_(cropped).jpg)
I decided to re-post the following here at the Intentional Living blog from my Behind the Music blog. This is my last post for the season. Next fall I’ll do something to amalgamate the two blogs for my subscribers. In the meantime, here’s what I wrote about the lovely piece that we’ll be performing to end our concert. Be sure to come if you’re in the area! It’s going to be great. (And if you come on Friday night you’ll get to attend the reception afterwards, which will include my version of Sally’s Baking Addiction Guinness brownies. If that’s not enough of a reason for you to come, I don’t know what is!) So here’s the post, in its entirety:
The Cherry Creek Chorale has been on somewhat of a Dan Forrest kick in the past couple of years. As far as I know, our first Forrest selection, an arrangement of several traditional Christmas carols titled “Christmas Joy,” was performed in the 2016 Christmas concert. Then last fall the centerpiece of our concert “Starry, Starry Night” was his “Three Nocturnes,” settings of three American poems and a true joy, and challenge, to sing. We closed that concert with another Forrest piece, “Good Night, Dear Heart.” For this, our final concert of the 2017-2018 season, we close with an in-the-round performance of his “Oread Farewell.”
Which raises the questions, “What’s an oread? And why is Forrest saying good-bye to whatever it is?” It’s fitting, I guess, that I’m writing about this piece as my last post of the season, as we say farewell to our audience for the summer.
First things first. “Oread” is a term from Greek mythology meaning a mountain nymph. (Echo was one such, who was a consort of Zeus and was doomed by Hera, Zeus’s wife, to speak only the last words that had been spoken to her. Thus, when Echo fell in love with Narcissus, she couldn’t tell him how she felt and was forced to watch him falling in love with his own reflection in a pool.) So “oread” would be a suitable name for a mountain itself.
Which brings us to Mount Oread in Lawrenceville, Kansas, a hill on which the University of Kansas is located. Its original name was Hogback Ridge, but this rather unpoetic name was changed in 1866, the same year that the university officially opened. This new university was one of the first in the US to admit men and women equally; the initial preparatory class was composed of 26 girls and 29 boys. So someone came up with the idea of re-naming the hill (it’s actually more of a small mountain) Mount Oread, after the Oread Institute in Massachusetts, an early women’s college.
That’s the historical background for the first word of our selection’s title. On to the second question I posed above: Why a “farewell”? Let me quote from the website of the lyrics’ author, Charles Silvestri:
In the Spring of 2007 John Paul Johnson, the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Kansas, approached me with a commission to write a poem in collaboration with composer Dan Forrest which would become a farewell or encore standard for the KU choral program. After a discussion with the composer, I chose as a starting place the English folk song “Barbara Allen.” It seemed plaintive to me, and with a mood evocative of farewells. I chose to use its structure, meter and rhyme-scheme as a base for my poem. I found out that I was influenced by this choice, and the finished poem has the feeling of a folk song. I even toyed with more antiquated forms, like thee and thou, but rejected those in favor of a less formal, but still old-fashioned “ye,” which Dan liked.
The Chorale has had a chance to sing Silvestri’s beautiful words before. He’s written the lyrics to Eric Whitacre’s “Sleep,” which we performed in March 2017, and to Ola Gjello’s “Across the Vast, Eternal Sky,” from our May 2015 concert. You can refresh your memory about these two pieces if you’d like by following the links provided, which will take you to my own music website, “Behind the Music.” If you take a look at the “poetry” page on Silvestri’s website you’ll see a list of the lyrics he’s written for composers; Whitacre, Gjello and Forrest are well represented.
For space and copyright reasons I won’t reproduce the entire poem (you can read it here); I will just say that its ideas look to the past and to the future. The time together has been fleeting and brief. The flowers of spring have now withered in winter’s chill, and the memories of past happiness are now bittersweet. Yet the speaker wishes success upon the departing one, requesting only fond thoughts for himself. Forrest’s music fits the mood of the lyrics perfectly, music that he wrote as his three years of study at the University of Kansas were drawing to a close. As he says in his notes, “I spent three wonderful years at the University of Kansas from 2004-2007, studying composition, writing more music than I ever had before, and making lifelong friendships with several of my colleagues.” I sometimes think that we more deeply value experiences when we know that they have a limited time span.
Silvestri and Forrest more than fulfilled their commission to write a piece that could be used as a standard finale for choral programs. It’s not big and showy but quiet and reflective, reminding those performing and those listening that a wonderful experience is over, leaving only the memory. I often have that bittersweet feeling myself at the end of a concert.
But hey! There’s always another concert coming up. That’s the joy of being a part of the Chorale. Have a great summer, everybody, and we’ll reconvene next fall. And to our wonderful audience members, we hope to see you again in October.