From the Director’s Desk:

Winterlude: Songs of Sleep and Repose

Dear Friend of Sacred and Profane,

Now that the days are getting shorter and the nights longer, it’s easy to feel like we want more time to rest, slow down, light candles, and curl up on the couch with a book—you know, hibernate. It was with that seasonal mood shift in mind that I developed our upcoming concert—Winterlude: Songs of Rest and Repose. While it's easy to fill a concert like this with only sweet lullabies and Christmas cradle songs—those pieces are definitely included in the program (and they are beautiful!)—I wanted to make sure there was something to keep our interest piqued as well. We don’t want you all actually falling asleep in the concert!

Our concert begins with the beautiful medieval English carol On Yoolis Night, edited and arranged by the women’s early music quartet, Anonymous 4, whose fabulous work exploring women’s medieval-era vocal repertoire has been an inspiration to me for years. I attended a vocal workshop with them a few years ago, and was happy to learn that these phenomenal singers and scholars are equally gifted as educators and promoters of this relatively obscure area of early women’s music. It’s delightful to bring this meaty carol to S&P’s singers and our audiences. In keeping with Christmas lullabies, we will sing Dormi, Jesu by Minnesota-based composer, Abbie Betinis. After hearing Abbie’s music become increasingly present in choral programming for several years, I finally met this fabulous young composer at the Chorus America Conference in the summer of 2018. In addition to her active composing career, Abbie has been the main creative and organizational force behind Justice Choir, a chapter-based movement, complete with songbooks, that arms singers to hit the streets during protests with easy protest-appropriate songs about social justice, environmental issues, and more. I’m hoping to collaborate with other local conductors to create a Bay-Area chapter of Justice Choir in the not-too-distant future.

Composer Tina Andersson. We performed her work in May 2019, and are thrilled to be singing her music again—this time for a world premiere!

I discovered Tina Andersson’s Sleep, Baby, Sleep last year when we were preparing the Swedish composer’s The Angel for our concert in May. When I contacted Tina to let her know we’d be singing Sleep, Baby, Sleep, I was excited to learn that our performance will be its world premiere!

Sacred and Profane audiences have come to anticipate hearing the wonderful music coming out of Scandinavia at many of our concerts, and this concert won’t disappoint. In addition to Tina’s piece, we will be singing the Swedish composer Gunnar Eriksson’s arrangement, Norwegian Lullaby. Like S&P tenorTomas Hallin, Eriksson comes from Göteborg, a city on the Western coast. After a recent rehearsal, Tomas commented that Norwegian Lullaby is classic Eriksson, complete with a sense of humor in the addition of a bit of Cuban rhythm to this traditional Norwegian folk song. Lest you think that all Scandinavian music is light-hearted, we will also sing the young American composer Jocelyn Hagen’s arrangement of Sofðu unga ástin mín, a dark Icelandic lullaby that was originally composed for a play about 18th century outlaws who do unspeakable things when on the lamb from the law. The piece is simultaneously sweet and creepy, as one would expect.

Composer Lera Auerbach conducting in Vienna, Austria recently (via Wien Modern)

The Russian-American composer Lera Auerbach’s setting of the Blake poem A Cradle Song also has a rather unsettling quality to it. I was first introduced to the work of this exciting young composer by our bass and board president, Niek Veldhuis, who heard a demanding multi-movement work of hers performed by the phenomenal Netherlands Chamber Choir. I immediately set out to find a work by Auerbach for S&P, and I love how this piece, possibly better-suited to a Halloween concert than a December holiday concert, gave our concert some chilling contrast.

Our concert will also feature two works by different American composers, both from multi-movement pieces called Paradise, and both written for San Francisco's Chanticleer. Shawn Crouch’s setting of Brian Turner’s poem about a father in Iraq who tries to soothe his four-year-old son to bed during a military offensive, telling the child that the bombs are “just the drums, a new music,” brings tears to my eyes every time I read the poem, let alone hear S&P sing the beautiful music that Shawn has composed. When I met him at the Chorus America conference last June, Shawn told me that this piece has become the most-performed of his choral works, and for very good reason. Followers of American choral music are now very familiar with the layered chords of Grammy Award-winner Eric Whitacre, probably the most celebrity-like composer of our choral universe. I sometimes resist Whitacre’s popularity, but he never fails to win me over with his moving and rich music, especially in more demanding works like his Sleep My Child, an ethereal work originally composed for three women portraying angels in his theater work, Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings.

Scattered throughout the program are works by the great composers of history, the 17th century English madrigalist John Wilbye (probably my favorite English madrigal, the contemplative Draw on sweet night), the great Edwardian English composer Herbert Howells, whose Sing Lullaby deserves its place as one of the classics of the English Christmas repertoire, and a folk music-inspired lullaby by the Polish spiritual minimalist composer Henryk Górecki. This is sure to be a wonderful holiday concert, with lots of variety to both lift you up and to settle you into rest. I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

Warmly,

Rebecca

Settling to Rest in the Dark Winter Nights

From the Director’s Desk:

Winterlude: Songs of Sleep and Repose

Join us!