Artists and Musicians

Walt Whitman, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Vaughan Williams' Personal Plea for Peace: Dona Nobis Pacem

Background on Dona Nobis Pacem Submitted by Charles Bihler

As the American Civil War was beginning Walt Whitman published his poem “Beat! Beat! Drums!” as a patriotic rally call for the North.  Reading a casualty list, he thought he spied his brother on it and decided to head South to find him if her were alive (He was indeed alive and only superficially wounded.) 

A friend got him a part time job in the army paymaster’s office in Washington DC, leaving time for Whitman to volunteer as a nurse in the army hospitals.  This experience produced a vivid poem, “Drum Taps” in 1865.  It was followed by a poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln entitled “O Captain! My Captain!” which has extremely popular and contributed to his newfound fame.

The poetry of Whitman became somewhat of an obsession of the young Vaughan Williams whose first setting of Whitman, from “Leaves of Grass,” was the text of his first symphony, A Sea Symphony.  This was followed by other settings, culminating in Dona Nobis Pacem.  Asked about his use of many Whitman texts, Vaughan Williams said “I just can’t get him out of my mind.” 

Certainly, Whitman’s war poetry contributed to the development of the young Vaughan Williams as a pacifist.  But service in the Great War was required, and he became an ambulance driver.  As much time as
he spent in bringing the sick and wounded to hospital, he spent an equal amount bringing in the dead, as well as untold parts of soldiers.  

Vaughan Williams has been described as either an agnostic or an atheist.  He was nevertheless one of the greatest composers of sacred music during the twentieth century. Dona Nobis Pacem is a personal plea for peace composed in 1936, when war again clouded the horizon in Europe.  It is a powerful synthesis of the experiences of a deeply and richly led life.

Mahler: Eugene Ormandy to Jung-Ho Pak

The Cape Cod Symphony will present Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony for its fiftieth anniversary concert on May 5 and 6, with a chorus composed of members of the Chatham Chorale and the Falmouth Chorale. Charles Bihler shares how Mahler’s great work touched him as a teenager, and continues to sustain him on a musical (and romantic!) journey from Eugene Ormandy to Jung-Ho Pak. 

It was the fall of 1956 and the Rutgers University Choir was beginning a new season. As a freshman the previous year, I leapt from an average high school choir experience to the thrill of participating in two concerts with the Baltimore Symphony, the second of which was Carl Orff’s lusty Carmina Burana─ an appropriate sing for a testosterone-ridden boy. I was giddy in this new world of choral-orchestral masterpieces. 

In a conversation with my choir director, I ventured that nothing could top the Carmina experience.  I was immediately dispatched to the Music House record library where I listened dutifully to Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, also known as the Resurrection Symphony. A few months later, we were to perform the symphony with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Eugene Ormandy.  Little did I know that the encounter in the record library would be the start of an exciting and lasting relationship with Gustav Mahler and his stirring musical portrayal of the human experience. It is a relationship that contributed immensely to my maturation as a person and that has nurtured Catherine’s and my music-filled marriage. 

Mahler’s world included popular German poetry, dating back as far as the Middle Ages.  According to Mahler’s pupil, Bruno Walter, it was a world “of fair maidens and errant knights, of forlorn sentinels and ghostly drummers, of moon lit castles and bewitched forests, of love’s joy and sorrow.”  I was drawn into that world as I sat in the chorus bleachers for the Philadelphia Orchestra performance, and again the following year at Carnegie Hall when I attended Bruno Walter’s last concert as a conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Two unforgettable performances followed years later with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic and with William Steinberg and the Pittsburg Symphony. 

For those who are not familiar with the Resurrection Symphony, it has a design in common with the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven.  It is a long work, with several movements. In the last, the chorus rises to provide a building-rattling climax with words from Friedrich Gottlob Klopstock's ode Die Auferstehung (The Resurrection). The ode ends with the words, “I shall die to live.  You will rise again, my heart, in a moment and be borne up, through struggle, to God!” 

Years after my teenage encounter with Mahler, Catherine and I, both now single and dating, discovered that Mahler’s second symphony was our favorite piece of music.  Catherine had never sung it, which was unsurprising since performances are quite rare given the enormous resources required. 

As we approached our tenth wedding anniversary, I read that Zubin Mehta, one of Catherine’s favorite conductors, was bringing the Israel Philharmonic to Carnegie Hall to perform the work.  The idea for an anniversary gift hit me like lightning.  I called the vocal contractor who had Catherine in her little black book, but found that she was not hiring the chorus (the New York Choral Artists) for that concert.  She did know the contractor to contact.  A few favors were exchanged, and we were added to the chorus.  It was a gift I could never again equal. 

To sing the Resurrection is a visceral experience.  The September 2004 performance with the Cape Cod Symphony under Royston Nash was Catherine’s and my first singing experience together on Cape Cod and it seemed likely to be the last Mahler we would sing in our lifetimes.  Now, to our delight, the occasion has arrived to sing this great Mahler work with the Cape Cod Symphony under the direction of Jung Ho Pak.

After a lifetime of singing, I can still never get over the experience of singing this emotional, mystical, colorful, and powerful work.   If you hear or sing it for the first time in May, I hope you will feel the same.

Charles Bihler is Membership Chair of the Chatham Chorale, and husband of the gifted soprano Catherine Bihler.

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My Journey with Saint Nicolas

by ArtistsAndMusicians guest writer Charles Bihler

The story that follows is, at once, a confession, a description of personal discovery, and a morality tale. It is also the story of how I rejected, and ultimately fell in love with, Benjamin Britten’s “St. Nicolas.”

In 1985, when my wife Kate and I moved from New Jersey to Connecticut, we attended the Christmas concert of the Greenwich Choral Society, which became a singing home for me for nearly fifteen years.  The director, Richard Vogt, was a veteran of the Robert Shaw Chorale, a local legend, and a character who veered from tyrannical outbursts and demands to inspired sweetness and joy.  Dick was an anglophile and a personal acquaintance of England’s great composer-tenor duo, Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. In fact, the year prior to our joining, the Greenwich Choral Society had appeared at the famous Aldeburgh Festival, founded by Britten and Pears.  

Dick had strong ideas about programming. One might say that he was a genius at it, yet his plans for concerts were as stress-inducing as they were imaginative.  Examples abound. The fire department did not take well to the life-sized plastic horse and carriage that made its way down the center aisle of the church in 1986. I too had my doubts. Was Dick’s non-negotiable demand for an actual Native American tribe for the performance of the “Huron Carol” the product of an altogether sane man? 

Some years into my tenure with the chorus, I headed a committee charged with examining Dick’s proposals for the following season.  Dick’s Christmas concert proposal at the time included one of his personal favorites, Benjamin Britten’s “Saint Nicolas.”

Upon hearing the work for the first time on an old LP record, I concluded, in my brashness, that the choice was one more piece of evidence that Dick was mad.  Much of the piece struck me as very modern and strident in sound. I advised Dick that there had to be a better choice. Dick selected an alternative, and the program for the following year featured, instead, Vaughan-Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem.

Dick later died, suddenly, of heart failure. Saddened by the loss, I also had an unsettled feeling. Was it because Dick was not feeling up to par that he had allowed my programming choice to prevail?

My uneasiness was compounded when I was the first to ascend Dick’s podium after his death. I conducted rehearsals for our next concert, which was to be held in a huge park on the Greenwich waterfront under the baton of composer-conductor-teacher Alice Parker. I left the rehearsal podium with renewed inspiration to return to the choral conducting classroom after an absence of more than two decades.

Ultimately, the chorus elected Paul Mueller of New York City to be the new director. The new director in place, and my angst at red-lining “St. Nicolas” beginning to fade, I was in for a new and sobering shock: Paul’s choice for his debut performance was none other than “St. Nicolas!” 

I am basically a Bach to Mahler man, but I have increasing respect for the 20^th Century genius who created “St. Nicolas.” It has been a long journey but, over the years, I have become increasingly convinced that it is the inherent power to move people that distinguishes great music. And “St. Nicolas” has this power. 

Nicolas’s world was a brutal one. His good works were marshaled against, and triumphed over, many of the horrible conditions of his age, such as selling children into slavery and worse. Britten chose to tell Nicolas’s story in all its unsavory and inspiring reality, and he wrote music that communicates both the darkness and the light in a direct and immediate way. 

Now, you may be able to imagine my amazement when, in 2010, the new director of the Chatham Chorale, Joe Marchio, announced that he wanted to present “Saint Nicolas” in his second year. Through this 2010-11 rehearsal season, my appreciation for the piece has grown still further, and I know that others in the Chorale have had the same experience. The three “pickled boys” come alive for me in a way that they never could through the conventions of Baroque or Romantic music. And, yes, the music grips me sufficiently that I have awakened at 3:00 a.m. with the music of Nicolas marching to rescue those pickled boys ringing in my head!

But, still, I draw the line. No horses, plastic or otherwise, and no Indian tribes!

Charles Bihler holds a BA in Music from Rutgers College and an EdM in Music from Rutgers University. His lifelong love of music led him into both teaching and choral conducting, and he has been an amateur and professional chorister for more than fifty years. A passionate believer that “great musical culture is not yet dead,” Charles founded Crescent Concerts in Plainfield, NJ, and served as President of NJ Schola Cantorum. He sings with the Chatham Chorale and serves as its Membership Chair.

Charles Bihler on the Ninth

This article contains insights and information from Charles Bihler, pictured  here (third from left in photo) as he sings with the Chatham Chorale. Charles will be one of approximately 150 voices in the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony performance at Christ the King Church in Mashpee on Tuesday, May 10, at 8 pm. And he writes for his fellow performers, who are working hard to master this famously demanding piece.

 

For those who think the work is a killer, look at the contents of the first performance from the point of view of the chorus:

The Ninth Symphony was premiered on May 7, 1824 in the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, along with the “Consecreation of the House Overture” and the first three parts of the Missa Solemnis. This was the composer's first on-stage appearance in 12 years; the hall was packed.

Based on the testimony of the participants, there are suggestions that it was under-rehearsed (there were only two full rehearsals) and rather scrappy in execution. On the other hand, the premiere was a great success. Beethoven directed the piece himself; that is, he stood before the lectern and gesticulated furiously. At times he rose, at other times he shrank to the ground, he moved as if he wanted to play all the instruments himself and sing for the whole chorus. Fortunately, the musicians tended to watch the conductor instead.

The last movement.

There is actually a “program” to the last movement, or better said, an evaluation of the previous three movements in light of the composer’s intention of creating a sublime statement in the last movement.

In the last movement, the cellos and basses play the role of narrator and evaluator.  It begins with an introduction, which starts with a stormy passage. It then briefly quotes all three of the previous movements in order, each dismissed by the cellos and basses which then play in an instrumental foreshadowing of the “Ode to Joy” vocal recitative. At the introduction of the main theme, the cellos and basses take it up and play it through, with obvious great satisfaction, as opposed to their opinions of the first three movements.

The main theme forms the basis of a series of variations for orchestra alone.  The introduction is then repeated, this time with the bass soloist singing the recitatives previously suggested by cellos and basses.  The main theme again undergoes variations, this time for vocal soloists and chorus.

For this writer, half the fun of the last movement is the dialog between the cellos/basses and the orchestra, settling with enthusiasm on the new theme.

Vocal parts

Those words written specifically by Beethoven (rather than Schiller) are shown in italics.

German original[11]	English translation
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! Sondern laßt uns angenehmere an stimmen, und freudenvollere. Freude! (men's chorus: Freude! ) Freude! (chorus again: Freude! )	Oh friends, not these tones! Rather, let us raise our voices in more pleasing And more joyful sounds! Joy! (Joy!) Joy! (Joy!)
Freude, schöner Götterfunken* Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum! Deine Zauber binden wieder Was die Mode streng geteilt; Alle Menschen werden Brüder, Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.	Joy, beautiful spark of divinity* Daughter of Elysium, We enter, drunk with fire, Into your sanctuary, heavenly (daughter)! Your magic reunites What custom strictly divided. All men become brothers, Where your gentle wing rests.
Wem der große Wurf gelungen, Eines Freundes Freund zu sein; Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, Mische seinen Jubel ein! Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund! Und wer's nie gekonnt, der stehle Weinend sich aus diesem Bund!	Whoever has had the great fortune To be a friend's friend, Whoever has won a devoted wife, Join in our jubilation! Indeed, whoever can call even one soul, His own on this earth! And whoever was never able to, must creep Tearfully away from this band!
Freude trinken alle Wesen An den Brüsten der Natur; Alle Guten, alle Bösen Folgen ihrer Rosenspur. Küsse gab sie uns und Reben, Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod; Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben, Und der Cherub steht vor Gott. Vor Gott!	Joy all creatures drink At the breasts of nature; All good, all bad Follow her trail of roses. Kisses she gave us, and wine, A friend, proved in death; Pleasure was given to the worm, And the cherub stands before God. Before God!
Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen Durch des Himmels prächt'gen Plan, Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn, Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.	Glad, as His suns fly Through the Heaven's glorious design, Run, brothers, your path, Joyful, as a hero to victory.
Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! Brüder, über'm Sternenzelt Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen. Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen? Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt? Such' ihn über'm Sternenzelt! Über Sternen muss er wohnen.	Be embraced, millions! This kiss for the whole world! Brothers, above the starry canopy Must a loving Father dwell. Do you bow down, millions? Do you sense the Creator, world? Seek Him beyond the starry canopy! Beyond the stars must He dwell.
Finale repeats the words: Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! Brüder, über'm Sternenzelt Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen. Seid umschlungen, Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! Freude, schöner Götterfunken Tochter aus Elysium, Freude, schöner Götterfunken Götterfunken!	Finale repeats the words: Be embraced, you millions! This kiss for the whole world! Brothers, beyond the star-canopy Must a loving Father dwell. Be embraced, This kiss for the whole world! Joy, beautiful spark of divinity, Daughter of Elysium, Joy, beautiful spark of divinity Divinity!

This article was constructed by Charles Bihler from long experience and various sources, including Wikipedia.