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From "I Bring You Heartsease" to "Inconstancy" (4 works)
- "I Bring You Heartsease" by Gena Branscombe
- 1915
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I Bring You Heartsease, 1915. Gena Branscombe, 1881-1977. A. P. Schmidt Collection. Music Division, Library of Congress. Call number: ML1570.B Also published as a solo song, Branscombe's choral setting (SSA) was issued by Arthur P. Schmidt Co., Boston, in 1915. The text, written by the composer, refers to a variety of flowers shared by lovers in springtime. Heartsease, the progenitor of the cultivated pansy, was most likely the flower that yielded a powerful love potion in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Branscombe's musical setting is smoothly harmonized for women's voices with the tune in the top voice. The climax of the first verse comes with the first sopranos singing a high G in the most widely spaced chord of the piece, "But Ah! My dearest, our love will live when the springtime flowers are gone." A middle section refers to the "flowers of mem'ry," and Branscombe introduces her most chromatic progression, a G-minor chord to an E- major chord, at the mention of "sadness and tears." The opening music returns at "For life cannot hold all our loving." The climactic chord occurs again, this time in the phrase "And the love that is best is the love that has lived when the springtime of youth has gone."
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- "I Love Thee, Lord" by William W. Gilchrist
- 1900
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Evening prayer, 1906. W. H. Partridge, Boston, photographer. Photograph. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Reproduction number: LC-USZ62-88923 Gilchrist was co-editor of a series titled The International Choir, in which the editors published a new anthem each week. They write in editorial notes, "Few preachers would have the audacity to repeat a sermon to the same audience within a few months. . . . But many choirs repeat their anthems without serious criticism." With the weekly publications, they aimed to help choirs avoid that repetition.
Gilchrist's anthem I Love Thee, Lord appeared as no. 40 in volume 1 of the series, dated August 8, 1900. The editors noted: "It is strong and fresh, out of the beaten track in form and style." The text is by the French mystic, Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717). The accompaniment is written for piano, a departure from common practice. The piano introduction presents a short figure that is taken over by the soprano solo and used as a unifying device throughout the piece. Gilchrist is sensitive to the rhythm of the English text, and the figure fits the text well.
The choral writing features a dialogue between the upper three voices and the bass. Gilchrist was fond of using contrapuntal devices to enliven his choral writing. At the end of the second verse, "Our source, our centre, and our dwelling place," triplets suddenly emerge in the accompaniment. The voices remain in common time, however, creating a rhythmic tension as the sopranos climb to a high A.
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- "In Arcady by Moonlight" by Gena Branscombe
- 1914
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In Arcady by Moonlight, 1914. Gena Branscombe, 1881-1977. A. P. Schmidt Collection. Music Division, Library of Congress. Call number: ML1570.B Also published as a solo song, Branscombe's choral setting (SSA) was issued by Arthur P. Schmidt Co., Boston, in 1914. The text is by Kendall Banning (1879-1914) and refers to a mythical utopian place, a pastoral vision in which all is in harmony with nature. The poem begins, "In Arcady by moonlight (where only lovers go), there is a pool where fairest of all the roses grow." In Branscombe's setting that last phrase is set ppp rit. to a questioning augmented-fifth leap in the alto. The consequent phrase, "Why are the moonlit roses so sweet beyond compare? Among the purple shadows my love is waiting there." At "so sweet," Branscombe introduces an exotic chromaticism from a C-sharp-minor chord to a C-major chord. The opening theme returns, "To Arcady by moonlight the paths are open wide! Only joy can enter and only joy abide." The last phrase contains a daring enharmonic chord progression in which the D-sharp of a B-major chord becomes E-flat of an F dominant-seventh chord leading directly to the fortissimo climax of the piece on a tonic A-major chord, "There is the peace unending that perfect faith can know." The closing phrase, "In Arcady by moonlight where only lovers go," repeats the F-seventh/A-major progression on the last two words, rit. e dim.
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- "Inconstancy" by George Whitefield Chadwick
- 1910
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from Four Choruses (1910)
Large-scale works figure most prominently in Chadwick's output--Judith, Noël, and his Ode for the Opening of the Chicago World's Fair (1892), which was performed by a chorus of 5,000 persons, an orchestra of 500, and three brass bands. Due to his long-time association with church choirs and choral societies, however, he also produced a substantial body of smaller works: 37 anthems, 19 choruses for male voices and 20 choruses for female voices.
Chadwick's Inconstancy is the first in a set of Four Choruses (1910). It is dedicated to Samuel L. Herrman and the Treble Clef Club of Philadelphia. Herrman, whom the young Chadwick met during his ocean voyage to Europe in 1877, also conducted the Philadelphia Männerchor. Chadwick's original setting for unaccompanied women's voices, was also transcribed and published for SATB [soprano, alto, tenor, bass] unaccompanied chorus and TTBB [tenor 1, tenor 2, baritone, bass] chorus with piano ad lib.
In this chorus he sets Shakespeare's text "Sigh no more ladies" from Much Ado about Nothing. The opening line receives a plaintive homophonic setting before the piece launches into a buoyant free counterpoint. Chadwick's rhythms are tied closely to the agogic stress of the text. He makes use of a folk-like pentatonic melody on "Then sigh not so, but let them go," climaxing on a minor-seventh chord at "converting all your sounds of woe." The verse ends with a rapid upward scale in the first soprano, "Into hey nonny, nonny, nonny, nonny," while the lower three voices sing "sigh no more" piano, dolce, and with an expressive grace note.
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