NEC Symphonic Choir and Chamber Singers: Great Music in a Great Space - Sanctuary

John Corigliano | Fern Hill (1961)

Program note

I first encountered Dylan Thomas’ work in 1959, my last undergraduate year at Columbia College. It was a revelation. Both the sound and structures of Thomas’s words were astonishingly musical. Not by accident, either: “What the words meant was of secondary importance; what matters was the sound of them...these words were as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments," he wrote in his Poetic Manifesto of 1951. I was irresistibly drawn to translate his music into mine.
     One poem captivated me: Fern Hill, about the poet’s “young and easy" summers at his family’s farm of the same name. I wanted to write this work as a gift for my high-school music teacher, Mrs. Bella Tillis, who first encouraged my musical ambitions. She introduced Fern Hill with piano accompanying her (and, once, my) school choir.
     Fern Hill is a blithe poem, yet touched by darkness; time finally holds the poet “green and dying," but the poem itself, formally just an ABA song extended into a wide arch, sings joyously of youth and its keen perceptions. I set it for mezzo-soprano solo, chorus, and orchestra, aiming to match the forthright lyricism of the text. (The direction “with simplicity" is everywhere in the printed score.)

– John Corigliano

SHORT PAUSE

Caroline Shaw | To the Hands (2016)

Prelude
In medio / in the midst
Her beacon-hand beckons
ever ever ever
Litany of the Displaced
i will hold you

Program note

The Crossing commissionedTo the Handsas a response toAd manusfrom Dieterich Buxtehude’s 17th century masterpiece,Membra Jesu Nostri. It is a part of the Seven Responses project and was performed by members ofThe Crossing, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the early music ensemble Quicksilver, alongside the complete Buxtehude and new works by six other composers.

To the Handsbegins inside the 17th century sound of Buxtehude. It expands and colors and breaks this language, as the piece’s core considerations, of the suffering of those around the world seeking refuge, and of our role and responsibility in these global and local crises, gradually come into focus.
     The prelude turns the tune ofAd manusinto a wordless plainchant melody, punctured later by the strings’ introduction of an unsettling pattern.The second movement fragments Buxtehude’schoral setting of the central question,“quid sunt plagae istae in medio manuum tuarum,”or “what are these wounds in the midst of your hands.” It settles finally on an inversion of the question, so that we reflect, “What are these wounds in the midst of our hands?” We notice what may have been done to us, but we also question what we have done and what our role has been in these wounds we see before us.
     The text that follows in the third movement is a riffon Emma Lazarus’ sonnetThe New Colossus, famous for its engraving at the base of the Statue of Liberty.The poem’s lines “Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and its reference to the statue’s “beacon-hand” present a very different image of a hand — one that is open, beckoning, and strong. No wounds are to be found there — only comfort for those caught in a dangerous and complex environment. While third movement operates in broad strokes from a distance, the fourth zooms in on the map so far that we see the intimate scene of an old woman in her home, maybe setting the table for dinner alone. Who is she, where has she been, whose lives has she left?This simple image melts into a meditation on the wordsin cavernafrom the Song of Solomon, found in Buxtehude’s fourth section,Ad latus.
     In thefifth movement the harmony is passed around from one string instrument to another, overlapping only briefly, while numericalfigures are spoken by the choir.These are globalfigures of internally displaced persons, by country, sourced from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) data reported in May 2015 (accessed on 20/03/2016 at www.internal displacement.org). Sometimes data is the cruelest and most honest poetry.
     The sixth andfinal movement unfolds the wordsin cavernainto the tumbling and comforting promise of “ever ever” — “ever ever will I hold you, ever ever will I enfold you”.They could be the words of Christ, or of a parent or friend or lover, or even of a nation.
- Caroline Shaw

NEC Symphonic Choir / NEC Chamber Singers

Symphonic Choir
Aislin Alancheril
Genie Alvarado
August Baik
* Ilan Balzac
Emelia Boydstun
Peter Butler
Gia Cellucci
‡ Coco Chapman
Baian Chen
Chen Chen
Xingyan Chen
Daniel Chen Wang
Su Cong
Ivy Evers
Timothy Goliger
‡ Bailee Green
Jialin Han
Cameron Hayden
Jinyu He
‡ Jackie Hu
Jane Ai Jian
‡ Yoomin Kang
Ian Yoo Kim
Song Hyeon Kim
Molly Knight
Jinyoung Kweon
Yu Lei
Lucci Zimeng Li
Matthew Li
Shawn Xiangyun Lian
Kira Lim
Hao Wei Lin
Nine Lin
Angelina Pin-Hsin Lin
* Sally Millar
Hannah Miller
Yechan Min
Samuel Mincarelli
Yowon Nam
Grace Navarro
Daniela Pyne
Quinn Rosenberg
Nancy Schoen
Samuel Schwartz
Yide Shi
* Tamir Shimshoni
Yunsun Shin
Eunchae Song
‡ Maggie Storm
Minhyuk Suh
Haolun Alan Sun
‡ Matthew Tirona
‡ Calvin Isaac Wamser
Haowen Wang
Qizhen Steven Wang
Tianyou Wang
Yinuo Wang
Yixiang Wang
Zhaoyuan Wang
‡ McLain Weaver
Lena Ying Ting Wong
Shanshan Xie
Chenran Yang
ShengQiao Ye
*Aimee Yermish
‡ Henri Youmans
Honghao Howard Zheng
* Maggie Zheng
    *community member
    ‡Corigliano small chorus

Chamber Singers
Pitiki Aliakai
Ashley Chen
Anjulie Djearam
Haijie Du
Timothy Goliger
Bailee Green
Jackie Hu
Siyu Leng
Corinne Luebke-Brown
Colin Miller
Yuanwei Ni
Nicholas Ottersberg Enriquez
Anna Poltronieri Tang
Rafe Schaberg
Rachel Solyn
Maggie Storm
Chloe Thum
Valentine Umeh
Calvin Isaac Wamser
Ying Ting Lena Wong
Yumeng Xing
Henri Youmans
Honghao Howard Zheng