Ragazzi's December Christmas Concerts

Please join us Dec. 4, 5 or 12 to hear this wonderful concert of choral music enhanced by the professional Sonos Handbell Ensemble. Visit Ragazzi’s website for concert information: www.ragazzi.org.

 

Here are the program notes for the concert, prepared by Sarah Wannamaker

 

O Come Emmanuel offers both a musical and thematic beginning for the concert.  The chant style is the earliest written style of music in the West; the smooth lines, small intervals, and undulating phrases capture the ethereal and timeless flow of chant.  The text is for the Advent season – a verse to prepare the listener for the promises of Christmas.

The freedom of chant gives way to rhythmic playfulness in the next piece.  The modern setting of Three Medieval Carols captures the spirit of medieval dances from which English carols originally evolved.  Syncopation and playful duple-triple interplays complement the complexity of singers and bells dabbling in different meters.  The text is a unique blend of Old English and Latin.  An example – “Comfort my heart’s blindness, O puer optime, With all thy loving kindness, O princeps gloriae” – is difficult for the listener to interpret on first hearing – mixing the languages emphasizes the text as a sound and rhythmic element. 

Masters In This Hall is a French carol which describes the singers traveling to Bethlehem to “seek a Lord who lies in manger low”.  The simple verse-refrain format fits the folk song filled with the bucolic humbleness of shepherds, oxen, and “milk-white snow”.  The different voice sections sing different parts of the story – all different voices in a group of travelers anxious to tell the next part of their story.

The Holly and The Ivy and I Wonder as I Wonder are both tunes which bridge the Christmas birth story with the crucifixion story.  The Holly and the Ivy does this using a veiled, symbolic language: the holly bears the crown, the blossom, and the prickle.   I Wonder as I Wonder is more forthcoming in the connection.  This Appalachian tune tries to evoke a haunting musical representation of the words “as I wander out under the sky.”

In I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, California composer Kurt Erickson addresses the dichotomy of Christmas idealism found in traditional hymns (“of peace on earth, goodwill to men!”) compared to the everyday reality (“for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace”).  Just as the text by Alfred Lord Tennyson is glossed with a new context, the traditional tune is presented and expanded upon with new melodies and surprising harmonies.  The music relies heavily on fourths, mimicking the unique overtones of bells.  

Similar in spirit to Masters in this Hall, Wassailing Song is a frolic of a tune about wassailing (the English version of door-to-door caroling).  This is not a Christmas song reflecting on the nativity; it is a festive tune to celebrate the New Year.  Wassail is both the spiced ale in the bowl as well as the toast – and this song describes a band of singers who are offering good cheer in exchange for a treat.

The text for Biebl’s Ave Maria is drawn from the traditional Ave Maria in addition to the Angelus, a devotional text focusing on the Incarnation.  Although the texts are ancient, the musical language relies on full, lush, modern chords enriched by the presentation of multi-voiced harmonies.  The texture alternates between a single line of chant, a 4-part chorus, and a dual-choir arrangement.

Like The Holly and the Ivy, I Saw Three Ships is an English tune with a symbolic text.  The references are nebulous – with possible references to the three kings, the Holy Trinity, the three ideals of “faith, hope, and love”, or even (perhaps) the three ships of Columbus.  This arrangement highlights the playful and lilting dance nature of the tune.

Dede Duson’s arrangement of From Heav’n Above is a stately and modern interpretation of a tune attributed to Martin Luther.  The setting plays with rhythmic variation and meter changes while reflecting the various moods associated with each verse: the tidings of great joy, the virgin Mary, making space in the heart for the Christ child, and glory to God.

Ding-dong! Merrily on High is a 16^th century tune married to a 19^th century text about ringing the bells to celebrate Christmastide.  The melismatic chorus “Gloria” indulges in the sound of the choir, and the verses talk about the excitement of both heavenly and earthly bells announcing Christmas.  Carol of the Bells similarly celebrates the sounds of bells as carrying the message, “Christmas is here, carrying good cheer.”  This choir accompanies itself in this piece – those without the melodies use their voice to imitate the bells.

The last three Christmas carols are traditional and well-known carols – 2 sacred and 1 secular take on the season.  Each setting reveals a unique mood of Christmas.  Silent Night is a lush, quiet lullaby, while O Come All Ye Faithful captures the reaction of heaven’s angels to the Christmas story.  Finally, We Wish You a Merry Christmas ends the concert with a musical joke and all the best wishes for a happy new year.

We know that Christmas is one of many faith traditions represented today by our boys, families, and guests.  Christmas music remains an integral and vital part of the Western music tradition, which remains the core of Ragazzi.  In the Christmas story, we find messages of hope, family, celebration, peace, and music – elements universal to every tradition.  We are glad that you joined us today and hope that the concert filled your spirit with warmth, celebration, peace, and music.

 

 

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

 

 

Ragazzi tour preview

Here is a short story about one of the choirs I heard during my trip to Cuba in January 2010. Ragazzi looks forward to working with them next June on our Cuban tour.

 

We entered a courtyard of the Museum Alejandro von Humboot. Two huge, perfectly preserved skeletons of dinosaurs, donated by Mexico in 2007, filled the yard. I heard some powerful, rich falsetto singing coming from upstairs. We were ushered up to the rehearsal of Sine Nomine, an eleven-voice professional all-male choir. Their conductor was Leonara Suarez and they were perfecting a program which the conductor wanted them to perform without her. The first piece was a beautiful Renaissance piece by Victoria with perfect 5ths that rang and with crescendos and phrasing that astonished. They sang the famous French chanson “Il est bel et bon bon” by Passereau and then a Hassler piece with strong clashing harmonies, incredible crescendos. It was in five parts, SSATB, and as they sang with long breathed phrases, they leaned into the dissonance before releasing it. They took it very slowly. The text is about how the singer has suffered (loving you) and it has cost him his life. The conductor corrects them: more feeling, more intimacy. I was in tears hearing the beauty of their singing. They gave me this piece.

 

They then sang a heart-wrenching “Danny Boy” and a great medley of Beatles and Queen music. All the rehearsing was done by memory by both singers and conductor.  The conductor told me that they start each concert with musica antica and then sing all styles. She says “they sound like an SATB choir.” All rehearsing is done by memory, but I was hearing them right before a concert the following week. Expressive extremes. They breathed deeply through the nose.

 

Their English is better than ours because all the vowels are formed consciously and beautifully. They sang so beautifully, but their rehearsal room was divided only by wooden slats which did not protect them from the street noises, including loud honking horns. Somehow they were able to keep their focus. Each time they sang, it was full of feeling. This will be a wonderful group for Ragazzi to work with next June!

 

 

 

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

 

 

Education or Inspiration

Recently I attended a play that was supposed to be "ground-breaking" and awesome. But I was disappointed to see that it was instead an historical diatribe about a political point of view. I left early, bored and restless.

Later that weekend, I attended the West Bay Opera production of La Forza del Destino. It was a three and one half hour production, so I expected to find it difficult to sit for so long. Of course the presence of Ragazzi singers was an enticing incentive and I was looking forward to seeing and hearing them.

Imagine my surprise when at the end of the opera I found my eyes watering up. I had been moved to tears by the beauty of the story and the powerful acting and music.

This led to my thoughts about art and what we at Ragazzi are trying to do. Yes, we are educating boys in the mores of different historical times, languages and cultures. Yes, we are learning to sing with correct technique. And yes, we are learning to read music, an almost forgotten language.

But fundamentally we are making connections. We want to feel what people who sang Latin chants felt. We want to understand the impetus for the rhythms of the great Latino songs. We want to understand the mysterious chants of the cathedral. We want to learn how music in the Renaissance played with words and melodies and rhythms. and then we want to communicate that to you. We want to connect with you, to share with you.

At the end of a Ragazzi concert, we want you to feel happy, sad, moved, amazed; we want you to feel something. We don't want you to only think, "My, they must have worked hard on this music. As Jon Carroll, after attending a performance in the East Bay, wrote in his column in the San Francisco Chronicle November 4, "...the music was beautiful; I still felt a lump in my throat. That's real art, I think--when the emotional moment transcends the plot..."

To this end we are working to help the boys connect to the texts, even when they sing in foreign languages. We are exploring different ways to showing the feelings of the text through our faces and bodies. We are reaching out to you, our audience, and asking you to connect with us to other times and places and to share our journey of exploration and excitement. We want to inspire you to experience a moment of transcendence, even if for just an hour.