CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Carnegie Hall National High School Choral Festival

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 8:00 PM

Select choirs from across the country come together for this yearlong educational program guided by Dr. Craig Jessop, Music Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The program includes school visits by Dr. Jessop, a Professional Development Workshop for participating choir directors, and four days of rehearsal in New York City culminating in the final concert at Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke's.

Craig Jessop, Conductor
Orchestra of St. Luke's
Janice Chandler-Eteme, Soprano
Stephen Powell, Baritone

Baltimore City College High School Concert Choir
Baltimore, Maryland
Linda R. Hall, Conductor

Enloe High School Singers
Raleigh, North Carolina
Ann Johnson-Huff, Conductor

San Marcos High School Madrigal Singers
Santa Barbara, California
Carolyn Teraoka-Brady, Conductor

State College Area High School Master Singers
State College, Pennsylvania
Robert W. Drafall, Conductor

Program to include:
BRAHMS A German Requiem

This concert is made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for choral music established by S. Donald Sussman in memory of Judith Arron and Robert Shaw.

Programs of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall are generously supported by the City of New York: Office of the Mayor, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York City Council; and by the New York State Council on the Arts.

Program Notes:

By Walter Frisch

JOHANNES BRAHMS Ein deutsches Requiem (“A German Requiem”)
Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg; died April 3, 1897, in Vienna.

The Carnegie Hall premiere of A German Requiem took place on November 27, 1891,
with Clementine DeVere, soprano; Heinrich Meyn, baritone; the Oratorio Society of New
York; and the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch.

Brahms’s German Requiem has become such a staple of the choral-symphonic repertory that it is easy to lose sight of its profound originality. Brahms’s Classical and Romantic predecessors in the Austro-German tradition—Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert—whether observant Catholics or not, had almost all used the standard Latin texts in their masses. Brahms took an entirely different path—hence the special title of his piece. For his German Requiem, he turned to his own native language and to what he felt was the most important text in it: the Bible in Martin Luther’s translation. A Protestant from Hamburg, Brahms once remarked, “People don’t realize that we North Germans long for the Bible every day. In my study I can pull out my Bible right away, even in the dark.”

Brahms did not attend church as an adult, nor did he write any liturgical music. For him, the Luther Bible was as much a poetic and literary source as a sacred one. In the German Requiem, Brahms acted as his own librettist, as it were, interweaving 16 different passages from the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha. The texts focus not on the terror of death but on consolation and hope among the living. There is little conventional Christian prayer; the names Jesus and Christ appear nowhere in the German Requiem. Only the Lord (Herr) is addressed directly.

The almost secular faith displayed in the Requiem puzzled some of Brahms’s contemporaries. Karl Reinthaler, who in 1868 prepared one of the earliest performances of the work, found fault because no reference was made “to the concept on which everything turns, namely Jesus’s death as redemption.” Of course Brahms knew exactly what he was doing—he was directing his Requiem not toward any specific group of Christians, but to a modern community of listeners and believers, who become particularized in the baritone and soprano soloists and generalized in the chorus. Reinthaler suggested that Brahms add a section that would incorporate the notion of Christian redemption. Though Brahms demurred, the famous soprano aria from Handel’s Messiah, “I know that my redeemer liveth,” was inserted at the first Bremen performance of the Requiem.

Brahms may have planned his Requiem as early as 1861; a page on which he wrote out the texts for all seven movements is on the verso of a work known to have been composed in that year. But the first mention of the Requiem in his correspondence—and the likely date of his earliest real compositional activity on it—came only in spring 1865. One impetus may have been the death of Brahms’s mother, Christiane, in February of that year. She is often associated specifically with the fifth movement, which was added to the Requiem only after its premiere in 1868. An authoritative biographer of Brahms, Florence May, reported that Brahms had been thinking of his mother when writing that movement. But his mother’s death may have played a more significant role in getting the whole Requiem underway. Anyone who has read her letters to Brahms will recognize the same steadfast, unpretentious piety that is reflected in the words and music of the Requiem.

The German Requiem was also a memorial to another figure of parental authority for Brahms, Robert Schumann, who had died many years earlier in 1856, but whose importance for Brahms remained undiminished. Brahms commented to his friend Joseph Joachim in 1873 that “you ought to know how much a work like the Requiem belongs to Schumann.” Brahms may have been aware that Schumann had himself contemplated writing a German requiem. In any case, Brahms’s Requiem was the first work that realized the enormous promise Schumann had found in the younger composer. Clara Schumann understood its significance immediately. She wrote in her diary after attending a rehearsal of the Requiem led by Brahms in Bremen: “As I saw Johannes standing there, baton in hand, I could not help thinking of my dear Robert’s prophecy, ‘Let him but once grab his magic wand and work with orchestra and chorus,’ which is fulfilled today.”

The German Requiem gave Brahms his first large-scale success as a composer, and it consolidated his reputation as one of the leading figures in the German musical world. In its wake, he created several other choral-symphonic works during the next few years, including the Alto Rhapsody, Op. 53; Schicksalslied, Op. 54; and Triumphlied, Op. 55. The confidence generated by the reception of the Requiem also allowed Brahms to push ahead with his long-delayed First Symphony, which had its premiere in 1876 and further enhanced his popularity.

In overall design, the German Requiem forms a great arch in seven movements. It is anchored on both ends by movements in F Major, whose texts were carefully selected by Brahms to complement each other. The first movement begins with a passage from the Gospel of Matthew, “Selig sind, die da Leid tragen” (“Blessed are they that have sorrow”). The seventh movement begins with the Book of Revelation, “Selig sind die Toten, die in dem Herrn sterben” (“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord”). At the center of the Requiem’s arch is the fourth movement, “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen” (“How lovely are thy dwelling places”), which is perhaps the most beloved part of the work, and the only one that is sometimes performed alone. Here Brahms offers a vision not of anguish or torment, but of beauty and security, taken from Psalm 84. Brahms sets these words to a lilting theme and accompaniment in 3/4 meter that most resemble a Viennese waltz. He thus brings a more popular or accessible style into the very heart of his Requiem. This is no simple dance, however. Brahms includes a fugal development at “die loben dich immerdar” (“they praise you evermore”). And the main vocal melody of the movement is fashioned as an inversion of the introductory orchestral theme. The midpoint of the Requiem thus reflects the same principle of mirror symmetry that informs the two outer movements.

Brahms told the choral conductor Siegfried Ochs that much of the Requiem was based on a chorale melody, but did not specify the actual tune. Ochs identified it plausibly as “Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten” (“Who only lets beloved God rule”). The profile of that chorale can be heard in the orchestra at the beginning of the first movement and in the stern vocal melody of the second. This second movement, “Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie das Gras” (“For all flesh is as grass”), based on the letters of Peter and James in the New Testament, is a different kind of dance in 3/4 meter from that in the fourth movement—a somber sarabande that is also a funeral march, indicated to be played langsam, marschmässig (“slowly, like a march”). Brahms adapted this movement from an instrumental one he had drafted in the mid 1850s for a two-piano sonata, which then became a draft of a symphony, and was eventually completed as the D–Minor Piano Concerto, Op. 15.

After two purely choral movements, the baritone soloist enters in the third, “Herr, lehre doch mich” (“Lord, make me to know”), set to words from Isaiah. If the second movement was more reminiscent of Bach in its treatment of the chorale, this movement culminates with an expansive and positively Handelian fugue, at the words “Der Gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand” (“But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God”). The fugue is underpinned for 36 measures by a continuous pedal point on D played by the trombones, tuba, and timpani—an effect that was widely noted, and almost as widely condemned, at the first performance of this movement in Vienna, especially because the percussionist managed to play fortissimo and drown out most of the other players.

The fifth movement, “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit” (“And ye now therefore have sorrow”), is the most intimate and delicate in the Requiem. Its tone of consolation has been prepared by the fourth movement but now is focused on the voice of a soprano soloist, who sings in counterpoint with a plaintive solo oboe.

The sixth movement, “Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt” (“For we do not have a lasting place”), brings back the baritone soloist and the more turbulent mood of the second and third movements. It is literally the most apocalyptic movement of the Requiem, as it grimly evokes (with words from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians) the trumpet of the Last Judgment and asks defiantly, in a passage of enormous declamatory force, “Tod, wo ist dein Stachel?” (“Death, where is thy sting?”). The answer is provided by the second large fugue of the Requiem, “Herr, du bist würdig” (“Lord, you are worthy”), which creates a glorious culmination to the Requiem. After this, the quiet affirmation of the seventh movement seems the only appropriate conclusion.

Brahms’s German Requiem, though created at a time and place rather remote from ours, is one of the most universal of all artworks. This was demonstrated when Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic selected it for the memorial concert was given three days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and broadcast on national television. In the wake of those unimaginable and unspeakable events, Brahms’s masterpiece, with its blend of the secular and sacred, helped to articulate both the deep grief and fervent hope felt by so many people around the world.

—Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Walter Frisch is a Professor of Music at Columbia University. His writings include Brahms: The Four Symphonies (Yale University Press, 2003) and Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation (University of California Press).

Craig Jessop, Conductor
Craig Jessop was appointed music director and conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in December 1999, after having served as the Choir’s associate director since 1995.

Before his appointment with the Choir, Dr. Jessop was a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force music programs, where he served as director of the USAF Singing Sergeants in Washington, DC (1980–1987); as commander and conductor of the Band of the US Air Forces in Europe at Ramstein, Germany (1987–1991); and as commander and conductor of the Air Combat Command Heartland of America Band (1991–1995). He has also been music director of the Maryland Choral Society, the Rhineland-Pfalz International Choir of Germany, and the Omaha Symphonic Chorus.

At the Opening Ceremony of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Dr. Jessop conducted the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Utah Symphony, working with world-renowned artists Sting and Yo-Yo Ma and composers John Williams and Michael Kamen. In 2003, Dr. Jessop conducted the Choir at the Tanglewood Festival, and prepared the singers for a performance of A German Requiem at that prestigious venue with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Rafael Frübeck de Burgos. In 1999, Dr. Jessop was asked to step in for Robert Shaw to conduct the concert and subsequent recording of Mr. Shaw’s English adaptation of the same piece with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Utah Symphony.

In addition to his work as a conductor, Dr. Jessop has been active as a baritone vocalist, first as a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and later with the choirs of Helmuth Rilling and John Rutter and with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers. He is a previous winner of the Metropolitan Opera regional auditions and San Francisco Opera auditions, and has participated in the Merola Opera training program of the San Francisco Opera.

Orchestra of St. Luke's

Janice Chandler-Eteme, Soprano
Janice Chandler-Eteme has long been among America’s foremost lyric sopranos, singing an astonishing range of literature with the world’s top orchestras and conductors. Ms. Chandler-Eteme first gained international prominence as a favorite of Robert Shaw, performing with orchestras across the country. Her current season includes her Dallas Opera debut as Clara in Porgy and Bess, Messiah with the Minnesota Orchestra, Missa solemnis with the National Philharmonic, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Detroit Symphony.

Mahler’s Second Symphony figured prominently in Ms. Chandler-Eteme’s 2006–2007 season, performing this work with Maestro Temirkanov and Rome’s Santa Cecilia Orchestra, with the Nashville Symphony under Leonard Slatkin, and with the Pacific Symphony under Carl St. Clair. This same season, she also performed Porgy and Bess at the Kennedy Center, and toured France with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, performing Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras, No. 5.

Ms. Chandler-Eteme has performed Strauss’s Four Last Songs with the Baltimore Symphony, the Syracuse Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, and at the Grand Teton Music Festival. She has collaborated with the Cincinnati Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony (Haydn’s Die Schöpfung), the Dallas Symphony (Tippett’s A Child of Our Time), the San Diego Symphony (Mahler’s Second Symphony and Mendelssohn’s Elijah), and the Milwaukee Symphony (Orff’s Carmina Burana).
Ms. Chandler-Eteme’s recordings include the Dvorák Te Deum with Zdenek Macal and the New Jersey Symphony and a forthcoming world-premiere recording of Maslanka’s Mass.

Stephen Powell, Baritone
In 2007–08, Stephen Powell makes his San Francisco Opera debut singing Sharpless in Madame Butterfly; appears with Washington Concert Opera as Riccardo in I puritani conducted by Antony Walker; appears with North Carolina Symphony as Count in Le nozze di Figaro conducted by Grant Llewellyn; and performs Germont in La traviata with Arizona Opera and Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia with Hawaii Opera Theater. Mr. Powell also joins Austin Lyric Opera for its fall gala concert and performs Messiah with Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Carmina Burana with Oregon Symphony conducted by Carlos Kalmar, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall, and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with Singing City Choir.

Past operatic highlights include Camoëns in Dom Sébastien (Opera Orchestra of New York), Germont in La traviata (Utah Opera), Jochanaan in Salome (Cleveland Opera), Zurga in Les Pêcheurs de perles (Kentucky Opera and New York City Opera) and Marcello in La bohème (Lyric Opera of Chicago).

On the concert stage, Mr. Powell’s performances include Carmina Burana (Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony), Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius (North Carolina Symphony), Messiah (Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal), Elijah (Jacksonville Symphony), Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (San Francisco Symphony), St. Matthew Passion (Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society), and Missa Solemnis (Phoenix Symphony).

Baltimore City College High School Concert Choir
Baltimore, Maryland
Linda R. Hall, Conductor

Enloe High School Singers
Raleigh, North Carolina
Ann Johnson-Huff, Conductor
The William G. Enloe High School Choral Department consists of an Opera Theater/ Music Theater class and five choirs. The Chamber Choir and the Advanced Women’s Ensemble study a wide array of challenging repertoire, and perform for numerous local and national events throughout the school year. Students from the Chamber Choir and Advanced Women’s Ensemble participate in countless Honors choirs, including the North Carolina High School Honors Chorus, North Carolina All State Chorus, North Carolina Governor’s School, ACDA Honor’s Choir, and the Wake County Choral Festival. Past tours include performances in Australia, Europe, and across North America, including performances at the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain; at the Vatican in Italy; at Carnegie Hall, St. John the Divine, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York; and at the Polynesian Cultural Center and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In 2006, the Chamber Choir and Advanced Women’s Ensemble were chosen to perform for a special event at the North Carolina Music Educators’ Association Conference. Both ensembles represented the state of North Carolina at the Founding of Jamestown Settlement Celebration in May of 2007, featuring guest speakers Judge Sandra Day O’Connor and President George Bush.

This past year’s performances included the world premiere of award-winning pianist and composer Joel A. Martin’s Requiem for Peace, featuring the poem “Caged Bird” by Dr. Maya Angelou.

San Marcos High School Madrigal Singers
Santa Barbara, California
Carolyn Teraoka-Brady, Conductor

State College Area High School Master Singers
State College, Pennsylvania
Robert W. Drafall, Conductor