Prludium

VOLUME XIX NUMBER 1 FALL 2011

CATHEDRAL CHORAL SOCIETY

J. Reilly Lewis, Music Director
2011-2012 Season

CONCERT I
BASILICA OF THE NATIONAL SHRINE OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

CZECH MATES

Friday, October 28 at 7:30 PM

CZECH NATIONAL DAY

Under the gracious patronage of His Excellency, the Ambassador of the Czech Republic and Mrs. Gandaloviov

BOHEMIAN SPLENDORS
CATHEDRAL CHORAL SOCIETY CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA

J. Reilly Lewis conductor Alexandra Berti soprano Magdalena Wr mezzo-soprano Corey Bix tenor Aleksey Bogdanov bass Vtzslav Novk, Antonn Dvok, and Leo Janek

Celebrating Czech-American Cultures

BOHEMIAN SPLENDORS, the opening concert of the Cathedral Choral Societys seventieth anniversary season, is the culminating concert of the Mutual Inspirations Festival, an initiative spearheaded by the Embassy of the Czech Republic, under the patronage of Deputy Prime Minister and Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Schwarzenberg. The festival, which commenced on September 8Antonn Dvoks 170th birthdayfeatures over 500 local and international artists, thirty concerts and events, world and American premieres, and over a dozen prestigious venues in the Washington, DC, community, all focusing on the mutual inspirations between Czech and American cultures.

VTZSLAV NOVK
V kostele, Slovck Suita, Op. 32

ANTONN DVOK Te Deum in G LEO JANEK

Ma Glagolskaja

From the Editors Desk

Michael Beckerman, in his study In Search of Czechness in Music* writes of the historical period from 1850 forward with music composed by Czech-born and Czech-speaking composers who perceive themselves to be a part of the western European musical mainstream. Czechness, he suggests, while it may be associated with certain musical traitssuch as first beat accents, syncopated rhythms, two-part writing of parallel thirds and sixths, alternation between What is Czechness in music? major and minor modesis more than the sum of The composers whose music the Cathedral Choral its parts. While Czech composers such as Smetana, Society performs in this concert, Novk, Dvork, Dvok, Novk, and Janek often drew upon and and Janek, are each considered singularly Czech. even quoted directly from But how does one recognize folk songs and melodies, at or define Czechnessor the same time their music any other national identity transcends and alters the in music? meaning of individual The idea of musical elements. nationalism in There is a distinction, Czechoslovakia, as Beckerman notes, between elsewhere, emerged writing in the Czech style alongside the nascent and Czechness itself: movements for national Czechness itself comes liberation and selfabout when, in the minds of determination that composers and audiences, characterized much of the Czech nation, in its many nineteenth-century political manifestations, becomes a history in Europe. subtextual program for From the French musical works, and as such, Revolution to World War I, it is that which animates the the landscape was in a musical style, allowing us to constant state of flux as make connections. . . . [F]or boundaries were redefined the Czech composer and his by the break-up of old Bohemia, Kreis Eger, chromolithograph, audience, Czechness is as empires. Albert Kretschmer, 1887 real as the river Vlatva, The emergence of a Smetanas eternal image of waters which, by national school the use of musical ideas or motifs flowing through a country, united a land, and its identified with a particular country, region, or culture history, and people. ethnicity, such as liturgical chant or folk tunes and melodies, rhythms, and harmonies inspired by themarose as an effort to differentiate from the _______________________ French, Italian and, most important, German *19th-Century Music, Vol. 10, No. 1, Summer, 1986) standards of classicism.
2 To nourish instrumental motives with Czechness (eskost) is only to take them to the course, into the present, into the sphere of Czechness. Leo Janek, 1910

Vtzslav Novk Slovck Suita

1. V kostele
A youthful holiday visit in 1896 to a remote rural area along the Bohemian-Moravian border radically upended the life of composer Vtzslav Novk (18701949), a student of Dvok at the Prague Conservatory. Shortly thereafter, he became one of the many late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century composers to collect and discover the riches of folk songs. Like Ralph Vaughan Williams, who discovered folk songs in England around the same time (e.g., Norfolk Rhapsody, 1906) , Novk developed his discoveries into a more personal musical language. In an introduction to the study score (Munich, 2006), J. Bradford Robinson describes how jagged rhythms, antiquated modes, quartal and quintal melodic intervals, and the sounds of the domestic cimbalom began to fill his music. he composed in 1903, what became his most popular and enduring work: Slovck Suita, or the Slovakian Suite, op. 32, a loving evocation of country life in the village of Javornk nestled in the borderlands between eastern Moravia and western Slovakia. The Suite is comprised of five sketches of various rural images: At Church, Among Children, The Lovers, At the Dance, and At Night. Maestro Lewis has chosen the serene opening movement as a meditative prelude to Dvoks exuberant setting of the Te Deum. The Slovakian Suites first movement, At Church, according to Robinson, captures the air of a country church and features [like Janeks Mass] magnificent use of the organ. For most of the movement, the music is of heavenly strings and harp, but it reaches a climax with a clever depiction of church bells (despite the fact that the small orchestra for which Novk scored the piece does not include any percussion) and a solo on the organ. At Church, explains Robinson, depicts a local Protestant service, complete with a parlando sermon from the pastor and a Protestant hymn (Moravia did not resist Habsburg rule to the same extent as neighboring Bohemia, and its Protestant subculture was able to survive the Thirty Years War.)

View of a wooden belfry, in a small village, ca. 1880.

Karel Liebscher (1851-1906), National Library, Prague

The Slovakian Suite was premiered by the Czech Philharmonic on February 4, 1903. Soon thereafter, Novk came to be viewed as the leading Czech composer of his age and by 1906 he had been inducted into the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts. Three years later, he succeeded his mentor Antonn Dvok as professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory, a post he held from 1909 until March 15, 1939, when Nazi Germany occupied the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia and all institutions of higher learning were closed.

__________________________
This performance has been made possible through the assistance of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in arranging the loan of orchestral parts from the library of the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

Antonn Dvok Te Deum in G

By June 1892, all arrangements had been completed with Jeannette Meyers Thurber, one of Americas first major classical music patrons and founder of the National Conservatory in New York. Czech composer Antonn Dvok (1841-1904) was to reach New York in October and serve for two years as the conservatorys director at the astronomical annual salary of $15,000. During the summer, at Thurbers request, he planned to compose a cantata, The American Flag, to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbuss voyage of discovery to the New World. However, the American text by Joseph Rodman Drake failed to arrive until nearly sailing time. Thurber suggested the idea of substituting a Te Deum for the original patriotic cantata; Dvok composed one in just four weeks, between June 25 and July 28, 1892. The choice of the Te Deum text could not have been more propos. According to Columbuss diario, or ships log (as transcribed and paraphrased by historian Bartolem de Las Casas), when he had finished describing his first voyage to Spains King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Royal Chapel choir sang the Te Deum. Dvoks 1892 Te Deum coincided with the publication of the first edition (Baccolta) to return to Las Casass original manuscript, in which Columbus recounted the court scene: And when I ceased to speak, the king, the queen, Sank from their thrones, and melted into tears, And knelt, and lifted hand and heart and voice In praise to God who led me thro' the waste. And then the great Laudamus rose to heaven. Thus conceived and first presented, Dvoks Columbian Te Deum was a substantial contribution to the great impetus that he gave American music during his residency in the United States, a worthy foretaste of the New World Symphony, which he composed the following spring. Dvok divided the Latin text of the Te Deum into four sections. The main theme of the first movement, introduced by the tenors and then by the sopranos, as well as the rhythmic motif in the orchestra, has distinct development and recapitulation. The Lento maestoso of the second and Vivace in triple meter of the third movement, combined with the return of the first rhythmic figure in the Alleluias of the final movement, all bring the work remarkably close to the standard symphonic form, a veritable choral symphony. The Te Deum (op.103) was performed under Dvoks baton on October 21, 1892, at a gala Carnegie Hall reception in his honor just three weeks after he had arrived. The remainder of the program, which opened and closed with The Star Spangled Banner, consisted of his three overtures for orchestra. An unsigned review in the New York Times dismissed the composer as an extremely bad conductor, but opined: Fortunately, it is not necessary that Dr. Dvok should be a great conductor. So long as he will continue to pour forth music from his fertile brain, men and women will be found to sing and play it well. . Dr. Dvok has creative ability, and that of a fine order.After all, the first requirement of a composer is ability to make tunes, and this ability Dr. Dvok certainly has in a high degree. The Cathedral Choral Society first sang Dvoks Te Deum in May 1943, augmented to 200 voices by members of the Army Music School Choir from nearby Fort Myer, Virginia. Conductor Paul Callaway and the Army men appeared in their Army uniforms.

Leo Janek Ma Glagolskaja

THE COMPOSER
Leo Janek (18541928) was born in Hochwald in northern Moravia, the fourth of eight children in a family of teachers and musicians. At age eleven, he was packed off to be a chorister at the Augustinian Monastery in Moravias capital city Brno. By eighteen, he was conductor of the first of several choral societies. He spent a year at the Prague Organ School, and studied at the conservatories in Leipzig and Vienna. While teaching and conducting in Brno, he edited two volumes of Moravian folksongs and dances he collected in the 1890s with folklorist Frantiek Barto. His rise to national fame came with the 1916 premiere of his opera Jenfa. Forty years after Janek established the Society for the Promotion of Church Music in Moravia, he found himself lamenting to the Archbishop in 1921 about the sorry state of church music [a familiar lament!], who encouraged the composer to do something about it. The answer came when he was given a copy of the Mass in Old Church Slavonic, recently published in the Czech church music periodical Cyril. Seventy-twoyears-old when he composed the Glagolitic Mass (1926) in the Indian summer of his life, he wrote a friend, I feel as though I were living in a fairy tale. I compose and compose as though something were urging me on.

THE MUSIC

The genesis of the Mass dates to the spring of 1908, when Janek dictated a Latin Mass in E flat for chorus and organ to his composition students at his Brno Organ School to show them how to set a sacred text. The unfinished Mass, which consisted of a Kyrie, Agnus Dei, and two-thirds of a Credo, would form his first draft of the Glagolitic Mass in 1926. (For more detailed analysis of the musical score, please turn to page 7.)

WHY DID JANEK COMPOSE THE MASS?

Janek answered this question in the newspaper Lidove noviny on November 27, 1927, one week before the first performance of his Mass. The Luhaovice rain pours down, he wrote. From the window I look up to the glowering Komon mountain. Clouds roll past; the gale-force wind tears them apart, scatters them far and wideIt grows darker and darkerI sketch nothing more than the quiet motive of a desperate frame of mind to the words Gospodi pomiluj. Nothing more than the joyous shout Slava, Slava! Nothing more than the heart-rending anguish in the motive Rozpet e zany, mcen i pogreben jest! Nothing more than the steadfastness of faith and the swearing of allegiance in the motive Veruju! And all the fervor and excitement of the expressive ending Amen, Amen! The holy reverence in the motives Svet, svet!, Blagoslovljen and Agnee Boij. Without the gloom of mediaeval monastery cells in its motives, without the sound of the usual imitative procedures, without the sound of Bachian fugal tangles, without the sound of Beethoven pathos, without Haydns playfulness. . . . At length the warm air streamed in through the open window into my frozen fingers. Always the scent of the moist Luhaovice woodsthat was the incense. A cathedral grew before me in the colossal expanse of the hills and the vault of the sky, covered in mist into the distance; its little bells were rung by a flock of sleep. I hear in the tenor solo some sort of a high priest, in the soprano solo a maiden-angel, in the chorus, our people. The candles are high fir trees in the wood, lit up by stars; and in the ritual somewhere out there I see a vision of the princely St. Wenceslas. And the language is that of the missionaries Cyril and Methodius. 5

THE TEXT
Glagolitic Missal, 1631
Old Church Slavonic was a language invented by Cyril for the purpose of translating the liturgy and the Bible into the Slavic language, bringing not only the Gospel, but literacy, to the region. The dialect used at the time is now called Old Church Slavonic, preserved only in the church.

JANEK ANSWERS HIS CRITICS:

You know what [Kundera] wrote about me: an old man, now a believer. I said; You youngster, for one thing I am no old man [72], and I am not at all a believer; no not at all. Until I see for myself. In three weeks, the work was finished. In it, I wanted to portray faith in the certainty of the nation, not on a religious basis, but on a strong moral foundation which calls God as a witness.

WORLD REACTION
In Czechoslovakia Reviewers in Brno and Prague stressed the originality of the work. In Europe Reviews of Alexander von Zemlinskys debut performance as principal conductor of the Hochschule fr Musik choir said the Mass had found a special place within the literature. In Geneva, the Mass was proclaimed as the highlight of the ISCM Festival. In England The hostile critical reception at the Norwich Festival premiere in 1930 revealed Britains then-prevalent condescension toward all contemporary European music. Sniffed the Daily Mail critic: If any sort of religious occasion was suggested by the music, it was perhaps the dedication of a new railway station. Ferruccio Bonavia in The Musical Times was even more snide: [T]he chorus emitted a series of hasty Amens closely resembling in speed and accent the perfunctory All right of a creditor to a pleading debtor.It is fully probable that Janek speaks a language that his countrymen alone understand. In the United States New York Times critic Olin Downes dismissed the Mass as partly incoherent music. It is so different from a Roman mass that its crude, primitive, Hussite conception of the ritual will shock the esthetic sensibilities of many people wholly unprepared for it, as it will merely puzzle or bore others. It is very stark, barbaric stuff. Steel rings in the music, and ancient racial voices.

THE AUTHENTIC SCORE

This is the first Washington performance of Janeks original score and one of its rare American performances. In this score, editor Paul Wingfield has restored passages that are among the works most striking. The removal of an entire movement and the major rewriting of another were unsatisfactory compromises imposed on Janek in 1927-1928 by practical performance difficulties that are no longer problematic for todays orchestra and chorus. Among the most significant restorations to Janeks original score are: Inclusion of the Intrada (processional) at beginning as well as end; Return to the original notation of the outer sections of the Gospodi to 5/4, not 4/4; Reinstatement of offstage clarinets in the Vruju; Restoration of 14 bars in the Svet of very high chorus notes; Restore the stunning interjections by three sets of timpani during the organ solo prefacing the Crucifixus; Restoration of the vods clashing polymeters of 3, 5, and 7. In a review for The Musical Times (December 1994) of the Danish National Radio Choir recording of the original version, Gavin Thomas remarked, It is astonishing to imagine anyone (Ives excepted) conceiving this last polyrhythmic free-for-all as long ago as 1926. . . . [T]his new version [has] transformed a work which was already fine enough and takes it to an altogether higher plane of magnificence.

FIRST HEARINGS
1927, Dec 5 1928, April 8 1929, Feb 28 1929, April 7 1929, Fall 1930, Oct 23 1930, Oct 26 Brno, Sokol Stadion Hall, Jaroslav Kvapil, conductor Prague, Smetena Hall, Kvapil conductor Berlin, Hochschule fr Musik, Alexander von Zemlinsky, conductor Geneva, International Society for Contemporary Music Festival, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Jaroslav Kvapil, conductor Rotterdam Norwich Festival, Henry Wood, conductor New York, Metropolitan Opera House. Arthur Bodansky, conductor. 190 auditioned for places in the 160-voice chorus of the Society of the Friends of Music in New York City, but the difficulty in finding a heldentenor soloist almost resulted in cancellation of the performance. Arlington Metropolitan Chorus, National Presbyterian Church, Vera Tilson, conductor; J. Reilly Lewis, organ soloist Detroit Symphony and Wayne State Symphonic Chorus, Kennedy Center Premiere Cathedral Choral Society, Washington National Cathedral, J. Reilly Lewis, conductor

1973, May 16 1975, Jan 31 1986, May 18

ANALYSIS
Editors Note: The following is based on, and quotes from, analysis by Paul Wingfield, Professor of Music at Trinity College, Cambridge, in his Cambridge Music Handbook for Janeks Glagolitic Mass (Cambridge University Press, 1992). I. Intrada (Processional) orchestra The mass begins with a festive orchestral Intrada, which would accompany the entry of the clergy in a liturgical performance. This short movement is overtly secular in style. There are two sharply contrasting main motives in the strings and wind, one is bustling, syncopated and chromatic; the other is a joyous brass fanfare, sonorous, rhythmically regular and diatonic. II. vod (Introduction) orchestra The Introduction, another purely instrumental movement, is described as abrasive and energetic. The opening grand, imitative brass and timpani fanfare is interrupted by two metrically contrasting motives, one a complete transformation of the intervallic content of the fanfare, and the other, a close derivative. These motives initiate a three-against-five-against-seven metrical conflict that persists until the final bar. Superficially, the form of the vod is a loose rondo, governed by returns of the fanfare. Much of the movements impetus derives from the continual juxtaposition, superimposition, and overlapping of its metrically conflicting motives within a kaleidoscope of shifting dominant-, major- and minor-seventh harmonies. III. Gospodi pomiluj (Kyrie) soprano, chorus The Gospodi adheres fundamentally to the customary ABA-arrangement with a separate section for each line of text, including what Janek described in his November 1927 article (p. 5) as the motive of a desperate frame of mind. IV. Slava (Gloria) soprano, tenor, chorus The Slava has six sections arranged in a rondo pattern: ABA CC A. [T]he Slava despondency is dispelled in a flash by the solo sopranos modally inflected joyous shout (Janeks description) and the airy, glistening orchestral combination of oboes, clarinet, [bells], harp, and strings. Eventually, five choral interjections (Amens) sweep the movement to an exhilarating climax with its concluding acclamation in E major. V. Vruju (Credo) tenor, bass, chorus The text of the Creed consists of three parts, affirming belief in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Vruju begins with a sprightly two-bar motive, which, according to the composer, embodies steadfastness of faith and the swearing of allegiance, Janek actually provided programmatic titles for certain sections in his initial draft, e.g., Jesus in the temple among the wise men and the expulsion from the temple of the degenerate traders. Restored in this performance are the original thunder and flashes of lightning that burst forth from three sets of pedal timpani during the organ solo prefacing the Crucifixus, and was crucified also for us, he suffered and was buried. The full horror of the violent culmination of Jesuss life is then rammed home by. . . an Aminor triad [played] by three piccolos, horns, trumpets and trombones reinforced by a spine-chilling three-timpani roll, immense cymbal crash and a fortissimo organ chord. VI. Svet (Sanctus) S, A, T, B, chorus The traditional Sanctus (Svet) and Benedictus (Blagoslovlen), usually two distinct but related movements, are here conflated by Janek, who also omits the first Osanna. Further, the composer eschews the predictable joyful setting in favor of a serene and ethereal opening motive scored for violins, harp, and celesta. The timpani entrance marks the beginning of the principal focal point of the Svet. VII. Agnee Boij (Agnus Dei) S,A,T,B, chorus In the final choral movement, Janek returns to the somber mood of the Gospodi. Where Bach lifts us all into another realm with the sublime reassurance of the Dona nobis pacem in his B Minor Mass, Janek underscores an aura of uncertainty and despondency by omitting this very phrase. The tonal instability of the concluding bars, says Wingfield, further emphasizes the movements general mood of despair.
Continued on back cover

WOODROW WILSON AND THE CZECHS

We all know Woodrow Wilson is interred in Washington National Cathedral, but who knew that the main railway station in Prague was named Wilson Station? On October 5, 2011, a new statue honoring the 28th president of the United States was unveiled in the Czech capital seventy years after the Nazis destroyed the original one. The first Wilson statue was erected in front of Pragues Central Station in 1928 (the year in which Janeks Mass was premiered in Prague) in appreciation of his support for the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918 after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1941, during the German occupation, the original statue was destroyed. Former US Secretary of State Dr. Madeleine Albright, who was born in Prague, led the delegation of American dignitaries present.

Prludium
Founded 1993
This shall be for music. . . . these songs for love of singing. Robert Shaw, 1950

J. REILLY LEWIS Music Director TODD FICKLEY Chorus Master and Associate Conductor JOY SCHREIER Rehearsal Accompanist and Vocal Coach CATHERINE BEAUCHAMP Chorus Administrator MARGARET SHANNON Founding Editor ***
Cathedral Choral Society Washington National Cathedral Massachusetts & Wisconsin Avenues, NW Washington, D.C. 20016-5098 www.cathedralchoralsociety.org

NO PRE-CONCERT LECTURE

Due to the change in venue dictated by ongoing repairs to Washington National Cathedral, there will be no Pre-Concert Lecture prior to the BOHEMIAN SPLENDORS concert.

Synopsis continued from page 7

VIII. Varhany Solo organ With the tempestuous organ solo that ends the Mass proper, all vestiges of optimism are removed by an explosion of the Crucifixion key: Aminor. Wingfield: This leaves us in no doubt that Janek does not believe the solution to the mystery of creation to lie in blind belief in the resurrection and the life of the world to come. To him, the Mass text embodies an essentially human drama of suffering and death. An atmosphere of sheer frenzy is whipped up through an accelerando from Allegro through Un poco piu mosso and Presto to Prestissimo. IX. Intrada (Recessional) orchestra The closing reprise of the Intrada, which would accompany the exit of clergy and congregation from the church in a liturgical performance, has been described as a marching entry into life strengthened by a new certainty and by the preceding display of the Slav spirit. Wingfield, however, argues that the superficial optimism is undermined by the persistent chromaticism. Thus, while it is a transition back into the real world, it is a march back into a life whose meaning is yet to be discovered.

***
Praeludium, the scholarly pre-concert study guide for the Cathedral Choral Society in preparation for its concerts, is published quarterly during the Societys concert season.

2011 Margaret Shannon