Saturday, February 13, 2010

Program Notes - ACDA 2010 performance

I worked on program notes for our upcoming ACDA performance that you can look at here.

I was surprised that I was able to find Liber usualis chants hit our concert at the beginning, middle, and ending . . . that made me pretty happy.

I've also been corresponding with composer Cecilia McDowall today - we talked a little about the Regina caeli and I found the original plainchant in the Liber usualis and sent it to her after her first email.

Early email:

I remember looking at Regina caeli plainchant before writing the motet and something of that footprint stayed with me, only speeded up! The Alleluia’s seemed opportunities for contemplation after the faster passages and each harmonic shift downwards allowed for a return to the opening statement as the climax of the work without pushing the soprano line higher.

Later email:

Dear Philip,

Wow, you are most impressively on the case!

Thank you for the Liber usualis download. Looking back, I can’t be certain of how I thought about the writing of Regina caeli; nothing literal from the plainchant, more a feel of the stepwise shape of the chant phrasing, I think.

You raise an interesting point about the ending. A final, plangent conclusion could indeed bring the work to a resounding close and yet I wanted something which might be a little subtle, something which could melt into a big acoustic of, say, our larger cathedrals or College Chapels, something to slip away into the distance. Not an apologetic ending, more one that might just bring the listener back to a mood of meditation.

I worked some of her comments into the program notes. Let me know what you think.

4 comments:

Jennifer said...

looks good. Check the sentence structure in the part about "Death may dissolve". It looks like you might have taken something out, and didn't re-word some things.

Lincus Maximus said...

I'm with Jennifer. Proofread! I also have another thing to add. Now, this may just be me being irreverant as usual, and I mean no disrespect to Maestro Hatteberg or his choir, but what do they have to do with us or our performance? I think if we are going to do program notes for our performance why would we talk about anything that doesn't relate directly to us or the performance at hand? ...I'm just saying.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the comments - and I do proofread, but decided to share it with you when I got tired of working on it Saturday night.

Providing the reference to Hatteberg and Louisville is an important piece of information for that Miskinis piece - referencing them in our program notes is appropriate since we are in the same ACDA division and since they commissioned the work!

Charles Daniel said...

I like the way you actually put the chant lines in the notes. Really cool, and professional looking. Overall it looks really great, and I hope our actual program covers are as cool. Haha