Notes from the Podium

• A Time For Choruses To Do What They Do Best

  November 22, 2024

  I am passing along an article written by the newly elected president and CEO of Chorus America. I think it is very appropriate to our current situation. His feeling is that we, as chorus members, have a mission in this world… — Mark Reppert

  Dear choral community,

  This week, an election cycle which permeated our public consciousness for the better part of two years finally drew to a close. For many Americans, the sheer weight of the lead-up to the election has been traumatic. In the outcome, some had their voices heard while others are feeling a sense of uncertainty and even fear over what is to come.

  It’s a remarkable time to take the reins of Chorus America as president & CEO, as it is against the backdrop of this contentious and divisive election that we see the work of our choruses — and of Chorus America — pop into vivid relief. Through this election cycle, it has become all the more apparent that, where so much of today’s discourse seems intent on dividing us, the act of singing together can be restorative and reparative.

  Now that the election has been decided, it is time for choruses to do what they do best: to serve as places of belonging for their members and to create something beautiful to replace the ugliness and division that has been front and center for these many months. I would urge us also, difficult as it may feel, to use this as an opportunity to humanize the people sitting to our left and right (literally and figuratively).

  As leaders of choral organizations, what is our role? First and foremost, we must keep doing what we’re doing, which is taking care of the members of our singing communities. In fact, I’d like to offer an amendment to the English language, which is to make the word ‘community’ a verb. In this post-election period, we’re going to community harder than ever before.

  Choral singing was here long before there were democrats and republicans, and it will be here long after we are all gone. It exists not in spite of our day-to-day trials but because of them. At Chorus America, this will be a year focused on the incredible value choral singing has on our mental and physical health: it is well known, for example, that those who have close-knit communities — like choruses — live better lives into old age than those without. Moreover, when we pursue shared artistic goals, the social bridging that occurs may be the most effective method we know of to create a more cohesive society.

  One of my aims as president and CEO of Chorus America is to be your biggest champion and a vocal advocate for the work that you are doing each day. I have been in the trenches with you as a choral conductor, administrator, and board member, and I know how little time there is to tell the stories of the impact you are making. If we do our jobs well at Chorus America, your jobs will be a little bit easier and more gratifying.

  Please keep up the fine and critical work that you do and let us know how we can help. Our collective success will be deeply felt by many.

  In solidarity,

  Christopher Eanes

• Antonio Vivaldi and His Gloria

  November 2, 2024

  Antonio Vivaldi is now recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers. Born just a few years before the more famous Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel in 1678, his music has been well known in classical music circles since the middle of the 20th century. However, this prolific composer was a model for most of the composers that followed him.

  Vivaldi was lucky to be born in Venice, at the time one of the great centers of music in Europe. Previously it had been well known as a bustling port city and center of commerce. By 1700, that importance had declined but had been replaced by its recognition as a tourist destination, especially by lovers of music.

  A visitor to Venice could experience great opera. During the peak season there were many musical and theatrical activities at multiple opera houses to choose from every night. During the 18th century there were 1,274 different operas written for Venetian opera houses, each performed multiple times. Vivaldi was an opera impresario throughout much of his career and wrote at least 51 operas himself. Very few of these pieces has come down to us, however.

  A visitor could also experience great sacred choral music at cathedrals throughout the city, although the undisputed center of this music was the Doge’s own St. Mark’s Cathedral. The music there was spectacular. Composers utilized the double choir lofts and wrote dazzling antiphonal music in which two choirs would answer each other in 8 parts or more with instrumental accompaniment. The choir directors there during this period included some of the most well-known to us today: Andrea and Giovanni Gabrielli and Claudio Monteverdi. It was also the place to go to study this style of choral music. German composers Heinrich Schuetz and Hans Leo Hassler studied at St. Mark’s during the 18th century as well as a young Mozart.

  Another center of music in Venice that surprises contemporary music lovers was the many ospedale. The word ospedale means “hospital.” At at the time the ospedali were orphanages for girls, each one run by a different church. Church leaders felt that it was beneficial to the girls to learn instruments to increase their -------. The ospedali exceeded expectations in this regard as they became the best place in Venice to hear instrumental music. Many parents at the time sent their daughters to the “orphanage” in order to reap the benefits of such a fine education. The performers also became a great source of income for the churches, each competing with the other for audiences. The orchestra made up of young girls produced music of top quality in technique and expression. Jean-Jacques Rousseau described a vocal and instrumental concert he attended in 1770: I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which I am of opinion no heart is secure. Vivaldi began his professional musical career as the head violin teacher at the Ospedale della Pieta, regarded as the top school and best orchestra in Venice. He quickly moved up to director of the orchestra there. He wrote 100’s of concerti and orchestral compositions for the students and orchestra. On a personal note, as an undergraduate bassoon player looking for a piece to perform I astounded to find thirteen concerti for bassoon by Vivaldi. Vivaldi is still considered a musical star in Venice. During a visit to Venice a few years ago my wife Marilyn and I looked for a concert to attend. We could not find one concert that did not feature the music of Vivaldi.

  Vivaldi is known as the “Red Priest” because his career actually began as a priest. He worked as a part of the clergy for 10 years, beginning at age 15. Antonio was drawn inevitably to music, however. As an example, the story is told about Vivaldi that he once left the pulpit during mass to write down a musical idea. He did not return to finish the service.

  At the Ospedale Vivaldi took on the position of maestro di coro from 1713 - 1717. This is most likely the time during which he wrote the famous Gloria which the Siskiyou Singers will be performing in January. Though he is primarily known as an instrumental composer, he actually wrote over 60 sacred choral works.

  As happens to musicians, especially during the 18th century, audiences eventually tired of Vivaldi’s music. This left him without a job. It was in 1740 that Vivaldi moved to Vienna in the hopes of securing a position at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI. Unfortunately for Vivaldi Charles VI died almost immediately upon his arrival. Vivaldi died soon thereafter in 1741 and was buried in a very modest grave, quite inappropriate for a composer of his stature.

  Siskiyou Singers is very proud to be performing Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria RV 589 with orchestra accompaniment at the Southern Oregon University Music Recital Hall at 3:00 PM on January 18 and 19. This work will be paired with the exciting Chichester Psalms by the 20th century composer Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein was well-known as a composer and conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in the 20th century and has recently been the subject of the biopic “Maestro” starring Bradley Cooper.

• Notes from the Podium: Gone, gone, real gone

  March 12, 2024

  Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha

  This is the text of Brian Tate’s dance-like piece which Siskiyou Singers will be performing at our concerts May 4 and 5 at SOU Music Recital Hall. The text is usually translated: “Gone, gone, real gone, completely gone, Alleluia!” The idea that we would celebrate being gone, or everything being gone, is very foreign to us! Why would we want to be gone? Where have we gone? This Buddhist text sounds very nihilistic to our ears. I must, at this point, do my disclaimer that my understanding of all this is decidedly with a “beginner’s mind.” It is also hard to sum up 2500 years of Buddhist teaching in a few paragraphs!

  Our text comes at the end of the Heart Sutra. The word “sutra” means “teaching” and it is the “Heart Sutra” because it is at the very heart of Buddhist thought. Although we have many different translations into English of this sutra, “gate gate…” is never translated from the original Sanskrit. It is intended as a mantra to be chanted which sums up the ideas in the sutra.

  The sutra explains the world as one unified whole. “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form” is a puzzling foundation of this teaching. But the word “emptiness” does not mean a dark hole of nothingness. It actually is a complete whole of everything. Stacy Waymire, a teacher at the Ashland Zen Center, muddies our traditional, rational understanding of reality by pointing out that it is impossible to separate each of us from all that is around us. “Your nose is not a nose without something to smell.” He goes on to explain that Buddhists name six senses, sight, smell, touch, hearing, taste, and mind. In a famous Zen story two monks argue (oops, discuss) a flag on a pole. One says “the flag is moving” the other says “the wind is moving.” At that point the teacher chimes in and says “mind is moving.”

  The other side of the same coin is the idea of “impermanence” which says that nothing stays the same. Our world is always changing. “You can never step in the same river twice.” We see this intellectually, but our gut tells us that we are a permanent being and we want ourselves and everything else to stay the way we want! We want to go on forever and have everything be just as it is right now. But that is not the truth, according to Buddhists.

  So we are not independent and we are always changing. According to the Heart Sutra, it is very freeing when the idea that we are a completely independent, unchanging self is “gone.” Alleluia!

• Notes from the Podium: Honoring Alice Parker

  February 25, 2024

  Alice Parker was a leading figure of the rise of choral music throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first in America. She was born in Boston in 1925 and received her education in music at the New England Conservatory. As a right-hand person to Robert Shaw, the “dean of American choral music” and director of the Robert Shaw Chorale, she collaborated on hundreds of choral arrangements. These arrangements are a main-stay of choral repertoires throughout the world. There are more arrangements in the Siskiyou Singers library by Alice Parker than by any other composer (except, perhaps, Reppert). Unfortunately, Alice Parker “passed across the Jordan River”, as she might have said, on Christmas Eve this past year.

  Alice Parker (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

  She has also contributed a vast amount to American choral music as a composer. She wrote 5 operas, 11 song cycles, 33 cantatas, 11 works for chorus and orchestra, 47 choral suites, and 40 original hymns according to Wikipedia. Many of her works are set to poetry by significant American poets. Among her favorites was Emily Dickinson. Alice Parker said,

  “I love lyric poetry and the kind of prose that approaches poetry (the King James Bible, for instance)…The lyric brevity of Emily Dickinson is music to my ears…”

  She received the Brock Commission from the American Choral Director’s Association in 2014. The result of that commission was The Definition of Beauty, set to the poetry of Emily Dickinson. The piece was debuted at the ACDA National Convention in 2015 and is the featured work of the Siskiyou Singers’ performances at Southern Oregon University Music Recital Hall May 4, 7:30 PM and May 5, 3:00 PM. It will also be a part of the tour repertoire when Siskiyou Singers participates in the International Choral Festival at Alta Pusteria, Italy in June of this year.

  Alice Parker was an educator and advocate for choral singing, especially community singing. She was the founder of Melodious Accord in 1984. This choral organization is committed to choral performance, but also to the education of choral singers and advocacy of the choral art.

  “Melodious Accord, Inc. believes that melody is an unparalleled means of communication for human beings; that when we use our ears and voices we enrich our lives through creating communities of sound; and that singing together brings immediate benefits–physical, mental and spiritual–to those who join in this most participatory of all the arts.”

  I know from personal experience that she was always ready to encourage everyone in their choral pursuits.

  I was lucky enough to spend a bit of time with her at a conference. She helped me think about new approaches to choral arranging and composition.

  Alice Parker’s contribution to the choral community in America cannot be overstated. She was a compassionate leader and talented creator and she will be missed. Siskiyou Singers is thrilled to honor her this May with the performance of some of her brilliant music.