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Austin Lovelace, composer, organist, and – not least – loyal attendee of St. Martin’s concerts over the last decade, will be honored by St. Martin’s as we begin tonight’s concert. The two pieces we will perform by him – late additions to this program when I heard of his death a few weeks ago – are works we presented with his approval in a concert entitled “Colorado Connections” a few years ago.
Personally present at Friday’s performance is the composer of the third work, J.A.C. Redford. Known principally as a film and television composer (of
The Trip to Bountiful, for instance, and over 150 episodes of St.
Elsewhere, for which he was nominated for an Emmy), JAC has another side to his compositional life. It is this side that we present tonight in “What the Bird Said Early in the Year,” to a text by C. S. Lewis. An achingly melancholy setting of this reflective text places JAC, in my mind, solidly in the company of melancholy English composers such as Finzi, Howells, and Dyson. I only regret that the work is so brief. Perhaps we can rectify that at the end of the concert with an
encore . . . (wink, wink).
Speaking of encores, at a Cameo Concert in 2008, we sang a madrigal by the upstate New York composer Robert Baksa – a setting of the Shakespearean text “Full Fathom Five.” At the end of that concert I had the audience vote for the single piece they would like to hear a second time. Almost unanimously, at
both concerts, the Baksa madrigal was chosen. Robert, whom I met last year when in New York City, was so pleased by this news that he offered me the premiere performance of a new Mass he had written.
Before we get to the Mass, however, our Mark Sheldon Conducting Intern, Brian Stone, will conduct a very haunting and atmospheric work by Minneapolis composer Abbie Betinis, called
“Bar xizam (Upward I Rise),” to a text by 14th century Persian poet Shams Hâfez-e Shirazi.
Abbie, a very winning and personable young lady to whom I was introduced by the Rose Ensemble’s conductor, Jordan Sramek, has made a meteoric rise in the choral world, and looks to figure prominently in future concerts by St. Martin’s.
In the second half of the concert, all three works are linked, the connection being the final composer of the night, Philip Cannon. Cannon is a British composer who taught composition for many years at the Royal College of Music, and was himself a student of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Paul Hindemith, and Imogen Holst. He was a friend of Edmund Rubbra (whose works immediately precede his), and has told me personally that, of all 20th century choral composers, he
most admires the work of Zoltán Kodály. So we begin with the latter, a passionate and fiery scene depicting Jesus’ angry eviction of money-changers from the temple. Following this are three very harmonically complicated motets by Englishman Edmund Rubbra. All three tend to move slowly, so my advice is to close your eyes and let the kaleidoscopic harmonies, as they wash from one sonority into another, take you to another dimension.
Finally, Philip Cannon’s Son of God, a set of three motets written in 1955, closes the program. The outer movements are large in their affect, being celebratory and extroverted; and the inner movement is intensely sorrowful and introverted. It has been a supreme honor and pleasure to become acquainted with Mr. Cannon via the internet during the preparation of this concert. This growing friendship has inspired me so much, in fact, that, with the approval of the SMCC Board of Directors, this autumn I am launching a New Work Commissioning Appeal for St. Martin’s. The initial commission will go to Philip Cannon; but after that, the sky is the limit!
Timothy J.
Krueger
June 2010
© 2010 Timothy J. Krueger |