Past Event: Yale Schola Cantorum | O schöne Nacht – Romantic Songs of Love and Nature

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Vier Quartette, Op. 92, Johannes Brahms
Yale Schola Cantorum

1. O schöne Nacht
2. Spätherbst
3. Abendlied
4. Warum?

Drei gemischte Chöre, Clara Schumann
Yale Voxtet

1. Abendfeier in Venedig
2. Vorwärts
3. Gondoliera

Selections from the Waltzes, Op. 39, for piano four hands, Brahms

Gartenlieder, Op. 3, Fanny Hensel
Yale Voxtet

1. Hörst du nicht die Bäume rauschen
2. Schöne Fremde
3. Im Herbste
4. Morgengruss
5. Abendlich schon rauscht der Wald
6. Im Wald

Viel dopperch¨örige Gesänge, Op. 141, Robert Schumann
Yale Schola Cantorum

1. An die Sterne
2. Ungewisses Licht
3. Zuversicht
4. Talismane

Liebeslieder-Walzer, Op. 52, Brahms
Yale Schola Cantorum & Voxtet

1. Rede, Mädchen
2. Am Gesteine rauscht die Flut
3. O die Frauen – Patrick McGill & Benjamin Ferriby
4. Wie des Abends schöne Rote – Christina “C” Han & Molly McGuire
5. Die grüne Hopfenranke
6. Ein kleiner, hübscher Vogel – Matthew Newhouse
7. Wohl schön bewandt war es – Christina “C” Han
8. Wenn so lind dein Auge mir
9. Am Donaustrande
10. O wie Sanft
11. Nein, es ist nicht auszukommen
12. Schlosser, auf, und mache Schlösser
13. Vögelein durchrauscht die Luft – Christina “C” Han & Molly McGuire
14. Sieh, wie ist die Welle klar – Matthew Newhouse & Jared Swope
15. Nachtigall, sie singt so schön
16. Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe
17. Nicht wandle, mein Licht – Patrick McGill
18. Es bebet das Gestr¨¨auche

Johannes Brahms, Vier Quartette, Op. 92:

Composed in the summer of 1884, these four short, beguiling lyrics are suffused with imagery of nature and love. The prevailing mood is mellow and benign; only the second piece, “Spätherbst” (Late autumn), hints at the ineluctable decay that awaits us all. That song’s brooding E-minor tonality overshadows the lustrous E major of “O schöne Nacht” (Oh lovely night), even as its gloomy text foreshadows the poet’s allusion to “pain that oppress’d me” in “Abendlied” (Evening song). In “Warum?” (Why?), Brahms answers Goethe’s peremptory interrogation of the purpose of human life with a lilting paean to the stars and the gods. Brahms was reportedly “in the best of spirits” after hearing the Vier Quartette (Four quartets) premiered by the Krefeld Singverein in January 1885. A contemporary memoirist painted an idyllic picture of the composer’s outing to the Lower Rhine with a group of friends: “In the village street that follows the river’s course, children were playing and Brahms delighted them with candies that he magically produced out of his coat pocket… . The concert had been very successful and the lovely sun-drenched countryside delighted these lovers of nature.” 

To be sure, nature wasn’t the only thing on the fifty-one-year-old Brahms’s mind that midwinter day. Before visiting Krefeld, he had spent Christmas in Leipzig with his long-time artistic confidante Elisabet von Herzogenberg and her husband. Brahms’s soft spot for “Lisl” was an open secret, though a mutual friend, the British composer Ethyl Smyth, insisted that his attitude toward his former piano pupil was purely “reverential, admiring, and affectionate, without a tinge of amorousness.” Lisl had once chided Brahms about setting off-color texts that were suitable only for folk songs. In the manuscript of “O schöne Nacht,” beside the words “The boy steals quietly to his beloved,” the flirtatious composer penned a mischievous riposte: “Stop, dear Johannes, what are you doing! At best one may speak of such things in ‘folk songs,’ which you have unfortunately forgotten again!” 

Clara Schumann, Drei gemischte Chöre:

A great pianist as well as a distinguished composer, Clara Schumann led the stressful double life that was the common lot of gifted women in her day. Equally devoted to her family and her music, she managed to rear eight children even as her brilliant but increasingly erratic husband, Robert, slowly succumbed to mental illness. In the 1840s, when the Schumanns lived in Dresden, Clara volunteered her services as pianist for the local choral society that Robert directed. Although he encouraged his wife’s work as a composer, it was on the tacit understanding that his career took precedence over hers. Indeed, the Drei gemischte Chöre (Three mixed choruses) of 1848 were among the last pieces she wrote; a brief, final spurt of creative activity was cut short by Robert’s death in 1856. Like most of Clara’s music, the choruses were neither published nor widely performed until long after her death.

Schumann’s interest in vocal music had deep roots. In addition to her early training as a pianist, she studied with the renowned tenor and singing teacher Johann Aloys Miksch, and her love of Lieder—she published her first art song at age fifteen—helped cement the bond with her future husband. Written as a thirty-eighth-birthday present for Robert, the three choruses celebrate both the Christian virtues of piety, faith, and perseverance and the worldly, sensual pleasures of young love. The hymnlike strains of “Abendfeier in Venedig” (Evening celebration in Venice) and the invigorating march rhythms of “Vorwärts” (Onward) make an effective foil to the seductive, triple-time lilt of “Gondoliera” (Gondola song). All three poems are by Emanuel Geibel, Germany’s foremost lyricist in the mid-nineteenth century; his Spanisches Liederbuch was later set to music by Hugo Wolf.

Fanny Hensel, Gartenlieder, Op. 3:

Long eclipsed by her brother, Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Hensel has belatedly come to be recognized as an estimable composer in her own right. Unlike Clara Schumann, who subordinated her career to that of her husband, Fanny produced a steady stream of works both before and after her marriage to the Prussian court painter Wilhelm Hensel in 1829. The fashionable musical salon that she established at the family home in Berlin provided a venue for performances of her music, sheltered from the harsh glare of publicity. The fact that Fanny brought out her earliest songs under Felix’s name—in the Mendelssohns’ social circle it was considered unseemly for a married woman to pursue a professional career—fostered a lingering perception of her music as derivative. Yet the intimate emotional bond between sister and brother was fortified by mutual respect. As Fanny put it, Felix “has no other musical adviser than me, and he never commits anything to paper without showing it to me first for my examination.” 

Composed in 1846, the six part-songs that comprise Hensel’s Gartenlieder (Garden songs) exemplify a musical genre beloved of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and many other nature-worshipping German composers of the nineteenth century. The very title of the set suggests performance in the open air, or possibly in the frescoed garden room behind the Mendelssohns’ mansion, where Fanny held her celebrated Sunday musicales. The brevity and intimacy of the Lied suited Hensel, who confessed that she lacked “the ability to sustain ideas properly and give them the needed consistency.” The musicologist R. Larry Todd describes Gartenlieder as a miniature song cycle that charts a “trajectory from night to day, from dreamlike recollections of spring to the erupting arrival of the season.” With their simple, mostly syllabic word settings and clear, uncomplicated homophonic textures, the songs abound in unpretentious felicities. Listen, for example, for the sudden switch from triple to duple meter in “Schöne Fremde” (Beautiful foreign land), signaling a return from reverie to reality; or for the sopranos’ billowing melisma on the word Rauschen (rustling) in “Im Wald” (In the forest). 

Robert Schumann, Vier doppelchörige Gesänge, Op. 141:

Robert Schumann’s contribution to the Lieder genre is widely known, his choral music less so. Yet he wrote a substantial body of part-songs in the 1840s and 1850s, most of it arising from his activities as choral conductor in Leipzig, Dresden, and Düsseldorf. The Vier doppelchörige Gesänge (Four songs for double chorus) date from late 1849, which Schumann considered the most fruitful year of his entire career. In a burst of euphoria, he wrote to the editor of Germany’s leading music magazine: “I fail to see the nonrecognition from which I am supposed to suffer. Appreciation often falls to my lot in full measure; your journal provides many instances. Another practical but very convincing proof is offered by the publishers, who show a certain desire for my compositions, and pay high prices for them.” Then, perhaps wary of tempting fate, he added: “Where is the composer whose fame is universal? Where is the work—were it even of divine origin—universally acknowledged as sacred?”

Compared to cosmopolitan Leipzig, Dresden—where the Schumanns lived from 1844 to 1850—was something of a musical backwater. Apart from the court opera, led by a young firebrand named Richard Wagner, it boasted few musical institutions of note, and its solidly bourgeois, Biedermeier culture favored the production of amateur-grade Hausmusik. Schumann probably wrote his Opus 141 for the community choir he formed soon after arriving in the Saxon city. Each of the first three songs addresses a familiar Romantic trope: the promise of heavenly peace (“An die Sterne,” [To the stars]), love-death (“Ungewisses Licht” [Uncertain light]), and the restorative power of love (“Zuversicht” [Assurance]). Schumann treats the two four-voice choruses as distinct entities, by turns alternating and massing them to vary the musical rhetoric and texture. The religious theme of “Talismane” (Talismans) elicited a different response from him. Schumann had previously set Goethe’s poem as a solo song but evidently felt he had more to say, for the choral setting is significantly longer and more complex. Each of the three verses receives a distinct musical treatment, culminating in an intricate fugue that describes the erring soul’s return to the path of righteousness.

Johannes Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer, Op. 52:

Buoyed by the success of his popular keyboard waltzes, Op. 39, of 1865, Brahms followed up with two sets of Liebeslieder-Walzer (Love-song waltzes) between 1869 and 1874. The first, Opus 52, was an unabashedly commercial enterprise. Although Brahms scored the eighteen waltzes for one to four voices and four-hand piano, his publisher cannily advertised the vocal parts as optional in a bid to boost sales. Musically, Brahms’s point of departure was the waltzes of Schubert and Strauss, but it’s his attachment to the Schumanns’ twenty-four-year-old daughter that provides the emotional subtext of these miniature love songs. When Clara told him that Julie was engaged to an Italian count in the spring of 1869, the composer stormed out of the house and plunged into a prolonged sulk. Later he made his feelings for the young woman clear in his deeply felt Alto Rhapsodie, which he described as a “bridal song” but Clara recognized as “neither more nor less than the expression of his own heart’s anguish.”

Brahms gleaned the texts of the Liebeslieder-Walzer from an anthology of folk poetry edited by the philosopher-poet Georg Friedrich Daumer. The subjects represent variations on the theme of requited and unrequited love, a tried-and-true formula that Brahms invests with a freshness of feeling undoubtedly born of his own experience. Despite the formal simplicity of the waltzes—all but number 6 are in binary song form (ABA)—Brahms’s treatment of harmony, phrase lengths, and rhythmic and melodic structure is as sophisticated as his piano accompaniments. He and Clara Schumann shared keyboard duties at the premiere of the Op. 52 set in Vienna on January 5, 1870.

Notes © by Harry Haskell

A former performing arts editor for Yale University Press, Harry Haskell is a program annotator for Carnegie Hall in New York, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, and other venues, and the author of several books, including The Early Music Revival: A History and Maiden Flight.

David Hill principal conductor

Laura Adam manager

Maura Tuffy student manager

Singers:  

Soprano

• Carolyn Craig   M.M.A. ’22 (Organ)
• Cora Marieke Hagens    B.A. ’24 (Environmental studies)
• Christina “C” Han*   M.M. ’23 (Early Music Voice)
• Anna Lee    M.M.A. ’23 (Violin)
• Charlotte Lucke   Ph.D. ’23 (Economics)
• Phoebe Oler   M.Div. ’22 (Anglican Studies)
• Maura Tuffy      M.M.A. ’22 (Choral Conducting)
• Yiran Zhao     M.M. ’23 (Choral Conducting)
•  

Alto

• Rhianna Cockrell  M.M.A. ’21 (Early Music Voice)
• Jacqueline Kaskel   B.A. ’24 (Undeclared)?
• Molly McGuire*   M.M. ’23 (Early Music Voice)
• Camilla Tassi   M.F.A. ’22 (Projection Design)
• Gloria Yin   M.M. ’22 (Choral Conducting)
•  

Tenor

• Collin Edouard  Ph.D. ’27 (Ethnomusicology)
• Michael Lukin  M.M. ’22 (Choral Conducting)
• Patrick McGill*  M.M.A. ’22 (Early Music Voice)
• Sydney Mukasa  M.M. ’22 (Choral Conducting)
• Matthew Newhouse*  M.M. ’23 (Early Music Voice)
• Ryan Rogers   M.M. ’23 (Choral Conducting)

Bass

• Benjamin Beckman  B.A. ’24 (Music, Classics)
• Benjamin Ferriby*  M.M. ‘22 (Early Music Voice)
• Harrison Hintzsche   M.M. ’20 (Early Music Voice)
• Mattias Lundberg  M.M. ’22 (Choral Conducting)
• Henry M. Quillian IV  Ph.D. ’25 (Neuroscience)
• Jared Swope*  M.M. ’23 (Early Music Voice)
• Joel Thompson   D.M.A. ’26 (Composition)
• *Member of Yale Voxtet

Instramentalists:   

• Salome Jordania piano
• Anthony Ratinov piano

David Hill: David Hill has a long and distinguished career as one of the leading conductors in Europe. He has held appointments as chief conductor of the BBC Singers, musical director of the Bach Choir, chief conductor of the Southern Sinfonia, music director of Leeds Philharmonic Society, and associate guest conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

In the 2019 New Year’s Honours for services to music, Hill was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). He has also been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Southampton, an honorary Fellowship of the Royal School of Church Music, and an honorary membership to the Royal Academy of Music. He has been Master of the Music at Winchester and Westminster Cathedrals, music director of the Waynflete Singers, artistic director of the Philharmonia Chorus, and director of music at St. John’s College, Cambridge.  

Guest conducting credits include some of the leading musical ensembles of Europe: the London Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Choir, and the RIAS Kammerchor, Berlin. Hill also maintains an active career as organist and pianist in recitals worldwide.

With over one hundred recordings to his credit, Hill has performed virtually every style and period in the choral repertoire from Gregorian chant to Renaissance polyphony, from Baroque oratorios to modern masterpieces for chorus and orchestra. He has commissioned dozens of works from leading composers of today, including Judith Bingham, Francis Pott, Patrick Gowers, Sir John Tavener, Philip Wilby, and Jonathan Dove. 

At Yale University, Hill serves as principal conductor of Yale Schola Cantorum, and participates in the training of choral conducting majors with Jeffrey Douma and André Thomas.

Yale Schola Cantorum: Yale Schola Cantorum a chamber choir that performs sacred music from the sixteenth century to the present day in concert settings and choral services around the world. It is sponsored by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and conducted by David Hill; Masaaki Suzuki is principal guest conductor. Open by audition to students from all departments and professional schools across Yale University, the choir has a special interest in historically informed performance practice, often in collaboration with instrumentalists from Juilliard415.

Schola was founded in 2003 by Simon Carrington. In recent years, the choir has also sung under the direction of internationally renowned conductors Marcus Creed, Matthew Halls, Simon Halsey, Paul Hillier, Stephen Layton, Sir Neville Marriner, Nicholas McGegan, James O’Donnell, Stefan Parkman, Krzysztof Penderecki, Helmuth Rilling, and Dale Warland. In addition to performing regularly in New Haven and New York, the ensemble records and tours nationally and internationally. Most recently, Hyperion released Schola Cantorum performing a chamber version of the Brahms Requiem and recordings of the music of Roderick Williams, Tawnie Olson, and Reena Esmail. Schola’s 2018 recording on the Hyperion label featuring Palestrina’s Missa Confitebor tibi Domine has garnered enthusiastic reviews. A live recording of Heinrich Biber’s 1693 Vesperae longiores ac breviores with Robert Mealy and Yale Collegium Musicum received international acclaim from the early music press, as have subsequent CDs of J. S. Bach’s rarely heard 1725 version of the St. John Passion and Antonio Bertali’s Missa resurrectionis. A recording on the Naxos label of Mendelssohn and Bach Magnificats was released in 2009. On tour, Schola Cantorum has given performances in England, Hungary, France, China, South Korea, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Japan, Singapore, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, India, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway.

Rhianna Cockrell: Rhianna Cockrell, mezzo-soprano, has captivated audiences with her interpretations of Renaissance and Baroque works as well as her passion for contemporary works. She earned her master of musical arts in early music voice performance from the Yale School of Music, where she performed as alto soloist in works by Telemann and Schütz with Masaaki Suzuki and the Yale Schola Cantorum and in Handel’s Messiah with the Yale Glee Club. She won the Colorado Bach Ensemble’s 2020 Young Artist Competition and an encouragement award in the 2021 Audrey Rooney Bach Competition. As a champion of contemporary music, Cockrell appeared in Nasty Women Connecticut’s 2021 online art exhibition Silent Fire in a performance of Joel Thompson’s After, as well as in Prototype Opera’s 2021 virtual festival in Thompson’s Clairvoyance. She also recently premiered Amelia Brey’s the night i died again, which she commissioned for her degree recital at Yale. Her 2021–2022 season includes covering the alto soloist in Handel’s Messiah with Apollo’s Fire and performances with The Thirteen, the Oregon Bach Festival Choir, The New Consort, and Grammy-nominated ensemble True Concord Voices & Orchestra. Cockrell holds degrees from George Mason University (BM), University of Minnesota (MM), and Yale University (MMA).

Benjamin Ferriby: Bass-baritone Benjamin Ferriby developed an early appreciation for choral music during his boy chorister years with the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys in New York City, then directed by John G. Scott. As a high school senior he sang with the Yale Camerata and the Camerata Chamber Singers under the direction of Marguerite L. Brooks. Ferriby earned a bachelor of music degree at DePauw University, where he also minored in Italian language studies. A New Haven native, Ferriby hopes that his Connecticut-located family can attend some of his performances.

Christina “C” Han: Christina “C” Han is a Korean-American soprano, keyboardist, and researcher specializing in early Western art music and the music of living, “global” composers. Born and raised in Queens, New York, they attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan. They earned a bachelor of music in vocal performance from Westminster Choir College, studying with Margaret Cusack. A chorister and a creative recitalist, Han is at Yale to actively move the classical music scene away from its white supremacist and capitalist ideologies toward a safer space for people of color and other marginalized individuals, specifically, queer, non-Christian, transgender, neurodivergent, disabled, and unhoused people.

Salome Jordania: Pianist Salmone Jordania is a native of Tbilisi, Georgia. She earned her undergraduate degree at the Juilliard School and is currently an MMA student at the Yale School of Music, studying with Boris Berman. She has played solo concerts as well as chamber and orchestral performances around the world. In 2021, Jordania won multiple prizes at the José Iturbi International competition in Spain and the Georges Cziffra Award in Austria. Most recently, she won the New York Concert Artists Worldwide Debut competition, which will result in a debut recital at the Berlin Philharmonie in 2022.

Patrick McGill: American tenor Patrick McGill has been hailed as having a “clear, round intonation” and “a gorgeous sound” (Chronicle Journal). He has been a summer fellow at Tanglewood and Banff, and has sung at the Montreal Symphony House, Salle Bourgie and Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier in Montreal, the National Arts Centre in Ottowa, Palais Montcalm in Québec, and Carnegie Hall. Although his focus has been early music, McGill’s performance career has encompassed opera, art song, oratorio, and chamber music. Past performances include Lurcanio in Handel’s Ariodante, Candide in Bernstein’s Candide, Normanno in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, tenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah and Israel in Egypt, Torquemada in Ravel’s L’heure espagnole, and Gabriel von Eisenstein in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. McGill received his BM in vocal performance from the Boston Conservatory and his MM in early music performance from McGill University, where he studied with Ben Heppner and John Mac Master.

Molly McGuire: Hailing from Bellingham, Washington, mezzo-soprano Molly McGuire is an enthusiastic performer of all styles of classical voice repertoire. As a recent resident of Boston she has performed regularly with et al., the Cantata Singers, and the Choir of King’s Chapel as both a chorus member and soloist. Outside of Boston, McGuire has performed with the VOCES8 Foundation, Bach Akademie Charlotte, Quintessence Choral Festival in Albuquerque, and the Des Moines Choral Festival. Recent performances include a staged production of The Play of Daniel with the Boston Camerata and Handel’s Solomon with Cantata Singers.

Matthew Newhouse: Tenor Matthew Newhouse recently debuted at Carnegie Hall as winner of the Semper Pro Musica competition. He was also winner of the 2019 Texoma NATS regional competition. Newhouse participated in the VOCES8 USA Scholar Programme and served as a teaching artist at the 2019 Quintessence Summer Choral Festival. He performed Bach’s Magnificat with the Baylor Symphony Orchestra and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with the New Mexico Philharmonic. Newhouse is inspired by Icelandic and Danish art song and strives to incorporate the repertoire into the classical music canon. Originally from Conroe, Texas, he earned his bachelor’s degree from Baylor University.

Anthony Ratinov: Anthony Ratinov began playing piano at the age of four under the teaching of his grandmother, Edit Ratinova, who taught at the renowned Gnessin Music School in Moscow. He recently earned first prize at the 2021 Canada International Artists Piano Competition and the Pianists’ Award at the Austrian International Summer Academy. He is currently a master’s student at the Yale School of Music, studying with Boris Berman. Ratinov earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale College, where he majored in chemical engineering and studied piano with Wei-Yi Yang.

Jared Swope: Acclaimed for having a voice “perfectly suited to Baroque music” (KCMetropolis), baritone Jared Swope sings in a multitude of genres spanning early music, contemporary choral, oratorio, opera, and more. Recent solo engagements include Bach’s cantata Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme with CORO Vocal Artists and Mass in B Minor with the JSB Ensemble, Handel’s Messiah with the Spire Chamber Ensemble, and Telemann’s Johannespassion with the JSB Ensemble. Swope has performed internationally with conductors Helmuth Rilling, Jos van Veldhoven, and Hans-Christoph Rademann. He can also be heard on recordings of Michael John Trotta’s Seven Last Words and Chorosynthesis’s Empowering Silenced Voices.

Maura Tuffy: Conductor and soprano Maura Tuffy currently serves as principal assistant conductor of the Yale Camerata under the direction of André Thomas. As a soloist, she has performed with groups such as the USC Thornton Wind Ensemble and USC Thornton Percussion Ensemble. Tuffy was one of eight conductors selected to participate in the 2019 national ACDA Undergraduate Conducting Masterclass. Tuffy earned her bachelor’s degrees in vocal arts and choral music from the University of Southern California. She holds a master of music in choral conducting from the Yale School of Music and is currently pursuing a master of musical arts, also at Yale.