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INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Eighteen Lips, a celebration of love in many dimensions.
The twenty songs on this program, in five languages, range from the ecstatic to
the melancholy. You’re about to hear songs of longing, adoration, wistfulness,
loss, wry enjoyment, teasing, eager anticipation, and pedal-to-the-metal
excitement.
“Love” has the following definitions in a small dictionary:
1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection; 2. a feeling of warm personal
attachment; 3. sexual desire or its gratification; 4. a beloved person; 5. a
strong predilection or liking for something; 6. in love (with), feeling deep
affection or passion (for).
Most of us in Western cultures, it seems, want companionship that combines
the first four items above, though people frequently accept a far smaller
subset. You’ll hear songs about loss and songs of arousal—even arousal not
always welcomed, in the case of Will you be sensible, girl! Some of our
songs defy stereotypes: the Swedish song is most ardent, and the Italian one is
subdued (partly because it’s in Latin).
Choral music tends to highlight one mood at a time. It has been my job for
Eighteen Lips to first select songs that best show the ranges of human
loving available in the repertoire that is known to me, and then create a
90-minute weave out of the feelings in each song. The whole ensemble has the
challenge of having you feel, in your bones, the essence of each song’s feeling,
the nuance in each text, and the depth and power of each composer or arranger’s
musical expressiveness.
Longtime fans of Chicago a cappella will recognize some of our
favorite composers and arrangers, among them Paul Crabtree, Jennifer Shelton
Barnes, Ulf Långbacka, Morten Lauridsen, and Deke Sharon. A hearty welcome is
due Stacy Garrop, whose joins the ranks of composers we champion with her superb
What lips my lips have kissed, and Paul Carey, whose wry humor infuses a
300-year-old poem with music.
Choral music is the most common form of artistic participation in America.
Industry research says that 28.5 million of us sing in choirs. However,
professional choral music—sung by people whose living is in music—is rare. There
are fewer than thirty fully professional choruses in the USA that are not
attached to symphonies or operas. It is our hope that our art produces an
extraordinary cultural experience for you. Thank you for supporting, by your
presence here, live professional choral music, which we believe to be worth our
highest efforts. Have a great time, too, and come talk with us after the show.
—Jonathan Miller, Founder and Artistic Director
Lennon/McCartney, arr. Paul Crabtree: Got to get you into my life
From the Beatles’
Revolver album, this tune combines the best influences
on the Beatles by 1966: R&B, Motown, and straight-ahead pop. Paul Crabtree
created this arrangement for Chicago a cappella. He perfectly captures
the song’s urgency and its pulsing, tight brass chords.
Morten Lauridsen: Contre qui, rose
Featured on our upcoming Eclectric CD, this song has been a favorite
of Chicago a cappella’s singers and audiences since we premiered it
locally in 1995. Morten Lauridsen has emerged as one of America's finest and
most-beloved composers. His music is performed regularly by choruses and vocal
artists throughout the world. Mr. Lauridsen (b. 1943) is Chair of the
Composition Department at the University of Southern California School of Music
in Los Angeles, a faculty he joined in 1967. “Contre qui, rose” is the second
movement from Les Chansons des Roses, a delicate cycle of French songs on
Rilke poems. Lauridsen wrote this piece a few years before O magnum mysterium,
working out similar harmonic language here in the key of D-flat. The text, by
Rilke, is a delicate meditation on the fragility of a rose.
Ulf Långbacka: Refräng
Professor of choral conducting at Åbo Akademi in the Swedish-speaking region
of southeast Finland, Ulf Långbacka is a musician with a playful sense of humor.
This song, the first in a set of three for men’s chorus, is driven by the
swirling desire of the speaker, whose stilted language barely contains his
ardor. The composer puts the speaker’s passion mostly into the perpetually
off-center meter of 7/4.
Stacy Garrop: What lips my lips have kissed, and where and why
Stacy Garrop is a rising star in the ranks of American composers. She has won
several orchestra competitions resulting in performances by the Civic Orchestra,
Omaha Symphony, and New England Philharmonic, among others. Her residencies
include the Banff Centre for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, and
Yaddo. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Composition at the Chicago
College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. She received a 2001
Barlow Endowment commission, as well as a 2002 Artists Fellowship Award from the
Illinois Arts Council. Adept in a wide variety of musical genres, she was
selected for the Dale Warland Singers 2000-2001 New Choral Music Program,
resulting in the commission for this piece, the first movement of Songs of
Love and Chaos. The haunting, wistful poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
(1892-1950) is set
with exquisite sensitivity.
Paul Crabtree: Five Bird Songs (world premiere of whole
cycle)
Paul Crabtree’s innovative music intertwines the ephemeral and the eternal,
bringing together the worlds of popular culture and highbrow art. He graduated
from the Music Faculty at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the
Musikhochschule in Cologne, Germany. Crabtree grew up with an equal interest in
rock culture and classical music, but was disappointed that his academic
training never acknowledged the world of rock and pop, and transplanted to
California in his early 20s. Exposure to the musically permissive culture in the
Bay Area led him to integrate the various strands of his personal history, to
embrace and intermingle ideas as diverse as Latin poetry and 1960s girl groups.
His recent choral works include Three Rose Madrigals, Five Romantic
Miniatures from “The Simpsons,” and the driving, energetic Beatles
arrangement which opened this program.
Five Bird Songs weaves together a number of bird-themed folk songs
from the British Isles. Paul Crabtree writes: “This set of five folksong
arrangements was a wedding gift for my cousin, who married in the foothills of
the Pyrenees on September 15th 2001. Of course the events of 9/11 overshadowed
the festivities and changed any plans we had had for the days before the
ceremony. A spontaneous visit to the stunning cave paintings deep underground at
Niaux proved a cathartic experience, connecting us to tens (hundreds?) of
thousands of years of human history, when it seemed that the world was ending.
Similarly, these folksongs address the unchanging nature of the human condition,
its preponderance of loss and betrayal, but more finally its hope and its joy.”
The short notes for each piece are by the composer as well.
1. The Lark in the Morning
Despite an early-morning weather report concocted to make him stay, the
shepherd heads out whistling into the sunshine, leaving his lover in bed.
Lie still, my fond shepherd, and don’t you rise yet;
It’s a fine dewy morning, and besides, my love, it’s wet.
O let it be wet me love, and ever so cold;
I will rise with my fond Floro and away to my fold.
Oh no, my bright Floro, it is no such thing:
It’s a bright sun that’s shining, and the lark is on the wing.
Chorus: O the lark in the morning she rises from her nest,
And she mounts in the air with the dew on her breast.
And like a little pretty ploughboy she’ll whistle and sing,
And at night she’ll return to her own nest again.
O and when the ploughboy has done all he’s got for to do,
He trips down to the meadows where the grass is all cut down.
Chorus.
2. Fly Up, My Cock (solo quartet)
Woken early by the disobedient cock, Jimmy hastily abandons his lover for the
safety and freedom of the single life.
Fly up, my cock.
You’re my well-fathered cock.
But don’t cry till the break of day.
And your red rosy comb
Shall be of beaten gold
And your neck of the silvery grey.
My cock, he flew up,
My cock, he flew down,
But he crowed one hour too soon,
And this young man arose,
And he hurried on his clothes,
But it was only the light of the moon.
Oh when will ye come back,
my dear Jimmy?, she said,
for to wed with a golden ring?
Seven moons, said he,
Shining over the lea,
And the sky for to yield up no more rain.
For now I do see
Of the contrary way,
And I am forced to live single or be bound.
3. The Twa Corbies (Scottish)
Ravens gossip about a newly murdered husband, whose circumstances are
suspicious but whose corpse will nevertheless provide them a delicious dinner.
As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies mackin’ amain, talking at great length
And tain unto the tother did say,
“Where sall we gang and dine the day?” where shall we go and eat today?
In behind yon oul fail dyke
I wot there lies a new-slain knight, I see
and naebody kens that he lies there, nobody knows
but hawk and his hound and his lady fair.
His hawk is tae the hunting gane, gone
his hound to fetch the wild fowl hane. home
His lady’s taken another mate!
so we moun mak our dinner swate. we’re in for a delicious dinner!
You’ll sit on his white breastbane,
and I’ll pike out his bonny blue e’en, I’ll peck out his pretty blue eyes
With many a lock of his golden hair
we’ll theck our nest when it grows bare. to tend or keep up
There’s many a one for him makes mane, many are sad about this
but naebody kens where he is gane.
Through his white bones when they grow bare,
the wind sall blow for ever mare.
4. She’s Like the Swallow
Love is transient, and grief at its loss is deep.
She’s like the swallow that flies so high.
She’s like the river that never runs dry.
She’s like the sunshine on the lee shore.
I love my love …
It’s out in the garden this maid did go,
To pick up the beautiful primerose.
The more she plucked, the more she pulled.
It’s out of those roses she made her bed,
A stony pillow for her head.
She laid her down, no word she spoke.
I love my love, and love is no more.
5. The Lark in the Clear Air
On the eve of a declaration, love is exuberantly hopeful.
Dear thoughts are in my mind and my soul soars enchanted,
As I hear the sweet lark sing in the clear air of day.
For a tender beaming smile to my hope has been granted,
And tomorrow she shall hear all my fond heart would say.
I will tell her all my love, all my soul’s adoration,
And I think she will hear and will not say me nay.
It is this what gives my soul its joyous elation,
As I hear the sweet lark sing in the clear air of day.
arr. Jennifer Shelton Barnes: The nearness of you
Also on our Eclectric CD and from our Tenth Anniversary Concert, this
chart stretches one’s ears harmonically in a remarkably intimate way. Jennifer
Barnes is currently pursuing a commercial-music career in Los Angeles after
having served on the music faculty at Roosevelt University in Chicago. She is in
demand as a clinician and arranger in the field of vocal jazz and has published
this and other charts with UNC Jazz Press.
G. P. da Palestrina: Pulchra es, amica mea
When presenting the set of twenty-seven Motets from the Song of Songs
to his patron, Palestrina (c. 1525-1594) referred to these amorous love songs as
“indiscretions from my youth.” It seems that he was apologizing for the subject
matter, but there is no apologizing for the music. His work is generally
regarded as the pinnacle of exquisitely controlled modal counterpoint. He and
Lasso are considered the masters of the High Renaissance in Italian church
music, though Lasso was more given to rhetorical flourishes while Palestrina
stayed within the confines of moderation. No dissonance is out of place here, no
line expressing by itself any need for attention, nor are there any extremes of
vocal range; rather, it is a balanced whole that gives the music its effect.
Pulchra es, amica mea,
suavis et decora,
sicut Jerusalem:
terribilis ut castrorum
acies ordinata.
Averte oculos tuos a me,
quia ipsi me avolare fecerunt.
You are beautiful, my friend,
sweet and decorous,
as is Jerusalem:
awesome as an army
arrayed in battle.
Turn your eyes away from me,
for they have made me flee away.
Jonathan Miller: I am the rose of Sharon (world
premiere)
This short piece takes a beloved passage from The Song of Songs and gives it
a musical setting that the composer likens to “a cross between Gregorian chant
and Jethro Tull.” The text may be familiar from the famous setting by early
American composer William Billings.
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley.
As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among the sons.
I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
And his fruit was sweet to my taste.
Jonathan Miller: Thy two breasts are like . . . (from Kisses of Myrrh)
In the summer of 2001, shortly before 9/11, Jonathan Miller completed a
five-movement cycle, Kisses of Myrrh, on texts from the Hebrew Song of
Songs. This is the fourth of those movements, another short piece. The
narrator’s ardor is captured in the varied rhythm and musical accent, exploding
in the end at his marveling at his lover’s sensate beauty.
Thy two breasts are like two fawns that are twins of a gazelle,
which feed among the lilies.
Until the day breathe, and the shadows flee away,
I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.
Thy lips, O my bride, drop honey.
Honey and milk are under thy tongue,
and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
arr. Deke Sharon: Walkin’ my baby back home
This chart, made famous by Nat “King” Cole, has been set in stunning
all-vocal form by Deke Sharon, the unofficial maven of the American collegiate a
cappella scene.
I N T E R M I S S I O N
Paul Carey: Will you be sensible, girl!
In the early 17th century, an Irish priest named Seathrun Ceitinn (Geoffrey
Keating) published a volume of poetry, both reverent and bawdy. This song seems
to be sung by an older man, perhaps himself a priest, with a charming sentiment
that evokes the saying by Oscar Wilde: “I can resist anything except
temptation.”
arr. Philip Lawson: The Turtle Dove
The King’s Singers made famous this arrangement, created by one of their
ensemble members. Tenor, soprano, and alto voices take turns singing the tune of
longing, while the basses lay down a carpet of gently undulating harmonies with
a Celtic, modal flavor.
Javerbaum / Cohen: Bagel-Shop Quartet
This tongue-in-cheek love song comes from Suburb: The Musical, written
by the award-winning team of lyricist David Javerbaum and composer Robert Cohen.
If you never thought of your beloved as a bagel before, or vice versa, now is
your chance to think again.
Morten Lauridsen: La rose complète
The fourth movement in Lauridsen’s stunning cycle Les chansons des roses,
this song picks up where Contre qui, rose left off. It would work well as
a wedding song, expressing as it does the joy, calm, and exhilaration of being
joined with one in love.
Sholom Secunda, arr. Mark Zuckerman: Bay mir bistu sheyn
(I Think You’re Terrific)
Mark Zuckerman is an award-winning composer from New Jersey, who has made a
name for himself in recent years with skillful arrangements of Yiddish folk
songs, including Ikh bin a kleyner dreydl from our Holidays a cappella
Live CD.
The Andrews Sisters made this song a hit. Zuckerman writes: “Sholom Secunda
and J. Jacobs wrote this song for a Yiddish theatre show that opened (and
closed) in 1932. Story has it that, 5 years later, Sammy Cahn and Lou Levy heard
a black group sing the song (in Yiddish) at the Apollo in Harlem and were amazed
by the reception. They decided to do a version in English; Cahn wrote new lyrics
and Levy modified the verse (the chorus is the same). I think they paid Secunda
something like $25 for the rights. Cahn took their version to the Andrews
Sisters and the rest, as they say, is history. My arrangement, though entirely
in Yiddish, pays homage to both. The chorus is done twice: first in a Yiddish
theater style, and second in swing. The swing chorus has Yiddish scat singing at
the end, in the women’s parts.”
All program notes are copyright © 2005 Jonathan
M. Miller. These texts may not be reproduced or transmitted by any means,
in whole or in part, conventionally or electronically, without the express
permission of the author. |
