con le stelle”
RODERICK WILLIAMS: “O Guiding Night”
CHOIR
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Ständchen
Paulina de la Fuente, soloist
GABRIEL FAURÉ: “Le Ruisseau”
Victoria Schmidt, soloist
JOAN SZYMKO: “Stars in Your Bones”
CHRISTINE DONKIN: “The Dawn Is not Distant”
Claire Burreson, soloist
JAKE RUNESTAD: “Rise Up”
Program Notes
CHORALE
SAMUEL BARBER: “Sure on This Shining Night”
Samuel Barber set James Agee’s meditative poem as an art song in 1938, later creating the choral arrangement that we share on this program. The choral version highlights the beautiful, melancholy melody with a texture that is full and layered but not busy. A steady pulse continues in the piano throughout the piece, providing both a sense of grounding and forward motion. Still, the beautiful text “All is healed, all is health” suggests a moment frozen in time.
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: “See the Chariot at Hand”
“See the Chariot at Hand” is an excerpt from Ralph Vaughan Williams’s cantata In Windsor Forest, itself an adaptation of the opera Sir John in Love. Vaughan Williams marks this piece as a “wedding chorus,” with a text comparing the narrator’s love to a long list of beautiful and sensory experiences of nature. In our program, this piece opens a set of works about love both fulfilled and unrequited, perhaps taking place on the “shining night” of Barber’s music before.
MODESTA BOR: “Aquí te amo”
Modesta Bor was a 20th-century composer, choral director, and musicologist whose lasting legacy in her native Venezuela has only recently been better appreciated elsewhere around the world. “Aquí te amo” was composed in 1993 to a passionate and enigmatic poem by Pablo Neruda. Bor’s music captures the intimate quality of the poetry masterfully.
CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI: “Sfogava con le stelle”
Published in the Fourth Book of Madrigals in 1603, Claudio Monteverdi’s “Sfogava con le stelle” predates the composer’s most adventurous, groundbreaking madrigal writing. Still, Monteverdi utilizes a broad set of expressive tools to bring the evocative poem—about a lovesick man crying out his grief to the nighttime stars—to life. Most striking is the technique of “falsobordone,” a type of unmeasured group chanting on a fixed chord that recurs throughout the piece. Perhaps this represents the lovesick protagonist’s fixation on his anguish, or the steadfast, if unsympathetic, stars shining above.
RODERICK WILLIAMS: “O Guiding Night”
Chorale closes its program with a final work on the theme of love. “O Guiding Night” is a lush musical setting of an equally rich, expressive text. The poem, by the 16th-century mystic St. John of the Cross, can be read as the journey of the soul toward its reuniting with God. Though the text is spiritual, it is also sensual, and an alternate reading of the poem could imagine two lovers being drawn to one another from afar.
CHOIR
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Ständchen
Franz Schubert composed the choral work Ständchen (different from multiple Lieder with the same or similar titles) for alto solo and tenor-bass chorus. When the commissioner, a prominent Viennese singing teacher, pointed out that she had intended the work to be performed by her female friends, Schubert hastily reworked the score to create the version we share this evening. Ständchen depicts a group of well-wishers who pay an unusual but good-intentioned nighttime visit to a beloved friend. After rousing the friend, the visitors point out that sleep is perhaps the best gift of all and promise to leave, although they can’t seem to bring themselves to actually finish their visit and leave their poor friend alone.
GABRIEL FAURÉ: “Le Ruisseau”
Gabriel Fauré’s ethereal and elegant setting of “Le Ruisseau” flows gently along, propelled by an undulating piano line throughout. The calm beauty of the music reveals little of the emotional anguish lurking within the poem, though. The text, by an anonymous author, depicts a stream and a flower caught in a fleeting moment of connection with an impossible love that was never meant to be.
JOAN SZYMKO: “Stars in Your Bones”
Joan Szymko describes the opening of “Stars in Your Bones” as a depiction of the “big bang” that created the universe. From that dramatic opening, the piece develops an undulating and unsteady meter, as if finding its way for the first time. Eventually, the rhythm settles, beautiful lyricism takes over, and the piece builds to an uplifting, cosmic conclusion.
CHRISTINE DONKIN: “The Dawn Is not Distant”
“The Dawn Is not Distant” sets the shortest text of our concert this evening, and is perhaps the best to summarize our program as a whole. Combining texts from the Book of Genesis and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Donkin’s piece is a meditation on stillness, patience, and anticipation. As our program transitions from the night to the dawn—and as all of us in the Conservatory community have relaunched our in-person music-making for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020—this piece is a reminder to look forward and remain hopeful.
JAKE RUNESTAD: “Rise Up”
We close our program not with a literal dawn, but a figurative one. “Rise Up” sets words by the women’s suffrage hero and anti-slavery activist Susan B. Anthony. Jake Runestad’s piece begins and ends with rousing music that builds in layers and that frames a gentler, more introspective middle. Together, the two different portions of this piece highlight contrasts present throughout our program—darkness and light, anticipation and fulfillment, and intimacy and exuberance.
Texts and Translations
SAMUEL BARBER: “Sure on This Shining Night”
Sure on this shining night
Of star-made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder
Wandering far alone,
Of shadows on the stars.
(James Agee)
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: “See the Chariot at Hand”
See the chariot at hand here of Love,
Wherein my lady rideth!
Each that draws is a swan or a dove,
And well the car Love guideth.
As she goes, all hearts do duty
Unto her beauty;
And enamoured do wish, so they might
But enjoy such a sight,
That they still were to run by her side,
Through swords, through seas,
Whither she would ride.
Do but look on her eyes, they do light
All that Love’s world compriseth!
Do but look on her hair, it is bright
As Love’s star when it riseth!
Do but mark, her forehead’s smoother
Than words that soothe her;
And from her arched brows such a grace
Sheds itself through the face,
As alone there triumphs to the life
All the gain, all the good,
Of the element’s strife.
Have you seen but a bright lily grow
Before rude hands have touched it?
Have you marked but the fall of the snow
Before the soil hath smutched it?
Have you felt the wool of the beaver,
Or swan’s down ever?
Or have smelt of the bud of the brier,
Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white, O so soft, O so sweet is she!
(Translation by Ben Jonson)
MODESTA BOR: “Aquí te amo”
Original Language (Spanish) | English Translation |
---|---|
Aquí te amo. Se desciñe la niebla en danzantes figuras. Aquí te amo y en vano te oculta el horizonte. Que corren por el mar hacia donde no llegan. Amo lo que no tengo. Estás tú tan distante.Me miran con tus ojos las estrellas más grandes. (Pablo Neruda) |
Here I love you. The snow unfurls in dancing figures. Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain. The biggest stars look at me with your eyes. (Translation by Stephen Tapscott) |
CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI: “Sfogava con le stelle”
Original Language (Italian) | English Translation |
---|---|
Sfogava con le stelle (Ottavio Rinuccini) |
Crying to the stars, |
RODERICK WILLIAMS: O Guiding Night
One dark night,
fired with love’s urgent longings
— oh, the sheer grace! —
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
— him I knew so well —
there in a place where no one appeared.
O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.
Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
(St. John of the Cross)
SCHUBERT: Ständchen
Original Language (German) | English Translation |
---|---|
Zögernd, leise, Doch nun steigend, Sucht’ ein Weiser nah’ und ferne Aber was in allen Reichen (Franz Grillparzer) |
Hesitantly, quietly, And now growing, A wise man once looked near and far But what of all the riches (Translation copyright © by Emily Ezust, |
GABRIEL FAURÉ: “Le Ruisseau”
Original Language (French) | English Translation |
---|---|
Au bord du clair ruisseau Ô fleur, ô doux parfum, Mais il l’entoure en vain (Anonymous) |
On the banks of the clear stream O flower, o sweet perfume, But he holds her in vain (Trans. Gregory Ristow) |
JOAN SZYMKO: “Stars in Your Bones”
The small plot of ground
On which you were born
Cannot be expected
To stay forever
The same.
Earth changes,
And home becomes different
Places.
You took flesh
From clay
But the clay
Did not come
From just one
Place.
To feel alive,
Important, and safe,
Know your own waters
And hills, but know
More.
You have stars in your bones
And oceans
In blood.
You have opposing
Terrain in each eye
You belong to the land
And sky of your first cry,
You belong to infinity.
(Alla Bozarth)
Original Language (Latin) | English Translation |
---|---|
Suspice caelum et numera stellas (Genesis 15:5) |
Look at the heavens and count the stars The dawn is not distant, (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
JAKE RUNESTAD: "Rise Up"
There shall never be another season of silence.
Deepen your sympathy then convert it to action.
Pray every single second of your life, not on your knees but with your work.
Think your best thoughts,
Speak your best words,
Do your best work.
There is so much yet to be done.
Rise up!
(Translation by Susan B. Anthony)
Ensemble
CHORALE
SOPRANO
Francesca Coverini
Gracie Curran
Kit Flaherty
Chloe Gardner
Jayden Goldberg
Natalie Hansel
Maria Leonardi
Avery Richards
Kayli Swanson
Treshor Webster
ALTO
Emily Bartlett
Anna Bryk
Alena Feldman*
Delilah Rau
Cait Winston
Sophia Ysrael
TENOR
Nick Alessi
Alexander Georgopoulos
Blake Hopkins
Gabriel Muenzer
Anthony Paredes
Jackson Schroeder
Andrew Steele
Charles Wolfer
BASS
Barret Allen
Devon Bain
Donato Celentano
Abraham Cruz
Junze Gong
John Moorman
Vaughn Nesmith
Alex Robinson
Shouzheng Wei
CHOIR
SOPRANO
Rylie Austin
Claire Burreson
Marissa DuVall
Ruijing Guo
Sophia Holston
Klara La Guardia
Rachel London
Sarah Mair
Sofia Martinez
Sarah Mesibov
Grace Ann Miller
Caitlin Otto
Paulina Rodriguez*
Alex Roges
Laura Santamaria-Mendez
ALTO
Jenny Baena-Brito
Taylor Bailey
Yan Cui
Chirbee Dy
Paulina de la Fuente
Madeline Lee
Montserrat Martinez Buganza
Lucy Mae Martindale
Elizabeth Munoz
Maisy Parker
Daniela Pyne
Aoife Schenz
Victoria Schmidt
Hanqing Sun
Xin Zheng
*Student Ensemble Manager
Music Division and Performance Services
MUSIC DIVISION
Dean of Music
– Michael Shinn
Chair of Voice – Patty Thom
Chair of Instrumental Studies – Matthew Marsit
Chair of Composition, Contemporary Music, and Core Studies – Jonathan Bailey Holland
Chief Ensemble Operations Coordinator – Ryan Fossier
Ensembles Coordinator – Victoria Garcia
Administrative Coordinator – Chantel O'Brien
PERFORMANCE SERVICES
Director of Performance Services – Liz Keller-Tripp
Director of Audio/Visual Services – Richard Malcolm
Audio/Visual Specialist – Phil Roberson
Associate Director of Concert Services – Ryland Bennett
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