A SONG OF LIFE
In the rapture of life and of living,
I lift up my heart and rejoice,
And I thank the great Giver for giving
The soul of my gladness a voice.
In the glow of the glorious weather,
In the sweet-scented sensuous air,
My burdens seem light as a feather—
They are nothing to bear.
In the strength and the glory of power,
In the pride and the pleasure of wealth,
I can laugh at the world and its sages—
I am greater than seers who are sad,
For he is most wise in all ages
Who knows how to be glad.
I lift up my eyes to the beautiful days,
And my spirit soars off like a swallow
And is lost in the light of its rays.
Are you troubled and sad? I beseech you
Come out of the shadows of strife—
Come out in the sun while I teach you
The secret of life.
Come out of the world—come above it—
Up over its crosses and graves.
Though the green earth is fair and I love it,
We must love it as masters, not slaves.
Come up where the dust never rises—
But only the perfume of flowers—
And your life shall be glad with surprises, happy
And full of delight.
Adapted from the Poetical works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Edinburgh : W. P. Nimmo, Hay, & Mitchell, 1917.
NO FAIRY TALE HERE
With a shattered, furious, frustrated, fiery heart her rigid pen fought a mighty battle.
Business literally explodes
Then innocence is dragged out and turned into
Involuntary ornaments on the local tree.
It’s not even Christmas yet.
She finds out shattered, furious, frustrated, fiery is her heart and now the rigid P.S.A.’s begin.
She morphs into a knight
Her armor evolves with every word she types
“Southern Horrors” and “The Red Record” read like the scariest bulk of fiction
And has an equal amount of bloodshed as the Civil War
But they’re frigid facts without a stain to be found.
She shouted for her humanity and scolded the lack of without a sound
Her verbiage stabbed Confederate flags, Jim Crow, white-sheet masked men
And leaders of the “free world” without a touch.
PROGRAM NOTES
A SONG OF LIFE
Currently unpublished, this piece just made its premier in February at the National ACDA Conference and we are so excited to be singing it today! The text painting of the joys of life fly off of the page with beautiful harmonies and accompaniment. Listen for the aleatoric section which sounds like the noise of life and the quest for peace. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American Author and Poet, wrote almost 2000 poems including A Song of Life.
NO FAIRY TALE HERE
“No fairy tale here” tells of the extraordinary writing and artistry of Ida B. Wells and how she fought racism and oppression through literature. This musical setting for treble voices with piano and percussion accompaniment is a powerful statement about the responsibility we have to tell the stories of those whose voices have been marginalized. Robyn Watson’s bold, sobering poetry highlights Ida B. Wells as a beacon of truth during a brutal period of our nation’s history.
TO SIT AND DREAM
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) is regarded as one of the foremost figures of the Harlem Renaissance, penning many notable poems, articles, plays, and short stories over the course of his career. In “To Sit and Dream”, composer Rosephanye Powell sets the words of Hughes’ poem “To You” in a musical style that reflects the jazz age during which the poem was written. Powell writes that she “imagined Hughes, in his apartment, in solitude, reading the paper, overwhelmed by the realities of America’s present state, yet daring to dream of a better day. Almost in a state of trance, he makes his way to the busy streets of New York, reaching out his hand to passersby-those of like mind who will join him in being a catalyst for positive change.
HOLY IS THE LORD
Composed by Jeffrey L. Ames, Holy is the Lord is grand and jubilant in its praise for the Lord. Ames is an acclaimed composer and much sought-after clinician. Both a composer and publisher, Ames’ literary publications have often centered on choral music in the concert gospel genre and choral music composed in Western tradition by modern African American composers. Indeed, his stylistic approach to Holy is the Lord is reminiscent of choral concert gospel with the broad tones and joyful complex rhythms that are almost percussive in nature. The piece, with its homophonic texture, moves freely, quickly, and with unity. The fast-moving groups of notes seem to mimic the vocal embellishment and ornamentation traditional to the gospel style.
CREDO
Closing the first part of the program is Bonds’s choral magnum opus: her setting of the “Credo” of the ever-intrepid pan-Africanist sociologist and reformer W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963). The text (1904, rev. 1920) – one of the first political and social-justice manifestos committed to print by a Black American – stands with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech as one of the most influential racial-justice documents of the twentieth century. It not only condemns war as murder and oppression and imperialism as “devilish,” but also affirms, for a world in which – then as now – Black lives are viewed in some quarters as less than others, the inherent beauty and dignity of Blackness, the importance of racial equality. Most importantly, it declares that the quest for racial justice and global equality is mandated by God himself.
Margaret Bonds, a deeply religious lifelong-champion of social justice in all its forms, poured herself into setting this manifesto to music in 1964-66, creating an extended composition of extraordinary power and beauty. That composition was premiered with the composer at the piano in 1967 and received one other complete performance during Bonds’s lifetime, but remained unpublished until 2020, when Hildegard Publishing released the first edition of both the orchestral version and the piano-vocal version performed tonight. Perhaps the most compelling evidence of the work’s brilliance, though, is this: that when the poet’s widow, Shirley Graham Du Bois, attended the first complete posthumous performance she labeled the event “one of the most moving moments of [her] life” and described Bonds’s Credo as “a work of art that is eternal – that will live as long as people love each other and really believe in brotherhood.”
In a 1965 letter to Shirley Graham Du Bois, Bonds looked “forward to a time when ‘Credo’ will move all over the world” – and indeed, those present at tonight’s performance will surely agree that these words and this music are, to put it simply, for now. We may hope that this performance marks the beginning of W.E.B. Du Bois’s and Margaret Bonds’s vision of racial justice and global equality moving all over the world – just as she envisioned.
– John Michael Cooper
MASS: A Celebration of Love and Joy
Composers have set the words of the ancient Roman Catholic Mass for a thousand years. Starting in the 1960’s however the Vatican II statement allowed for churches (and composers) to sing and compose the mass in their own languages. This resulted in a flowering of creativity by composers worldwide. It also allowed the Mass to be set in different styles. The composer André Thomas was present for the premiere of an iconic example of this, the Gospel Mass by Robert Ray. One can hear hints of Ray’s work in this new gospel-style Mass. Incorporating the traditional texts along with additional scripture, each movement is at once prayerful, spiritual, and truly joyful!