September 15, 2026, Music Notes

Thanks for a lovely rehearsal last night. We had a lot of information to cover to get our season off to a great start and were able to start digging into our repertoire…feels like we are on our way to a wonderful semester of music-making and friendship!

Thanks to Diane and our set up crew last night and to everyone for helping to restore the room at the end of rehearsal. Many hands make light work!

If you missed rehearsal (we missed you!), the self assessment sheets and warm up sequence #2 are in the supply bin so you can pick up a copy when you return. The warm up sequence handouts will be collected at the end of the season to use again in the future.

It was great fun to meet our new members – welcome!

Kirsten has two upcoming recitals to which we are invited (I’m looking forward to attending the Burlington recital):

Friday, September 25, 7 PM, First Presbyterian Church in Raleigh

Friday, October 23, 7 PM, First Presbyterian Church in Burlington

Chamber Choir auditions are next week following our regular rehearsal at 9:30 PM. Please be prepared to sing the measures indicated below. Be prepared to independently hold your part while singing in a small group.

Rehearsal Reflection:

Grown Wild mm. 1-31

– Please read the poem if you haven’t already.

– we sang on counts and also on solfege before adding text (ask a neighbor to help you with the solfege if you missed it).

– we noted and sang the dynamics indicated in the score

– thanks for the clear F on leaf!

There Was a Time mm. 1-23

– note the stem direction for your part when sopranos share one staff and altos share one staff. Notes with stems going up are for the 1s, notes with stems going down are for the 2s.

– m. 18-19 ‘the glory’ easy on ‘the’ – it should not be accented but rather lead to ‘glory’

– pronunciation of ‘glory’ – GLAW-rih (flip the R and shape the second syllable toward an IH vowel, as in ‘sit.’

– note the dynamic markings in the score

From the Stone Age mm. 1-123

– I love that this piece opens with a flute solo. The oldest known musical instrument is a bone flute found in a cave in what is now Germany. The flute is dated to be around 43,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_flute

– I also love that this piece begins in the Phrygian mode (E F G A B C D E), known as the ‘mystic mode’ but then moves through other tonal centers, musically transforming as does the stone carving. So cool!

–  we worked through pitches and rhythms – much of the beginning is in unison.

– thank you for the K in ‘casting.’

– please listen to the soprano solo and consider auditioning for this opportunity.

The Circle Game mm. 1-41

– please consider auditioning for the opening solo

– we worked through pitches on this section

– rhythms were close…but not entirely accurate. We will address these challenges the next time we rehearse this piece – regardless, a solid start!

Looking Ahead to 9/21/26

– Please make sure that you have numbered all of your measures and that you know the part divisi (make sure you are learning the correct part!)

– We will do lots more singing and lots less talking next week (although the talking was important, too)!

– I have included my draft of the program notes for the pieces we are going to work on next week for your review.

Coro di pastorelle – Già l’ore sen volano from Ascanio in Alba (K. 111) – Mozart arr. William J. Bullock (1771)

Già l’ore sen volano.  The hours are already flying by.
Già viene il tuo bene. Your beloved is already coming.
Fra dolci catene          Within sweet chains
Quell’alma vivrà.         That soul will live.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed the festive Ascanio in Alba, K. 111, when he was fifteen years old. The allegorical pastoral festa teatrale was commissioned by Empress Maria Theresa for the wedding of her son, Archduke Ferdinand Karl, to Maria Beatrice d’Este in 1771. “Già l’ore sen volano” is sung by a chorus of shepherdesses as they gather around the nymph Silvia. They sing to comfort her and build anticipation, telling her that her beloved is finally arriving. The text expresses the universal notion that time does not diminish the grace of a good person.

Now I Become Myself  – Gwyneth Walker (1999)

Gwyneth Walker is a prolific American composer and music educator, widely celebrated for her extensive catalog of over 400 commissioned works. Though she writes for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and soloists, she is perhaps best known in the music world for her vibrant, American-folk-inspired, and emotionally resonant choral compositions.

Poet May Sarton, born in Belgium in 1912, moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1916 to escape the German Army during WW1. At the age of seventeen, she began publishing her poetry in works throughout the United States. This poem explores both individual identity and the ever-present force of time. It sums up a lifetime with the profound insight that when we are “running”, time feels old, but when we “stand still” time is young. Sarton critiques our tendency to panic against time (“Hurry, you will be dead before—”). We rush through life fearing we will “run out of time” before accomplishing arbitrary goals like achieving perfect love or societal success. Rather than wearing a metaphorical mask to please others, or forcing meaning or happiness, Sarton compares her evolution to the organic ripening of fruit and the growth of a plant, realizing that life is not about frantic outward achievements but inward awareness.

About Time  – Gwen McLeod Hall (2026)

Gwen and I have been close friends for decades (lucky me!). She will be with us at our retreat in October to share her creative process and insights regarding her piece. (Yay!)

What the Heart Cannot Forget – Grace Brigham (2021)

“What the Heart Cannot Forget” was commissioned by WVC in honor and in celebration of founding member, Elisabeth Curtis. Elisabeth sang with WVC for 27 years and supported the chorus in numerous ways. She believed strongly in the mission of the chorus to put forward new pieces by female composers. Composer Grace Brigham fulfilled the commission in 2021 and reflected, “I found it strikingly beautiful and inspirational. The first emotion that came to mind was nostalgia. This past year (during the pandemic), we’ve all experienced isolation, and have been deprived of so many things that our hearts love. … What I know we all miss is having the opportunity to sing together right now. My inspiration for this piece came from reminiscing on what life felt like before the pandemic, and the hope I have that we can soon return to normalcy.”

The heart remembers what the mind cannot forget: the deep, emotional residue of love, loss, and the feelings tied to our greatest experiences. While details fade, the emotional imprints of who and what we have loved remain forever.

What the Heart Cannot Forget was first performed by WVC as a virtual choir in spring of 2020.

Controlled Burn – Dessa & Jocelyn Hagen (2021)

“Controlled Burn” was written as a collaboration between composer Jocelyn Hagen and Dessa, a hip-hop artist, songwriter, and essayist. Hagen is a pioneer in the field of composition, pushing the expectations of musicians and audiences with large-scale multimedia works, electro-acoustic music, dance, and opera. Her first forays into composition were via songwriting, still very evident in her work. The majority of her compositions are for the voice: solo, chamber and choral. Her melodic music is rhythmically driven and texturally complex, rich in color and deeply heartfelt.This piece reflects on time, youth, love, loss, and the way memory changes our understanding of the past. If we could meet our younger selves, we might barely recognize them because time transforms us so profoundly. In the end, memory softens and fades, much like rain gradually eroding limestone, making once-vivid experiences seem distant and strange.

Turn Around – Alan Greene, Malvina Reynolds, and Harry Belafonte (1958), Arr. Ronald Staheli (2018)

Written in 1957–58 by Malvina Reynolds, with a chorus contributed by Alan Greene and championed by Harry Belafonte, who recorded and popularized it, “Turn Around” captures a parent’s realization of how quickly a child grows, tracing infancy through school days, courtship, and parenthood of their own, each stage marked by the poignant refrain “turn around and you’re two… turn around and you’re grown.” The song reached an especially wide audience through its use in a 1960s Kodak television commercial, cementing its place as a folk standard about the fleeting nature of childhood and the passage of time.

Try to Remember from The Fantasticks – Harry Schmidt, arr. Jay Althouse (1960, arr. 2007)

Running for 53 years off-Broadway, The Fantasticks is the iconic and deeply intimate fable created by Harvey Schmidt (music) and Tom Jones (book and lyrics). Originally opening off-Broadway in 1960, it is famous for its poetic simplicity, minimal staging, and the timeless, classic song “Try to Remember”.

Inspired by Edmond Rostand’s 1894 play Les Romanesques, The Fantasticks is essentially a reverse-Romeo and Juliet. It centers on two meddling fathers who trick their starry-eyed, teenage children—Matt and Luisa—into falling in love by pretending to build a wall between their properties and feuding.

The second act takes a poignant turn, shedding fairy-tale illusions as the young lovers face the harsh realities of the world, eventually returning to each other with a more mature, grounded understanding of love.

The song serves as a gentle invitation for the audience to look back on the innocence and warmth of the past. Using the changing seasons as a metaphor, the lyrics contrast the golden, dreamy days of youth with the harsh realities of growing older. It was originally sung by Jerry Orbach (who played the narrator, El Gallo) to set a quiet, imaginative mood at the very beginning of the show.

The 2026 Broadway production re-envisions and redefines the show’s timeless romance.

Looking forward to our music-making next week!

Laura