presents

From the Hearts of Women

Jan Wagner, artistic director and conductor

Victoria Okafor, guest artist

Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 7:30 p.m.
Armstrong Concert Hall, Shenandoah Conservatory

William Grant Still (1895–1978): From the Hearts of Women for Voice, Strings and Harp

Lyrics by Verna Arvey

I. Little Mother
II. Midtide
III. Coquette
IV. Bereft

Victoria Okafur, soprano

Performance rights granted by William Grant Still Music

Samuel Barber (1910–1981): Knoxville: Summer of 1915, op. 24

Lyrics by James Agee

Victoria Okafur, soprano

- intermission -

Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881): Pictures at an Exhibition

Orchestrated by Maurice Ravel

Promenade
I. Gnomus
Promenade
II. Il Vecchio Castello
Promenade
III. Tuileries
IV. Bydlo
Promenade
V. Ballet des Poussins dans leurs Coques
VI. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle
VII. Limoges – Le Marché
VIII. Catacombae – Sepulchrum Romanum – Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua
IX. La Cabane sur des Pattes de Poule; Baba Yaga
X. La Grande Porte de Kiev

From the Hearts of Women for Voice, Strings and Harp

Lyrics by Verna Arvey

Little Mother

Baby sweetheart, baby darling, baby on my knee!
My sweetheart, little angel, by my side the night long.
Little playmate, dear companion, with me through the day!
‘Cause I love you, you will listen to the things I tell you.

Baby, please don’t be naughty now.
You’ll get a spanking if you’re bad!
Mommy tells you, “Be good.
Stop your crying, and you’ll get a reward.”

Baby sweetheart, baby darling, baby on my knee!
My sweetheart, little angel, by my side the night long.
Little playmate, dear companion, with me through the day!
‘Cause I love you, you will listen to the things I tell you.

Daddy says you’re only a rag doll,
But I know better.
Now, go to sleep, and when you wake up,
We’ll have more fun together.

Midtide

Gone are the years of my youth,
Gone the fire in my soul.
Empty my heart, empty my life,
Now only the waiting!

I can remember the days full of sunlight, 
Of joy, of laughter.
I can remember blessed moments,
Time shared, lives joined!

Gone are the things that I cherished,
Gone all my dreams!
Empty my thoughts, and the hours they used to fill,
Now only a blank wall!

I can remember vows made in faith,
In warmth, in passion!
I can remember each word of our pledge,
Our trust, our promise! Now lost.

Each tender moment I spent,
Waiting the sound of your voice!
For gone is my love,
Gone my only love!

Coquette

By the sea, in the streets, at the ball,
I go forth wanting romance, wanting fun.
With a word, with a glance, with a gesture,
I’m seeking someone to adore me.

When I find him I’ll greet him with pleasure, 
When I greet him I’ll wait for his smile.
For in the game we’ll be partners,
In this gay game of flirtation.

In the spring, in the fall, in the summer,
I go forth wanting romance, wanting fun.
In the light, in the dark, ‘neath the moon,
I’m seeking someone to adore me.

When I find him I’ll join him in banter,
In that moment I’ll look far afield.
For in this game I seek new partners,
Since the game is worth more than the prize.

Bereft

By his bedside I sat with love in my heart,
As had sat long ago.
In childhood to bring sleep to his eyes,
But now, to hold back the last sleep.

My son, departing for isles uncharted!
My Boy! His life an unvoiced thought,
His future lost in the mist!
I hoped, though there was no hope,
Too soon his last breath came,
And part (of me) died too!

Knoxville: Summer of 1915, op. 24 for Voice and Orchestra

Lyrics by James Agee

It has become that time of evening
When people sit on their porches,
Rocking gently and talking gently
And watching the street
And the standing up into their sphere
Of possession of the trees,
Of birds' hung havens, hangars.
People go by; things go by.
A horse, drawing a buggy,
Breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt;
A loud auto: a quiet auto;
People in pairs, not in a hurry,
Scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body,
Talking casually,
The taste hovering over them of vanilla,
Strawberry, pasteboard, and starched milk,
The image upon them of lovers and horsemen,
Squared with clowns in hueless amber.

A streetcar raising its iron moan;
Stopping;
Belling and starting, stertorous;
Rousing and raising again
Its iron increasing moan
And swimming its gold windows and straw seats
On past and past and past,
The bleak spark crackling and cursing above it
Like a small malignant spirit
Set to dog its tracks;
The iron whine rises on rising speed;
Still risen, faints; halts;
The faint stinging bell;
Rises again, still fainter;
Fainting, lifting lifts,
Faints foregone;
Forgotten.
Now is the night one blue dew

My father has drained,
He has coiled the hose
Low on the length of lawns,
A frailing of fire who breathes…

Parents on porches:
Rock and rock.
From damp strings morning glories hang their ancient faces.
The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air
At once enchants my eardrums.

On the rough wet grass
Of the backyard
My father and mother have spread quilts
We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt,
And I too am lying there.
They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet,
Of nothing in particular,
Of nothing at all.
The stars are wide and alive,
They seem each like a smile
Of great sweetness,
And they seem very near.
All my people are larger bodies than mine,
With voices gentle and meaningless
Like the voices of sleeping birds.
One is an artist, he is living at home.
One is a musician, she is living at home.
One is my mother who is good to me.
One is my father who is good to me.
By some chance, here they are,
All on this earth;
And who shall ever tell the sorrow
Of being on this earth, lying, on quilts,
On the grass,
In a summer evening,
Among the sounds of the night.
May God bless my people,
My uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father,
Oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble;
And in the hour of their taking away.

After a little
I am taken in
And put to bed.
Sleep, soft smiling,
Draws me unto her:
And those receive me,
Who quietly treat me,
As one familiar and well-beloved in that home:
But will not, oh, will not,
Not now, not ever;
But will not ever tell me who I am.

From the Hearts of Women: A Song Cycle

by William Grant Still

Notes by Ruth Robertson

Best known for his orchestral works (five symphonies and over a dozen other lengthy orchestral works), African-American composer William Grant Still also composed extensively for the human voice: nine operas, many choral pieces, and many vocal solos and duets. 

In this last category, there are six published volumes of William Grant Still works for vocal solos and duets with piano accompaniment. These include three columns of Arias, Duets and Scenes from William Grant Still Operas; An Art Song Collection; and two song cycles: Songs of Separation and, with the release of this present volume, From the Hearts of Women. Many of the songs included in these collections and several other titles are also published as single works accompanied either by piano or by various instrumental ensembles.

Composed in 1959, the four songs in From the Hearts of Women stand in sharp contrast to those from Still’s other song cycle Songs of Separation, composed in 1949. For the earlier cycle Still employed texts by five male poets to describe the various emotions of a person at the end of a romantic relationship. While only two of the five poems are from specifically male perspective, when sung together as a set the entire cycle can be thought of as the emotional outpouring of one tormented man when his lady love leaves him. The songs feature mostly through-composed, arching, wide ranging, and emotionally intense melodies, painted with a wide brush and bold colors. 

For the lyrics of his second cycle Still turned to a woman, his wife Verna Arvey, for a description of the feminine emotional landscape. She takes a “verbal snap shot” of four very different women of various ages. In Songs of Separation, five men describe the anguish of one man. In From the Hearts of Women, one woman paints sketches of four very different women. The first three songs of the second cycle are mostly sectional, reserved, and wispy, sparkling, somewhat like minimalist paintings with repetitious bright patterns splashed on the canvas. 

The method of composition was different for both cycles: for his 1949 cycle, Still used pre-existing poems and set them to music. But he and his wife worked together on his second cycle. Their daughter Judith Anne Still described their collaboration: 

His method was to outline the text that he wanted to my mother, and she would fit the word to his concept, and to his initial sketch of the piece. They worked on the ideas of the poems together — my father was not putting music to her poems, as far as I know. That is how they usually worked, as they did with operas. My father probably made notes for the poems, and my mother worked from his notes (from an e-mail sent in May 2004).

It is fortunate for singers and their teachers that, while busy composing his third symphony and other works, Still took time out to collaborate with his pianist/journalist/librettist wife to produce this gem of a song cycle entitled From the Hearts of Women.

Knoxville: Summer of 1915, op. 24

by Samuel Barber

Notes by Chris Myers

The beginning of 1947 was a difficult time for Samuel Barber. He was happy to have returned to civilian life after his wartime service, but his father and aunt were both in failing health. That January, he encountered James Agee’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a short essay which would eventually become the preamble to the author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Death in the Family. Agee’s poignant look back at his childhood struck a chord with Barber, and when soprano Eleanor Steber commissioned a work from him in February, he immediately decided to set it to music. The piece came to him very quickly and was completed on April 4.

James Agee’s essay is a dreamy, conversational, almost improvisatory piece of prose reflecting on summers spent with his family at their home in Tennessee. The author claimed that he wrote the stream-of-consciousness text in less than 90 minutes and made only minor revisions to it once it was complete. In the course of the essay, Agee shifts between viewing the world as an adult and seeing it through the eyes of his five-year-old self. He affectionately describes his parents and his artist uncle and musician aunt, both of whom were very close to him. While the text superficially yearns for the “golden years”, it is suffused with an inescapable adult knowledge of the frailty of life. Written in 1938, with the world on the verge of the Second World War, and reflecting back to 1915, when the nation was struggling to avoid the First World War, Agee seems eager to cling to innocence as long as possible even while recognizing the inevitability of its loss.

The text resonated strongly with Steber, who commented, “That was exactly my childhood in Wheeling, West Virginia.” For his part, Barber was struck by the uncanny similarity between his and Agee’s childhood: both were five years old in 1915 and were raised by loving parents and an artistic aunt and uncle (for Barber, the composer Sidney Homer and contralto Louise Homer). The composer later wrote to his uncle, “It reminded me so much of summer evenings in West Chester, now very far away, and all of you are in it.” Barber’s Aunt Louise would pass away on May 6, 1947. His father, to whom the composer dedicated Knoxville, followed on August 12.

The piece begins with a theme that we will come to associate with the comfort of home. A gentle triplet figure in the orchestra brings to mind the image of rocking chairs on the porch, mirroring the text’s description of people “rocking gently and talking gently.” Throughout Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Barber looks to the text for his melodic cues in this way, using word painting to create atmosphere and emphasize words. We hear the horses’ “hollow iron music on the asphalt”, and the unhurried pace of passersby “talking casually” is reflected in the singer’s delivery of the words.

Knoxville’s structure closely follows the free, dreamlike flow of Agee’s prose. The composer referred to the resulting piece as a “lyric rhapsody”, and it can roughly be described in rondo form, with the tranquility of childhood memories interrupted by two episodes.

First, the gentle and casual evening is disrupted by the clattering onomatopoetic modernity of “a streetcar raising its iron moan, stopping, belling and starting, stertorous.” The orchestra moans, bells, and growls along, and the sparks and “iron whine” are given musical portrayal which slowly fades as the streetcar passes. As the narrator’s father appears to drain and coil the garden hose, we can still hear it fading into the distance.

We return to the opening image of people rocking and talking on the porch. This time, though, it’s no longer abstract people, but the narrator’s parents. As the family gathers together to lie on quilts in the backyard, Agee’s mind wanders, and the comfort of the “home” theme is interrupted again — this time by a slow recognition of mortality. As we meet each member of the family, the music grows in intensity, mirroring the author’s affection for his uncle and aunt, father and mother. The melody crescendos to a heartfelt plea that God will “bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father…” in trouble and at their death, and we realize that the music of the introduction was, in fact, a foreshadowing of this climactic benediction.

The gentle rocking theme returns and attempts to regain the innocent happiness with which it began, but it never quite manages. It does, however, achieve a calm acceptance which seems both more profound and more fulfilling. This soliloquy, which began as a naïve and blissful remembrance of the golden years of childhood, ends with acknowledgement of the frailty of life and the realization that, while home may always be welcoming and comforting, it “will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.”

Pictures at an Exhibition

by Modest Mussorgsky/Maurice Ravel

Notes by Malcom MacDonald

In 1873 Mussorgsky was deeply affected by the death of his great friend Victor Hartmann, a painter and architect. The following year an exhibition of Hartmann’s work inspired Mussorgsky to write Pictures at an Exhibition. Unpublished until after his death in 1881, it was by far his most important composition for piano solo. Ten pictures, illustrated in separate movements, are connected by the Promenade, a theme which leads us through the gallery from one picture to the next. In these pieces, Mussorgsky had produced a new style of piano writing which deeply influenced later composers. In addition, the chordal textures have tempted others to arrange the work for orchestra. Ravel’s orchestration, completed in 1922, is by far the best known, and the pièce de resistance of a master orchestrator. 

The piece begins with the Promenade, a formal and somewhat ponderous theme with a pronounced Russian character. It recurs after movements 1, 2, and 4, its uneven metre seeming to depict the portly Mussorgsky as he moved from picture to picture. The sequence is as follows:

Gnomus. The music depicts a gnome running on crooked legs (Hartmann’s picture was a design for a gnome-shaped nutcracker).

Il Vecchio Castello (“The Old Castle”). A troubadour sings before a medieval castle. Here Ravel gives the main melody to the saxophone. 

Tuileries. This depicts the Paris gardens, bustling with nursemaids and squabbling children. 

Bydlo. A polish ox-cart rolls along on enormous wheels. Ravel gives the melody to the tuba, creating a renowned solo for that instrument. 

Ballet des Poussins dans leur Coques (Ballet of Chicks in their Shells”). Hartmann’s picture shows sketches of some costume designs for a ballet. 

Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuyle. This is a double portrait based on two pictures of Polish Jews by Hartmann. Musically, one is arrogant and austere with an oriental Hassidic flavour, the other is pathetic with its importunate whining repeated notes. Ravel’s superbly effective realization of the latter is a virtuoso display of triple-tonguing for muted trumpet. 

Limoges – Le Marché (“Limoges – The Market Place”). The French market-woman in this clatteringly rhythmic piece are said to be gossiping about a lost cow, a drunken neighbor and some false teeth. 

Catacombae: Sepulchrum Romanum. Hartmann depicts himself probing the mysteries of the Roman tombs by the light of a lantern. In the section that follows, Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua, Mussorgsky figuratively picks up the lantern and continues the quest with a spectral, quasi-religious transformation of the Promenade tune. 

La Cabane sur des Pattes de Poule (“The Hut on Fowl’s Legs”). This is a  brilliant grotesque march. Hartmann designed a clock in the form of the hut in which dwelt the mythical witch of Russian folklore, Baba-Yaga.

La Grande Porte de Kiev (“The Great Gate of Kiev”). This design was commissioned in 1866 but was never built. Hartmann’s gate was in ancient Russian style, with a cupola shaped like a Slavic war helmet. Mussorgky’s finale, based on a triumphant variant of the Promenade theme, is also “in ancient Russian style” and brings the suite to a conclusion with a pealing bell-effects (enthusiastically interpreted by Ravel) that recall the coronation pageantry of the composer’s opera Boris Godunov.

FLUTES

Sheila DuMont*^
Khepesh Imhotep
Rosalee Discenza

OBOES

Mathuin Smith*
Zachary Gnall
Lillian Mathews (solo^)

CLARINETS

Erin Eady*
Peter Mattson
Jalen Mims (Bass clarinet) 
Yu Wang ^

BASSOONS

Clair Cangialosi*
Brenda Herrera
Kaelin Walton (Contrabassoon *); (solo^) 

SAXOPHONE

Timothy Goodman 

HORNS

Scout Kirkham*
Addison Ashley
Ethan Hahn^ 
Nicholas Peretti

TRUMPETS

Oscar Mason*
Duncan Moore (solo^) 
Noah Van Deventer

TROMBONES

Sarah Thompson*
Catriona Johnston
Gabriel Stachour

TUBA

Mark Swortzel*

HARPS

Brynn Olden^
Serenity Flores + 

CELESTA

Madeline Bevins

PERCUSSION

Jacob Ruthier*^
Sam Bradshaw
Austin Dettor
Alex Gamboa
Jack Kerness
Chance Morris

VIOLIN I

Rachel Zhao* 
Emily Ilyes^+
Ashley Crawford
Bryan Pabellon
Elena Ross 
Ethan Hemmings
Tajai Shorter 
Nicholas Whitley
Emmeline Pasquerette 

VIOLIN II

Jian Song*^+
Kyrie Beiler
Douglas Brown
Danielle Lopez
Meredith Kennedy
Conor Cook
Luna Love-Hoffmann
Kailbeth Chacin#

VIOLA

Jaylon Hayes-Keller*^+ 
Jacob Adamson
Alyssa Cabassa
Hannah Hill
Gavin Barricklow 
Charles Robertello
Franchezka Lynn Matundan
Sara Corrieri
Niyah Gransbury

CELLO

Edward Cho* 
John Keane^+
Alex Corley 
Matthew Reffner 
Bethany Hovermale 
Kristian Dillon
Sophia Alvini-Moore 
Madeline Southall 
Benjamin Figgs 
Kalysta Bryant 

BASS

Raegan Fisher*^+
Logan Unger
Michael Daly 
Jack Penland
Charles Perry
Brooke Rittner

* Principal Mussorgsky
^ Principal Barber
+ Principal Still
# Shenandoah University alumnus

Symphony Orchestra Staff

Gonzalo Hidalgo, assistant conductor
Tajai Shorter, orchestra librarian
Kyrie Beiler, orchestra librarian
Megan Frederick, orchestra librarian
Matthew Reffner, orchestra librarian

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