Boston Secession April 27 “Mother Tongue†Concert Features Three Commissions
Posted by sequenza21 in Concert AnnouncementBOSTON, MA – MARCH 28, 2007 – Boston Secession’s tenth anniversary season wraps up with a final “music of ideas†concert that is—according to artistic director Jane Ring Frank—“a playful exploration of the joys and pains of getting the notoriously lumpy English language to make great vocal music.†This concert—“Mother Tongue: The Music and Meter of the English Languageâ€â€”takes a look at the historical drought of important English-speaking music since the middle 1700s, and celebrates the unique successes of artists like Gilbert & Sullivan and W. H. Auden & Benjamin Britten, songwriting teams who balanced the natural accentual rhythm of English verse with crisp and innovative musical meters. Secession does its own part to contribute to the English language repertoire with three commissioned choral premieres featuring the poetry of Walt Whitman, Joyce Carol Oates, and Anthony Hecht.
“There are practical reasons why most vocal music is based on what we consider ‘foreign’ texts,†says Ring Frank. “This concert asks a simple linguistic question: why was the English language so unpopular for English-speaking composers and audiences between Purcell and Benjamin Britten?†The show includes a quick tour of the technical challenges of strong and weak beats in English poetry—“we’re thinking of it as ‘Versification 101,’ and we’ll demo some pretty funny and embarrassing examples of bad text settingâ€â€”and a survey of the impassioned pleas of poets against the ‘sing-song’ and doggerel musical settings that were ruining perfectly good poems in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The program features music from Handel to John Blow and Virgil Thomson—plus a showcase performance of one of the masterworks of modern English text setting: Benjamin Britten’s 1942 “Hymn to St. Cecilia,†based on the classic poem by W. H. Auden. The concert also features an unprecedented triple commission premiere. Secession’s composer-in-residence, Ruth Lomon, premieres her setting of Joyce Carol Oates’s “After the Storm,†Boston composer Scott Wheeler premieres his setting of Anthony Hecht’s poem “Prospects,†and California composer Byron Adam’s premieres his setting of Walt Whitman’s “Ashes of Soldiers.†[Note: composer headshots available at bostonsecession.org]
DATE, TIME & TICKETS: One performance only (concert plus post-concert composer reception and 10th anniversary birthday party): Friday, April 27, 2007, at 8 p.m. – First Church in Cambridge, Congregational (11 Garden Street, Harvard Square; T-stop: Harvard Square). Tickets: $30 in advance, $35 at the door (students and seniors $10 in advance or at the door). Tickets are available at all BosTix locations, on the Web at www.bostonsecession.org, or by calling 617-499-4860.
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