Greenfield Community College Chorus Concert of "Music for Chorus, Strings, and Piano"

The chorus is working on a variety of sacred and secular choral music from 1750 to the present in English, Latin, German, and French. Included are two early American numbers, "O Music" a round by Lowell Mason, and Euroclydon, an extended "Anthem for Mariners" by William Billings filled with plenty of storytelling and drama, with words from Psalm 107. The very beautiful and impressionistic "Cantique de Jean Racine" by Gabriel Fauré, and the spirited popular folk song "Auprès de ma blonde" will also be on the program. The concert also includes a magnificent excerpt from the 1959 Wedding Cantata  by American composer  Daniel Pinkham: "Awake, O North Wind." This is an exciting movement using dissonances, intervals of the fourth and fifth, and driving rhythm to create an exceptionally brilliant effect. Other music from the twentieth century includes Benjamin Britten's lulling "Concord," No. 2 of the "Choral Dances" from Gloriana, an opera about Queen Elizabeth I. The text is by William Plomer. "The Tiger" is a recent composition by Lauren Bernofsky which sets the famous six stanza poem "The Tyger" by William Blake. Several pieces on the program will be accompanied by a string quartet of graduate students and professionals. This program will include music from the preview concert, and in addition: Missa Brevis Rorate coeli desuper by Franz Josef Haydn, "Elegiac Song", Op. 118 by Ludwig van Beethoven, a Gospel style composition by contemporary composer Rollo Dilworth, as well as a solo song by Charles Gounod and C.V. Stanford's "Bluebird" sung by a semi chorus.