The Monmouth Civic Chorus
Dr. Mark Shapiro, Artistic Director
Close to Perfect, Close to Home

Notes on the Program

“The public doesn't want new music; the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead.” Arthur Honneger, 1951

Classical music is a living art, continually energized by the discovery of new compositions and little-known gems of the past. Tonight’s concert features music by two living composers and two 20th-century masters whose choral works are vibrantly alive, burnished by the gleam of brass accompaniment.

Frank Martin (1890-1974) was a Swiss composer whose subtle, elegant choral works are much admired by Dr. Shapiro. Cantori New York performed Martin’s final work, Et la vie l’emporta, in 2006, and the group’s CD of his opera Le Vin Herbé was an Opera News Editors’ Choice. His Ode à la Musique (Ode to Music) is based on a poem by the 14th-century French composer Guillaume de Machaut. This sparkling piece for a cappella chorus and baritone soloist exemplifies its own message: music is a source of joy, love, consolation and devotion.

Apparebit Retentina Dies sets a text from the 7th century, admonishing us to be kind to the poor and warning sinners of the perils of hell. The sound world is eerily Medieval, evoking the chants of monks and the trumpets of Judgment Day. Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was a German composer who lived in the U. S. from 1940 to 1953, teaching and lecturing at Yale and Harvard while writing an extensive canon of music for orchestra, chamber ensemble, piano, organ, choir, opera and ballet. He invented his own tonal system that gave him the latitude for complex experimentation, coupled with an emotional sensibility not often associated with avant-garde music at mid-century.

Trond Kverno (b. 1945) is a Norwegian composer, organist, teacher and conductor whose career is devoted to the power of sacred music in worship. He has said: “The essential point is that the music hears us and interprets us before the throne of God, not that we hear the music. This is the fundamental assumption on which my work is based." Missa in Sono Tubae expresses this state of reverence through hypnotic repetition and swift mood changes.

When Walt Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass in 1855, electricity was a thrilling new invention, and glorification of the human body in poetry was downright scandalous. Vince Peterson’s setting of I Sing the Body Electric captures this excitement and brings it into the 21st century, with jazz-inflected sonorities and free-spirited rhythms. Peterson (b. 1981) is the Founding Artistic Director of Choral Chameleon, a professional chamber choir in New York City; Assistant Conductor of the critically acclaimed chorus Cantori New York, directed by Mark Shapiro; Minister of Music at The Union Church of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; and Director of Choirs at Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.

--Susan Metz