Compositions run gamut from Renaissance to contemporary

As we have read in an earlier blog post, Market Square Singers will perform a challenging but delightful program based on the contrast between similar texts by early and more recent composers. Here is what you can expect to hear at St. Lawrence Chapel on June 3, and in the fabled acoustics found in the Italian churches the Singers will visit.

SACRED MUSIC: ANCIENT AND MODERN

Introit:

Daniel Gawthrop: Sing a Mighty Song

Daniel E. Gawthrop (born 1949 in Fort Wayne, Indiana) is an American composer, primarily of choral music. His output also includes a substantial body of works for the organ, as well as orchestral and instrumental works. He has been the recipient of more than 100 commissions to write original music.

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Palestrina: Sicut Cervus 

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525 or 1526-1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work has often been seen as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.

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Josquin de Prez: Ave Maria

De Prez (c.1450/1455-1521) -- there are many variations of the spelling of his name -- was the most famous European composer between Guillaume Dufay and Palestrina, and is usually considered to be the central figure of the Franco-Flemish School. Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music, which was emerging during his lifetime.

Franz Biebl: Ave Maria

Franz Xaver Biebl (1906-2001) was a German composer of classical music. Most of his compositions were for choral ensembles. Biebl's best-known work is his Ave Maria (1964), which sets portions of the Angelus as well as the Ave Maria. The piece was brought to the United States by the Cornell University Glee Club in 1970.  The Ave Maria quickly gained popularity. Although it was originally scored for male voices, after Ave Maria became popular, the composer himself rearranged the piece for SATB and SSA choirs.

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Morten Lauridsen: O Magnum Mysterium

Morten Johannes Lauridsen (born February 27, 1943) is an American composer of Danish descent. A National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), he was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale (1994–2001) and has been a professor of composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for more than 30 years. Lauridsen's choral compositions, including seven choral cycles and a series of sacred a cappella motets, are featured regularly in concerts worldwide. In particular, O Magnum Mysterium, Contre Qui, Rose and Dirait-on (from Les Chansons des Roses), and O Nata Lux (from Lux Aeterna) have become popular items in the choral repertoire.

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Padre Martini: Domine, ad Adjuvandum Me, Festina

Giovanni Battista Martini (1706-1784), also known as Padre Martini, was an Italian musician born at Bologna. His father, a violinist, taught him the elements of music and the violin. Later he learned singing, playing the harpsichord, and counterpoint. Martini received his education in classics from the fathers of the oratory of San Filippo Neri, then entered into a novitiate at the Franciscan monastery at Lago and became a Franciscan friar in 1722.

Jackson Berkey: Arma Lucis

Jackson Berkey was born May 24, 1942, in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. He began playing the piano at age 5. After graduating from high school in 1960, Berkey briefly attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, then at Wilkes College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor's degree in piano performance.  He received a master's degree in piano performance from Juilliard in 1968. Many of Berkey's compositions are songs, cantatas, and other works for vocal ensembles of men, women, and mixed choirs. Currently, Berkey is composing a series of nocturnes that cover all 24 major and minor keys.

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A. Scarlatti: Exultate Deo

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera.  Alessandro Scarlatti's music forms an important link between the early Baroque Italian vocal styles of the 17th century, with their centers in Florence, Venice and Rome, and the classical school of the 18th century, which culminated in Mozart.

Fred Gramann: Still, Still With Thee

Fred Gramann is a native of Washington state. He earned organ performance degrees from Syracuse University and the University of Michigan, moving to Paris in 1972 for organ study with Marie-Claire Alain and Maurice Duruflé. Since 1976, he has been Director of Music at the American Church in Paris where he is organist and conducts vocal and bell choirs.

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J. P. Sweelinck: Hodie

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621), Dutch organist and composer, was one of the principal figures in the development of organ music before J.S. Bach. Although he composed much sacred and secular vocal music in the polyphonic traditions of France and the Netherlands (including the Chansons, the Cantiones sacrae, and settings of the Psalms), Sweelinck was chiefly known as an organist and keyboard composer.

Bob Chilcott: Where Riches Is Everlastingly

Bob Chilcott is one of the most active composers and choral conductors in Britain today. He has been involved in choral music most of his life, as a chorister in the choir of King's College, Cambridge, then a Choral Scholar at King’s, and between 1985 and 1997 a member of the British vocal group The King's Singers. He has been a full-time composer since 1997. Chilcott has conducted his own works at Market Square Church with the choirs of Market Square and Pine Street Presbyterian churches.

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Moses Hogan: I’m Gonna Sing ‘Til the Spirit Moves in My Heart
Moses George Hogan (1957-2003) was an African-American composer and arranger of choral music. He was best known for his very popular and accessible settings of spirituals. Hogan was a pianist, conductor, and arranger of international renown. His works are often performed by high school, college, church, community, and professional choirs around the globe.