Royal Holloway
University of London
MMus Advanced Musical Studies
MU5355 Short Recital
CHUN-HO CHAN
Choral Conducting
10 a.m.
Monday 25th March 2019
College Chapel
PROGRAMME
Lieto Godea Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1555-1612)
Lay a Garland Robert Pearsall (1795-1856)
Three Shakespeare Songs Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Full Fathom Five
The Cloud-Capp’d Towers
Over Hill, Over Dale
Stars Ēriks Ešenvalds (1977-)
Bobby Shaftoe Arr. Daryl Runswick (1946-)
from Five British Folk Songs
Street Calls Yoon-pin Leong (1931-2011)
街頭巷尾 梁榮平
Lieto Godea Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1555-1612)
The representative of the high peak of the Venetian polychoral school in late 1580s-
90s at the time the world shifting from Renaissance to Baroque idioms, Giovanni
Gabrieli succeeded his famous uncle and probably teacher, Andrea, as the principal
composer in 1584 (also the principal organist from 1585), after staying at Munich and
studying with the renowned Orlando de Lassus at the court of Duke Albert V until 1579.
It was Gabrieli, who took the best advantage from the setting and acoustics of the
Cathedral, to first provide careful directions on instrumentations, dynamics, and to
develop the ‘echo effects’ for which he became famous. The fame of the St. Mark’s
sound spread across Europe and attracted numerous musicians to Venice to hear,
study, absorb and bring back to their countries of origin. Composers in Germany, in
particular, began to work in a locally-modified form of the style – most notably by
Giovanni’s student, Heinrich Schütz.
From the 1587 publications of his and his uncle’s Concerti di Andrea & Giovanni Gabrieli,
libro secondo, the eight-part madrigal Lieto Godea retained a lot of his signature
idioms where he exploited to the maximum sonority in his interest in sacred music.
Written in da capo form, the contrasting sections – in metre, dynamics and text – told
a pastoral lovesick story under the longings for Venetian spring of good weather. The
madrigal – ‘per cantar et sonar’, which could have been performed by two voices and
six instruments as by two four-voice choirs – was proved to be popular as being
arranged both as a lute duet and also by Schütz as an instrumental interlude in his
settings of Psalm 111, SWV 34, to name a few.
Lieto godea sedendo Sitting in happy repose,
L’aura che tremolando enjoying April’s sweetly trembling breezes.
Dolce spira l’aprile; Every creature sighed of love all the time
Ogn’hor sospira d’Amor ogn’animale With a mortal dart
Con mortal dardo Love came flying and pierced my heart;
Amor volando venn’ e’l cor mi punse Alas! He took flightpp: woe is me!
E lass’ oimè fugge meschino me Thus I shall have
Onde n’havrò la morte only death
S’in lieta non si cangia la mia sorte. unless my fate
turns to happiness.
Lay a Garland Robert Pearsall (1795-1856)
Probably most famous for his setting of In dulci jubilo still often heard during
Christmas, Robert Pearsall mainly worked as a barrister in Bristol until his move to
Germany for the sake of his health in 1825. He eventually purchased a ruined medieval
castle in Switzerland, spending his late decade restoring and living next to it until his
death in 1856, by selling his house at Willsbridge after his mother passed away in 1837
– when the Bristol Madrigal Society, the forerunner of today's Bristol Chamber Choir,
was established, of which Pearsall was a founding member.
Pearsall gradually developed his interest in composition during his life abroad. He
became interested in discovering early music and composing in the Renaissance style,
a lot of Morley-imitating madrigals were sung by the Bristol Madrigal Society. Written
in 1840, Lay a Garland was one of the most effective 19th century partsongs
incorporating earlier and Romantic styles. The 8-part madrigal was set on “Aspatia’s
Song” in Act 2, Scene 1 of The Maid’s Tragedy, a play by Francis Beaumont and John
Fletcher first published in 1610s but regularly played until the Victorian period as one
of those typical tragedies in which everyone finished up dead. Here Pearsall changed
the text from first to third person, speaking of the heartbroken Aspatia who was
forced to be parted from her betrothed Amintor as he was to undertake a marriage of
convenience to the king’s mistress. Pearsall also set the music to the Latin sacred text
‘Tu es Petrus’ (‘You are Peter’) as a motet dedicated to John Peter the first bishop of
St. Gallen, his residence in Switzerland.
Lay a garland on her hearse,
Of the dismal yew,
Maidens, willow branches wear,
Say she died true.
Her love was false, but she was firm
Upon her buried body lie
Lightly, thou gentle earth.
Three Shakespeare Songs Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Full Fathom Five
The Cloud-Capp’d Towers
Over Hill, Over Dale
Ralph Vaughan Williams is unarguably a giant in British music – strongly influenced by
his German and French training, native English Tudor music and folksongs (and his
editing for The English Hymnal), Cambridge degree in History with intimate
knowledge of the Bible and English literature. After years finding his own voice,
Vaughan Williams reached the peak of his fame with his Sixth Symphony in 1948 – a
powerful extra-musical message to the post-war world as the composer himself
referred to Prospero’s farewell speech at the end of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Some years later, Vaughan William was requested by his student Cecil Armstrong
Gibbs to write a test piece for the annual national choral competition in British
Federation of Music Festivals 1951 (of which Vaughan Williams was president) during
the Festival of Britain. Vaughan Williams was reluctant at first, and was of the opinion
that the choirs should perform established test pieces rather than introducing a new
composition. However, he eventually fulfilled his commission with Three Shakespeare
Songs, as a technical challenge from the impressionist harmony to tongue-twisting
diction for any choir, a staple in the repertory of twentieth-century unaccompanied
choral music and a height of the composer’s technical and expressive powers in his
last decade, especially on his humanitarian ethos as shown also by his large catalogue
for the voices from operas, folksongs to hymn tunes. The three songs set texts from
two of Shakespeare’s plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (No. 3) and again, The
Tempest (Nos.1 & 2), premiered in the Royal Festival Hall on 23 June 1951, conducted
by Armstrong Gibbs.
The first song Full Fathom Five is a setting of Ariel's Song to Ferdinand from The
Tempest. In ternary form, this depiction of the mysterious sea and magic is a play on
the sound of the resonance and dissonance of ding-dong-bells on a F-major
pentatonic scale with lowered 6th degree, with a central contrasting section classic of
his with beautiful word painting from parallel triads to the strangest superimposition
of chords on ‘strange’.
The second song The Cloud-Capp’d Towers is a masterful test piece for choirs to prove
their collective tuning skills and show the ravishing colour changes reminiscent of the
progressions in Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony. The second song also uses lines
from The Tempest, spoken by Prospero to conclude the masque at the wedding of his
daughter Miranda to Prince Ferdinand, often perceived as a metaphor for the real life
– with the globe symbolising both the world and Shakespeare’s Globe in London!
The third song is the Fairy's Song to Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream. The
furiously rhythmic verse evokes the mythology of Titania, the Fairy Queen, musically
in the form of Scherzo. The interval-span on ‘hill’ and ‘dale’ cleverly echoes the tolling
bells from the first song.
I. Full Fathom Five
Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, – ding-dong bell.
II. The Cloud-Capp’d Towers
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind: We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
III. Over hill, Over Dale
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough briar,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire
I do wander everywhere.
Swifter than the moonè's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Stars Ēriks Ešenvalds (1977-)
Born and educated in Latvia, Ēriks Ešenvalds is one of the most sought-after
composers of today. Previously a member of the State Choir Latvija, he was awarded
a two-year position of Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, University
of Cambridge in 2011-2013. He recently collaborated with the Boston Symphony
Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Latvian Radio Choir and
Sinfonietta Riga for the premieres of his work, received commissions from the BBC
Proms, Gewandhaus Leipzig, and Grant Park Music Festival, Chicago, with many
recordings of his compositions appearing on various labels.
Stars for mixed choir and water-tuned glasses, which Ešenvalds wrote in 2011 for Salt
Lake Vocal Artists / Salt Lake Choral Artists and their conductor Brady Allred, is a
setting of words by the American Pulitzer-winning poetess Sara Teasdale. Featuring
the composer's favourite tuned glasses throughout the piece, a glistening
accompaniment to the lyrical metaphors of the imagery and vision of the brilliance of
the stars in the dark, still sky, under a slowly glowing simplicity in harmony. “For me,
harmony is most important – how it flows and becomes a new harmony,” as the
composer said, the two similar earlier sections were brought to a radiant chorale of a
wondrous ‘heaven full of stars’ before a repeated oscillation of a pair of chords, adding
to the magic, receding into silence. In 2014 Michaelhouse Chapel Choir and William
Silk from South Africa and Regalo Tokyo, Japan commissioned a male- and a female-
choir version respectively.
Alone in the night
On a dark hill
With pines around me
Spicy and still,
And a heaven full of stars
Over my head,
White and topaz
And misty red;
Myriads with beating
Hearts of fire
That aeons
Cannot vex or tire;
Up the dome of heaven
Like a great hill,
I watch them marching
Stately and still,
And I know that I
Am honored to be
Witness
Of so much majesty.
Bobby Shaftoe from Five British Folk Songs Arr. Daryl Runswick (1946-)
In the composer’s own words, “educated at Cambridge University and Ronnie Scott's
[Jazz] Club”, Daryl Runswick began his musical life as a Cambridge chorister but
quickly moved into the jazz and pop world as one of the few, to quote John Wickes,
who can claim to have worked with both Ornette Coleman and John Cage. Runswick
started playing bass with leading UK jazz musicians in the mid-1960s, including Dick
Morrissey, John Dankworth and Cleo Laine with whom he toured the world, later
branched out into more popular music, appearing on the first The Alan Parsons
Project recording and working with Elton John. Classically he has also worked with the
London Sinfonietta, Nash Ensemble and The King's Singers, Pierre Boulez, Simon
Rattle, etc. In addition to his roles as improvising pianist, singer with Electric Phoenix,
bass player, arranger, record producer, broadcaster, educator, community animateur
and film and TV composer, he was the Head of Composition at Trinity College of Music
from 1995 to 2005, and involved for many years in community music, leading week-
long music-theatre summer schools with disabled people, and writing the acclaimed
textbook Rock, Jazz and Pop Arranging, which has been translated into Japanese,
German and Korean.
This arrangement of the English nursery rhyme Bobby Shafto’s Gone to Sea, fueled
with lighthearted vocal percussion, cross-rhythm and surprisingly humourous
harmonies, forms a part of his series of Five English Folksongs, in which containing the
setting of She Moved Thro’ the Fair often performed by the King’s Singers.
Bobby Shafto's gone to sea,
Silver buckles at his knee;
He'll come back and marry me,
Bonny Bobby Shafto!
Bobby Shafto's bright and fair,
Combing down his yellow hair;
He's my love for evermore,
Bonny Bobby Shafto!
Street Calls Yoon-pin Leong (1931-2011)
街頭巷尾 梁榮平
Yoon-pin Leong has often been exalted as the pioneer in Singaporean music. Born in
the British colonial Singapore, Leong was a self-taught musician, learning to play the
piano at 16 and the guitar at 17. After graduating from Teachers’ Training College, he
taught music and other subjects in local primary schools. Not until mid-1950s, he was
able to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and from 1966 to
1967, in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, under government scholarships. Almost a decade
later in 1975, Leong further took his master’s study with a British Council
Commonwealth Fellowship at the Newcastle University in music education, a field he
had played a predominant role in Singapore, later as the Head of the Music
Department of the government’s Institute of Education. Leong had also founded and
conducted choral and instrumental groups since 1960-70s and revitalised the local
music scene.
As a composer, his music was the first local work performed by the Singapore
Symphony Orchestra, at where he later became the first composer-in-residence. He
was also the first composer to have his compositions recorded as part of the
government archive of outstanding local works. His works, particularly choral
compositions, were especially well known for the local Asian flavour, portraying the
country’s unique blend of Chinese, English, Malay and Indian culture – inspired by
Boulanger’s emphasis in the importance of one’s drawing own background when
writing music.
Street Calls was composed for the 1997 Singapore Youth Festival Choral Competition,
interestingly written in Cantonese, a main sub-type of Chinese language commonly
spoken even outside China, made up of only the names of different food specialities
(still) popular in the Cantonese cuisine and community, without grammar or complete
sentence to resemble the calls by food hawkers in the streets back in the composer’s
youth in 1950s – with clever word plays with the special tones in Cantonese while in
an undeniably contemporary compositional language. Marked in the beginning ‘From
the far end of the alley’, this unique piece recreates the past memories when food
vendors roaming the streets and calling out their best dishes, ‘gradually approaching’
as the dynamics grow. This piece lively depicts the hustle and bustle in the ABA’ form,
starting from a few lone hawkers from the distance as paired in the male and female
voices, followed by more vendors joining to sell noodles as represented by the basses
and sopranos. The fugal section depicts a crowd of hawkers suddenly arrives selling
rice, dumplings and noodle rolls with three main melodies in a strong pentatonic
flavour, brought to a tutti climactic frenzy through an intense canonic section, before
the coda bringing back the solitude from the opening. As the music fades away,
memories of street calls also flow away with the government strict organisations and
gentrification to the famous – now even Michelin-starred – ‘hawker centres’.
雞粥、魚生粥！ Chicken congee, fish congee!
Gai juk, yu saang juk!
乾撈麵、雲吞麵！ Tossed noodles, shrimp dumplings noodles!
Gon lou meen, wun tun meen!
雞粥！ Chicken congee!
Gai juk!
河粉、水餃！ Rice noodles, boiled dumplings!
Haw fun, sui gau!
叉燒飯、糯米雞！ Roast pork rice, chicken sticky rice!
Tsa siu faan, naw mai gai!
燒賣、蝦餃！ Steamed dumplings, shrimp dumplings!
Siu mai, ha gau!
豬腸粉 Rice noodle rolls!
Ju cheung fun!
雞粥⋯⋯ Chicken congee…
Gai juk…
SOPRANO ALTO TENOR BASS
Millie Boulton Elizabeth Ajao James Edgeler David Critchley
Emily Chapman Celia Stoddart Joseph Morris Oran Friar
Emily Christian Chloe Wedlake Ben Rutt-Howard Jonathan Hunkin
Zoe Fox Adrian So Benjamin Richards
Maia Jarvis Alex Shaw
Isabelle Palmer
Isabelle Pott
CONDUCTOR: Chun-ho Chan
Currently a Master of Music in conducting student at the Royal Holloway,
University of London, Chun-ho Chan has been honoured to appear with the Chapel
Choir, College Chorus and Founder’s Choir as a conductor under the guidance of
Rupert Gough. An active member in the fields of music and education in Hong Kong,
he was the Head of Music at Belilios Public School, the oldest government secondary
girls’ school in the city, leading the prize-winning choirs to perform in China and
Taiwan and receiving the Outstanding Conductor Award in World Youth & Children’s
Choir Festival in July 2017. He also taught at the Hong Kong Children’s Choir and the
Music Office of Hong Kong Government. Besides organising and directing various
local youth choirs and orchestras, Chun-ho was a pianist and chorister at Die
Konzertisten, one of Hong Kong’s foremost chamber choirs based at St. John’s
Cathedral, the oldest Anglican church in the Far East. In Hong Kong, he conducted
before Vytautas Miškinis and John Rutter on the composers’ own works, and sung
under Helmuth Rilling, Stephen Layton and Jonathan Cohen.
Chun-ho read music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2010-13 where
he studied piano, organ and bassoon. He has actively participated in conducting
masterclasses to study with maestri around the world and work with Royal Bangkok
Symphony Orchestra and Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Orchestra, etc.
Recently, he was privileged to conduct in Eamonn Dougan’s workshop of the Royal
Academy of Music and David Hill’s masterclass at the Royal Northern College of Music
with their chamber choir and orchestra, and appointed as the organist of The Parish
Church of St. Margaret's Iver Heath.