by Brian Hathaway

Most recently during the fall of 2018, the Master Chorale visited elementary schools in Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties and are currently between two day-time concert presentations titled "Going to the Show."  On Tuesday, February 5th, excited students came to Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg for our first of two “Going to the Show” events that we have planned this season.  This concert program is now part of Mahaffey Theater's Class Acts presentations, which offers a wonderful array of cultural initiatives for children. We are thrilled to be partnered with Mahaffey Theater and Bill Edwards Foundation for the Arts and most grateful for their co-production on this special program.

​“Going to the Show” addressed six different standards for music education set by the State of Florida.  This was done by presenting a concert program with a focus on interaction between the singers and the students in the audience.  Songs presented by the Chorale's Education and Outreach Ensemble offered examples of four-part harmony through songs such as Lloyd Pfautsch’s “Consecrate the Place and Day”, Tim Osiek’s “Like a River in My Soul”, and Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run” as arranged by Craig Hella Johnson, which ended in an energetic hand-clapping recapitulation of the main theme.

For the concert finish, Master Chorale's Artistic Director Brett Karlin led the Education and Outreach Ensemble, combined with the Honor Chorus and the Baby Grands to create a combined choir for a rousing performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.  The high energy finale was Edwin Hawkins’ “Oh, Happy Day” with Master Chorale Soprano Sherry Fagan Martin belting out the solo line.

We look forward to presenting this program again to elementary students in Hillsborough County at the Tampa Theatre in March. 

​Even though singing as an adult has brought me tremendous joy, I still recall those magic moments when my elementary school music teacher, Miss Passenger, brought out my love of music and an appreciation of the beauty that music can bring.  The children who attended this event may have experienced a similar moment, either at Mahaffey or perhaps at the hands of their own music teacher.  To be a part of creating one of those moments is a special honor.

The performance at Mahaffey Theater was co-produced by Mahaffey Theater and the Bill Edwards Foundation for the Arts, and the Youth Initiative program is made possible through the generosity of Cynthia and Peter Zinober, donors of The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, and sponsored in part by the Tampa Bay Times (official media sponsor of The Master Chorale), the City of St. Petersburg, and by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, The Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay is proud to announce the 2018 Christmas Carol Competition.
 
Instrumentation for 2018 Competition: Choir & Piano.
 
Voicing: SATB, 150-voice auditioned chorus, medium to difficult level (may voice up to SSAATTBB divisi) & Piano.
 
Text: English or Latin text only, sacred or secular, medieval to present, appropriate for concert setting; proof of public domain or author’s written permission for use of text is required. (Please note: most modern translations of the Bible are protected by copyright). The music for this Carol should be original - not an arrangement of an existing carol.
 
 
Duration: no longer than 4 minutes. 
Prize: $750 will be awarded to the composer of the winning composition
 
Performance: The winning composition will premiere in Tampa Bay early December 7 - 9, 2018. If possible, the winner of the contest shall arrange to be present at the premiere. Additionally, The Master Chorale reserves the right to the premiere commercial recording of the winner.
 
Originality: The work must be an original unpublished composition with no prior public performances. Arrangements of compositions that have received a public performance will not be accepted. Any public performance before December 7, 2018, whether it is by students, faculty, amateurs, professionals (paid or unpaid), and whether it was in a private, public, or academic venue, disqualifies the composition from the competition. A ‘public performance’ also includes formally attended public reading sessions, broadcast, or any recording that has been commercially released.
 
Deadline: Score and application materials must be received on or before October 12, 2018. Results will be announced on October 29, 2018. The winner of the Christmas Carol Competition shall provide final performance score on or before November 2, 2018.
 
Age restriction: The competition is open to any United States resident, age 18 and above.
 
How to apply: All scores & recordings must be anonymous and marked only with a pseudonym of the composer’s choice. Materials that have not had all identifiable markings removed will not be accepted. The composer’s pseudonym and the title of the composition must be marked on each score and recording.
 
 
Submit:

1. Four copies of full score
2. Recordings will be accepted (and highly appreciated), but are not required. If a recording is included, please either include ONE flash drive or email a MIDI or rehearsal recording in the format of an MP3 – do not send cassettes, CDs, or data discs.
3. A copy of driver’s license or passport
4. The application form (page 2 in this document, also available for download at www.masterchorale.com)
5. Document giving permission or status for use of text

 
 
Mail materials to this address: Master Chorale of Tampa Bay Attn: Christmas Carol Competition 30382 USF Holly Drive
Tampa, FL 33620-3038

by Brian Hathaway

​The performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem by The Florida Orchestra and The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay are only about a month away on the weekend of April 20-22.  As part of The Florida Orchestra’s Masterwork Series, Verdi’s Requiem is one of the most dramatic Requiems in the choral repertoire. 
 
When I prepare for a Masterwork Concert, there are several components to my preparation, including score study, individual practice, and rehearsal with my Master Chorale colleagues.  To further enhance my understanding of the music, I research the history of the music, so I can better appreciate what the composer was trying to achieve in composing and performing it.  During my research for this concert series, I uncovered several facts about Verdi and his Requiem.  Some of these facts are very well known, while others may qualify as trivial or little-known facts.  I would like to share the facts I uncovered.

At the time of Rossini's death, Verdi called him "one of the glories of Italy," asking, "When the other one who still lives is no more, what will we have left?" The other one was Alessandro Manzoni, a celebrated poet, and the author of the landmark nineteenth-century novel, “I Promessi Sposi” (The Betrothed), a book Verdi himself had read when he was sixteen.  When Manzoni died on May 22, 1873, Verdi returned to the idea of a requiem.
 
When poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni died, Verdi was too grief-stricken to attend his funeral, and the entire country mourned the loss of one of its leading cultural icons.  Verdi shared the same national aspirations that Manzoni had, and Manzoni’s literature helped fuel an Italian national identity.  Verdi also supported Italian unification, and his last name was used as an acronym for support of unification under Sardinian King Victor Emanuel: Vittorio Emanuel, Rei di Italia (Victor Emanuel, King of Italy).  Following unification in 1860, Verdi served as a Senator.

​Verdi went to the mayor of Milan and proposed composing a memorial in the form of a requiem to honor the memory of Manzoni. Verdi reworked the existing Libera me from the “Messe per Rossini” and incorporated thematic material from it in the other movements. While he was quite sincere in his desire to memorialize Manzoni, Verdi, a successful businessman, was also aware of the commercial possibilities for the Requiem. While he was negotiating with the city of Milan to underwrite the premiere and with the Church to allow women singers to appear, he was also arranging publication and performance royalties.  As part of the arrangement with the city of Milan, Verdi offered to pay for the score printing himself on the condition that Milan assume responsibility for the cost of the performances.
 
The premiere took place in May 22, 1874, at the Church of San Marco as part of a liturgy so no applause was allowed. Women (Soprano Theresa Stolz and Mezzo Maria Waldmann, soloists who performed in Verdi’s European premiere of Aida four years earlier) were given a special exemption to perform by the local Archbishop on the condition that they must be veiled in black and hidden behind a grating.  Verdi also arranged three concert performances at La Scala a few days later which were greeted with great enthusiasm. In the year following the premiere, it was performed all over Italy, in Paris, London, Vienna and even in America. The Requiem had become one of Verdi's most popular compositions.

​Verdi composed his Requiem with Soprano Theresa Stolz and Mezzo Maria Waldmann in mind as the female soloists.  Soprano Stolz has been described as "the Verdian dramatic soprano par excellence, powerful, passionate in utterance, but dignified in manner and secure in tone and control” and premiered many of Verdi’s Operas.  Verdi hired Mezzo Waldmann for the mezzo-soprano role in his Requiem, for which he wrote the Liber Scriptus with her voice in mind. Verdi particularly valued her for the rich, dark color of her lower, contralto register.  For a Paris performance, Verdi revised the Liber Scriptus to allow Maria Waldmann a further solo for future performances.  Previously, the movement had been set for a choral fugue in a classical Baroque style. With its premiere at the Royal Albert Hall performance in May 1875, this revision became the definitive edition.
 
When German conductor, composer, and virtuoso pianist Hans von Bülow, a close friend of Verdi’s rival Richard Wagner, stole a look at the Requiem score just days before the Milan premiere, he offered his famous snap judgment, "Verdi's latest opera, though in ecclesiastical robes," and decided not to attend the concert. When he finally heard it, at a parish performance eighteen years later, he was moved to tears. Bülow wrote to Verdi to apologize, and Verdi replied, with typical generosity, that Bülow might have been right the first time. By then, Verdi had grown accustomed to critical disdain, especially from the followers of Richard Wagner. And he knew that Bülow, who once switched his allegiance from Wagner to Brahms, wasn't the last listener who would change his mind about this music as well.

​Playwright and music critic George Bernard Shaw had a different opinion.  Attending the London premiere, Verdi’s Requiem captivated him.  His first impression stayed with him, as he had the “Libera me” performed at his funeral in 1950. 
 
In January 1901, while staying in Milan, Verdi suffered a stroke. He died a few days later. Arturo Toscanini conducted the vast forces of combined orchestras and choirs composed of musicians from throughout Italy at his funeral service in Milan. To date, it remains the largest public assembly of any event in the history of Italy.

The Nazis tried to make Terezin a model village as an example of how they were treating Jews humanely.  Part of the façade was to create an active cultural environment in the ghetto, so shortly after arriving, Schacter was given the task of assembling a choir of 150 to perform Verdi’s Requiem.  Not having enough scores for all the singers, he taught them the music by rote.  The first performance took place in January 1942. 

It is interesting to note that this Requiem for the dead premiered in January 1942, the same month that SS General Rheinhard Heydrich led the Wannsee Conference that approved the “final solution” to the Jewish question.  Immediately following the premiere, about half the chorus members were loaded on a train bound for Auschwitz.  Rafael Schachter was forced to reconstitute the chorus for the fifteen subsequent concerts as chorus members were either taken away or died in Terezin.  The final concert was performed for members of the International Red Cross, who were visiting the camp at the invitation of the Nazi SS.  Rafael Schachter was finally taken by train to Auschwitz in October 1944, subsequently dying while a prisoner. ​

​Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem has been loved by audiences and performers since its premiere in 1874.  It is recognized as one of the most frequently performed masterworks in the choral repertoire.  For me, I will have a completely different emotional connection to the Requiem because of the research I completed for this blog post. 
 
Foremost in my mind will be the unknown victims who created a work of drama and beauty in the face of death and terror.  I am drawn to recall the opera “Nabucco” by Verdi, where in The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, they sang “let the Lord inspire you a harmony of voices which may instill virtue to suffering.”  For the prisoners of Terezin, the closing “Libera me” (Deliver me) was their most fervent plea for deliverance. 
 
Even if you have listened to recordings of Verdi’s Requiem, the beauty and drama of the music is best experienced during a live performance.  Please consider attending one of our concerts to experience it yourself. 

The Master Chorale's Youth Initiative is a music education program serving elementary students primarily in Title 1 schools in our community. The program offers a unique, hands-on approach to music education and choral performance free to the students.

Our all-volunteer Outreach Choir has presented a total of seventeen wonderful interactive educational performances in Hillsborough and Pinellas County Elementary schools and three (free) age-appropriate professional concerts (titled "Going to the Show"), led by Deah McReynolds with special guest conductor Doreen Rao, for over 4,000 2nd-5th graders since the program launched in 2016 (with 3,000 reached during our 2017-2018 season!).  We're excited about the popularity of our program and it's potential for significant growth! ​

By Brian Hathaway

​Yes!  “Dacci un Dramma!”, or in English “Give us drama!” is the topic of my latest post.  I was drawn to this phrase because the current season of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay is all about drama, especially the way we create it through our voices in collaboration with The Florida Orchestra.  To make it more interesting, this season is unique in that through four concerts, we take a “grand tour” of the history of creating drama with the voice through several musical genres that go back five hundred years.  Let us take this tour in chronological order, even though the concerts this season do not necessarily follow that order.

​Genre #1: Opera. Opera was the first musical form that combined voices and instruments to create drama as entertainment.  The first opera, “Dafne” was composed by Jacopo Peri in Italy in 1597, although it is now largely lost.  The earliest opera still performed is Claudio Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” composed in 1607.  The opera genre was exported to Germany in 1627 and later to England and France in the mid 1600’s.  As an art form, the opera has been widely performed up until the current time, although the mid to late 19th century is widely recognized as the “golden age of opera”, dominated by Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi.

​Giuseppe Verdi started composing his Requiem in June 1873, shortly following the death of famed Italian writer and humorist Allessandro Manzoni, whom Verdi met in 1868.  Manzoni’s death was the impetus for Verdi to write a complete Requiem, expanding upon the “Libera me” that he wrote in Rossini’s memory following his death in 1868.  Verdi’s Requiem is not normally regarded as a liturgical Requiem and is primarily performed as a theater piece, and the music is infused with the same level of drama we would encounter in his operas such as “Aida” (1872) or “Othello” (1887).  For me as a singer, I love dramatic moments such as the pounding of the bass drum in the “Dies Irae”, the unison opening of the “Sanctus” or the power of the opening phrase in the “Rex Tremendae”.  The Verdi Requiem will be performed with The Florida Orchestra on the weekend of April 20-22.

Genre #2: Musical Theatre.  Musical theatre grew out of the comic operettas of the 1800’s by composers such as Jacques Offenbach in Paris and Johann Strauss Jr. in Vienna.  From 1871 to 1896, William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan collaborated on numerous comic operettas such as “The Pirates of Penzance” and “The Mikado” that poked fun at English society and became internationally famous.  In America composers such as George M. Cohan and Victor Herbert gave musical theatre a distinctively American flavor.  Throughout the first four decades of the 20th Century composers such as Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin popularized the musical theatre genre.  Songs from musicals have become part of The Great American Songbook and an integral part of American culture.
​
In the 1940’s Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma” was the first fully integrated musical, incorporating song and dance to develop the characters and the plot.  The three decades of the 1940’s through 1960’s were marked by the worldwide popularity of the genre spurred on by the availability of original cast recordings and film versions of the musical.  There are so many dramatic moments arising from musical theatre that they are almost too numerous to mention.  Personal favorites of mine are the title song from “Oklahoma,” “I Am a Pirate King” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance,” and “It’s a Grand Night for Singing” from Rodgers and Hammersteins’s “State Fair.”

Concertgoers will be able to hear many of their favorites in the “Celebrate Broadway” concert series with The Master Chorale and The Florida Orchestra during the weekend of April 27-29th.

Genre #3: The Film/TV Score.  As musical theatre became a dominant force in bringing live music to the masses, the advent of films allowed even more people to experience the way music can combine with the moving picture to add drama and meaning to a story.  The development of talking pictures starting with “The Jazz Singer” in 1927 added the component of sound to movies. This film incorporated a musical play where singer Al Jolson played a cantor’s son who ran away from home to become a famous jazz singer.  The film is recognized as one of the 100 most influential films of all time.

Genre #4:  The Video Game.  Since the advent of electronic gaming in the late 1970’s, their complexity of the stories and images has been increasingly coupled with the development of music scores that are now equal to and in some cases exceeding the level of artistic expression in film scores.  We are now light years beyond the “beeps” and “boops” we heard when playing “Pong” or the simple 8-bit compositions we heard when playing “Donkey Kong” almost 40 years ago. 
 
Video game score composition now attracts some of the best composers who have embraced this avenue of artistic expression.  These include Koji Kondo (Legend of Zelda), Jeremy Soule (The Elder Scrolls) and Michael Giacchino (Medal of Honor).  Michael Giacchino also composed music scores for J.J. Abrams, producer of the current generation of Star Trek movies.  Nobuo Uematsu, composer of the Final Fantasy music scores has been composing them for more than two decades, and concerts of his music play to sell-out crowds around the world.

​In conclusion, do you remember what we were discussing 1,300 words ago?  Looking back at the operatic roots of combining the human voice with instruments, we can see a kind of musical karma.  I think if Richard Wagner were alive today, he would enjoy an animated conversation regarding leitmotifs with Nobuo Uematsu.  What is seen through these very broad brush-stroke discussions of musical history is the unmistakable impact the human voice can have on listeners.  The current Master Chorale Season still offers opportunities to experience live music that you will find enjoyable and memorable.  As a singer, it is a joy to be a part of the creative process that takes place when we prepare and present great music for our Tampa Bay community.
 
Dacci un Dramma!