This season’s final concerts highlight the work of composers with special ties to the Pacific Northwest. Some were born and grew up here, while others settled here after living in other states or countries. Several responded to an invitation for submissions with our long-time collaborator, Cascadia Composers, the largest regional chapter of the National Association of Composers USA; founded in 2008, it offers resources, including frequent performances, to showcase the creative gifts of contemporary composers in our region. All these composers have contributed to the musical riches we enjoy here.
We begin with “4 e e cummings songs” (2015) by Cascadia composer Brian Holmes (b. 1946). A recently retired professor of physics at San Jose State University, where he taught courses on the physics of music, he has composed numerous works for solo voice, chorus, and his own instrument, the French horn. Many of his works include humor, like a short opera based on the Dick and Jane books of his childhood. His humor certainly comes through in his approach to e e cummings (1894-1962), an American modernist who used invented or curious words, odd capitalization and punctuation, unexpected line breaks and word placement, and verbal non sequiturs to shake up how readers experience poetry. Holmes comes up with clever musical equivalents to cummings’ poems, from run-together words (“in Just”), to spooky sound effects (“hist whist”), to sedate acceptance of transformations after our deaths (“when god lets my body be”), and finally to a surprising combination of bounciness and barbershop (“Buffalo Bill’s”).
Olympia-based composer Dawn Sonntag teaches at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, as well as performing as a pianist. Though drawn to composing at an early age, she almost gave it up in college when instructors discouraged her from writing anything but atonal music; fortunately, she decided to go her own way and earned a doctorate in vocal performance and composition at the University of Minnesota. She has since composed instrumental works, in addition to art songs, operas, and choral pieces, like this lyrical setting (2019) of the beloved poem, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost (1874-1963). Her choice of text may reflect her passion for the environment, hiking, and the natural world, which has also led her to participate in the Alaskan Composing in the Wilderness program.
Our youngest composer, Patrick Vu (b. 1998), is working toward his master of music degree. The text of “This is Nothing But Thy Love” (1921) comes from a collection of Bengali devotional poems by Indian poet, painter, philosopher, and social reformer Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), entitled Gitanjali, which means “Song Offerings.” The poem portrays God’s love as reflected in the natural beauty that surrounds us, and the music depicts images from the poem. Vu puts it this way: “From dancing leaves to idle clouds, rhythms and textures quickly change to reflect these aspects of nature. The opening line of the text is repeated in the beginning and the end to express gratitude as the work concludes with an outburst of confident joy.”
Vu composed “On the Hillside” at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The stress and isolation started him reading poetry, including a poem by English writer Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943), which inspired him to compose for the first time in months. The setting of her poem became the first piece he completed during the pandemic. and it won the 2023 American Choral Directors Association Brock Prize for Student Composers. The text paints a scene of one person watching their partner fall asleep–a sign of immense trust. Vu has noted, “I like to imagine that the poet also falls asleep with them as the piece fades away. We often overlook how special it is to share that level of vulnerability with someone, and this piece calls us to recognize that through silence and stillness.”
We close the first half with “Czernogorsk Fugue” by Tomáš Svoboda (1939-2022). Born in Paris to Czech parents, Svoboda and his family moved back to Prague after World War II, and he graduated from Prague Conservatory in 1962 with degrees in percussion, composition, and conducting; he was also a piano virtuoso. Two years later, the family fled the Communist regime to the United States, where he earned his master’s in composition at the University of Southern California. In 1970, he joined the music department at Portland State University, and he lived and worked in Portland for the rest of his life. He originally composed this piece, based on a Slavic folk poem, in Prague in 1956 while still a teenager but revised it in Portland in 1991.
We have long enjoyed presenting the song cycles of Northwest native Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943), most recently his Midwinter Songs in our 2023 holiday concert. He was born in Washington, grew up in Portland, and has a cabin on an island in Puget Sound where he still composes. He earned a doctorate in music at the University of Southern California and taught composition there for over 30 years. He found his inspiration for Madrigali: Six “Fire Songs” on Renaissance Italian Poems (1987) not just in Renaissance poetry, but also in the secular madrigals by Monteverdi and Gesualdo. The former offered repeated themes of fire and burning, at once alluring and destructive, while the latter gave shape to the individual songs and the cycle as a whole. All six madrigals focus on obsessive and unrequited love—an obsession underscored by Lauridsen’s repeated use of what he called the “Fire-Chord.” In his words, “I wanted the music to emanate…from a single, primal sonority—one dramatic chord that would encapsulate the intensity of the entire cycle.” This chord (a B flat minor triad, plus what one critic called a “scorching” C natural”) explodes right at the beginning of the first movement and returns over and over in all the others, reaching a shattering climax in the fourth, “Io piango.” The mingled pleasure and pain of this feverish passion remain unresolved through to the very end.
We close with a joyous piece Sydney Guillaume (b. 1982), with whom we had the privilege of performing in concerts dedicated to his music in 2022. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, he and his family moved to the United States, first to Miami, when he was 11, but he has been a fixture on the Portland music scene as a composer, performer, and conductor for several years. He composed “Ay’bobo Pou Yo” to honor Sharon Paul for her 20 years as Director of Choral Activities at the University of Oregon. Like many of his compositions, this one has lyrics written by his father, Gabriel Toussaint Guillaume (b. 1939) and switches freely between Haiti’s two official languages—French and Haitian Creole, or Kreyòl, as it is known in Haiti. It also includes made-up nonsense syllables that Guillaume uses to great rhythmic effect. “Ay’bobo Pou Yo” celebrates composers, conductors, and musicians of all sorts, whose creative works spread joy and sow peace. What better way to honor the Northwest voices that enrich our lives!
Susan Wladaver-Morgan