Music of New York City Composers: About the Program
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©2023 ANDREW SPINA
“O! The joy of our spirit is uncaged!” — so starts Norman Dello Joio’s Jubilant Song.
Originally written for a New York high school choir in 1946 and based on a Walt Whitman poem, Jubilant Song, is, in Dello Joio’s words, “about the stars, the Moon, and getting outside yourself.” With the same marked enthusiasm the piece has continued to inspire in its performers, thus begins our concert, aptly titled “Music of New York City Composers.”
Dello Joio echoes and juxtaposes feelings of rapture and spontaneity with a dynamic piano accompaniment and key phrases such as “the joy of spirit is uncaged.” The antiphony, or call and response, between the voice parts conjures images of unbound excitement bursting at the seams, signaling a departure from the polyphonic conventions of more traditional choral music that embodies the peak of New York sonic innovation.
Some composers, like Dello Joio, opt to look into the future and the excitement of the unknown. Others, on the other hand, use the past as a catalyst for their own work. Harry T. Burleigh, an African American composer, singer, and former member of our very own St. George’s Choral Society, sought to preserve and popularize spirituals—a genre of religious folk music that arose in enslaved Black American communities. Originally from Erie, Pennsylvania, Burleigh moved to New York at the age of twenty-six to study music, and throughout his musical career, he brought spirituals to the forefront as a powerful form of expression and resistance among enslaved Black peoples.
Burleigh’s Wade in de Water haunts us with its imagery of water—a symbol of cleansing and renewal. The ostinato from the lower voices, all repeating the titular words, evokes images of ripples of water suddenly disturbed by a human force. The rich harmonies and shifting rhythms create a sense of tension and release throughout the piece, underscoring the emotion and intensity of the lyrics as the troubled main melody floats on top.
My Lord, What a Morning awakens feelings of serenity with its homophonic texture, as only one melody stands out at a time. The voices blend evenly to bring out the juxtaposition of contrary chromatic harmonies that represent the text’s tranquil yet uncertain atmosphere. Ezekiel Saw the Wheel is a joyous piece that recounts the story of the prophet’s vision of a wheel in the sky. The intricate interplay between the soprano section and the rest of the choir in their antiphony is elevated by lively syncopation and energetic rhythms, creating a heightened sense of jubilation.
“The Dean of American Music” Aaron Copland follows Burleigh’s approach of incorporating traditional American sounds into his compositions. Stomp Your Feet, a choral dance excerpt taken from the opera The Tender Land, features the celebratory moment when the protagonist Laurie and her friends dance and sing in anticipation of their adventures to come. The titular exhortations from the chorus are sung in unison until the text descends into gendered stereotypes of the 1950s, where the newly introduced responsorial texture is split along the traditionally female and male voices. Copland uses the abruptness of ascending chromatic modulations to add a sense of surprise, which elevates the text and the emotional intensity in its climactic moments.
It isn’t always the case that a text is sung in a particular way—with intricate harmonies or contrapuntal texture—to emphasize its meaning. For instance, Manuel Sosa’s Tabula I is, in his own words, simply a “prayer in sound.” The Venezuelan-American composer and Juilliard professor interlaces a sung incantation with spoken dialogue, creating a sonorous yet disorganized fabric of sound. The hollow and open pitches sparsely coming in and out of frame are always accompanied by a spoken macaronic prayer, whispered throughout in a haphazard and insistent manner.
The piece transports the audience into a prayer room, providing an aural and transcendental experience rather than a deliberate musical performance, blurring the usual distinction between performers and audience. As you figuratively enter the prayer room to observe others pray, you immediately become part of the multitude, inwardly reflecting—no matter how different your individual beliefs may be. As such, the “audience,” you who are reading this, are now a part of this piece, this fabric of sound, without even having to utter a single word.
The act of praying, though often done in a group, paradoxically remains a solemn and solitary journey, one that addresses a request to an object of worship unique to the individual. James Bassi’s Two Anthems explores this particular contradiction in detail with the choir, itself a collection of unique persons and vocal parts. Originally commissioned by St. George’s Choral Society, his Two Anthems premiered in 2012. The original scoring was for chorus and organ. For this concert, Bassi opted to significantly rework the keyboard part for piano. There is also some revision of the choral parts, mainly in the first movement. In the first anthem, “Thee God, I come from, to thee go,” Gerard Manley Hopkins offers us his usual brilliant reinvention of the English language, prototypically modern, and highly personal. This is an ecstatic poem, filled with humility, gratitude, and spiritual fervor. The music reflects this in rhythmically charged and syncopated vocal lines, surrounding a serene central section, giving its listener a taste of its long and yearning melody that could rival even the Swan of Catania — Vincenzo Bellini. By contrast, the second movement, “O Lord, support us,” with a text taken from the Book of Common Prayer, is an utterly calm meditation. These are words Bassi had wanted to set for many years, having been inspired after singing the glorious setting composed by the late great Calvin Hampton.
While some pieces transport the audience to another space—a prayer room—others take their listeners to a moment suspended in time. Leonard Bernstein, a quintessential contemporary New York composer, changes temporal continuity with his classic Candide and its finale, “Make Our Garden Grow.” The main melody, a timeless message of hope, is passed around in small segments between the voices, reiterating a metaphor of a sprouting garden that has yet to grow. In a splendid example of a klangfarbenmelodie by the arranger, Robert Page, a former artistic director of the St. George’s Choral Society, each voice part seamlessly transitions the main theme inherited from the previous bar and delivers it to its successors. Each iteration of the melody, the figurative garden, is ensured by the previous generations of its survival, blossoming into the final anaphora of its main message, grow!
Today’s performances capture feelings and themes that ring true to any New Yorker. Whether it be the recollection of our youth, the constant struggle for equality and equity in light of our checkered past, or the desire to create something new together in uncertain times, these pieces unite us all. Music composed by New York composers, both near and far, is hence accessible not only to the general public and music admirers in the city, but also to its providers: the performers. These composers, acutely aware of the city’s musical culture, have gathered all the creative energy of what has preceded them and reasserted their own voices through their works, defining and redefining what it truly means to be a New Yorker.
Tyler Nguyen is a freshman member of the St. George’s Choral Society, as well as a chorister, pianist, and amateur composer. He has a background in academic research, with a focus on the orchestral and choral works of Felix Mendelssohn.
