 Voce Performance Honors Marriage Of Poetry, Music By
Joseph McLellan Voce, a 26-voice chorus now in its 11th season in Northern Virginia, has established a solid reputation not only for the quality of its performances but also for the ingenuity and imagination with which its programs are selected and constructed. That reputation was splendidly upheld in a program, "The Poetry of Music," performed Sunday at St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Reston. Words and music have had a partnership--sometimes an uneasy partnership involving struggles for supremacy--for nearly as long as men have been inventing poems. Not "writing"--the partnership was in effect before the invention of writing. When it began, all poems were sung, and every poet was a musician. Through the centuries, many poems have been made about music--particularly its power of arousing and expressing our deepest feelings. And composers have returned the favor by setting some of these poems to music that illustrates what the words are about. Four such combinations of words and music were sung by Voce: "Cantus in Harmonia" ("A Harmonious Song") by Mack Wilberg; "Peter Quince at the Clavier" by Dominick Argento; a segment of the oratorio "Solomon" by George Frideric Handel; and "Celia Singing" by David Conte. Although three of the four works are by living composers (Argento was born in 1927, Wilberg and Conte both in 1955), the program had a pleasant flavor of antiquity. This was partly because of the composers' musical style--melodiously conservative throughout and positively medieval in "Cantus in Harmonia," which was composed last year. There also was an archaic atmosphere in the texts they used. Three of the poems dated back to the baroque era, when the power of music was a standard poetic theme. "Cantus in Harmonia" used a text adapted from an ode by Alexander Pope. Handel's text, adapted from the Bible, pays tribute to music's power to evoke joy, rage, sorrow and other feelings. "Celia Singing," with a text by the 17th-century poet Thomas Carew, argues prettily that Cupid's "fatal dart" can strike through the ears (at least when Celia sings) as well as through the eyes. The high point of the program, which had no low points, was Argento's "Peter Quince at the Clavier," a setting of one of the best American poems of the 20th century (the work of Wallace Stevens) by one of our nation's most outstanding composers of vocal music. Like Handel's music, Argento's has a strong element of rhetoric, cleverly and sometimes hilariously illustrating the text's basic thesis that "Music is feeling . . . not sound." The composer created, and the chorus exemplified, a special kind of beauty in the vivid treatment of such words as "quavering." All four selections were well interpreted, but Argento's deserved and received special deluxe treatment. It was introduced by poet Dan Johnson discussing the intricacies of the text and Voce's music director Kenneth Nofziger analyzing the music's structure and descriptive elements. The performance's charm and subtlety were greatly enhanced by these remarks. Barbara Bulger Vedile, a member of Voce's soprano section, substituted at the keyboard on a few hours' notice, playing as though she had rehearsed the music for weeks. Voce's will next perform the U.S. premiere of the "Misa Cubana" ("Cuban Mass") by Cuban composer Jose Maria Vitier, April 14 at St. George's Episcopal Church, Arlington, and April 15 at St. Anne's Episcopal Church, Reston. © Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company |
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