SU Chorale, Chamber Choir Perform Sunday, December 4"
class=""MsoNormal"">SALISBURY, MD---The Salisbury University Chorale and Chamber Choir inaugurates SU’s “Ornaments in Harmony” holiday music festival with “A Season of Metaphors” 4:30 p.m. Sunday, December 4 in Holloway Hall Auditorium.
class=""MsoNormal"">“Poetry is the major source of text for composers,” said Dr. William M. Folger, director of choral activities at SU, who conducts the performance. “The metaphor, common in poetry, enhances the meaning of the text while enabling the imagination of the listener. Music adds another dimension by providing non-verbal metaphors through text painting, depicting the meaning of the poetry through melodic and rhythmic figures, and harmony. The dance rhythms and tuneful melodies heard at holiday time depict the season.”
class=""MsoNormal"">During the concert the 29-member chorale and 16-member chamber choir present holiday classics such as Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride” with more unique pieces, including the world premiere of “On Bright Leaves…” by Dr. Jerry Tabor, SU Department of Music faculty.
class=""MsoNormal"">“‘On Bright Leaves…’is a piece that explores the space between longing for something we know exists through memories of past experience and actually having something tangible and knowing it exists because it is presently at hand,” said Tabor. “
class=""MsoNormal"">Performed by the chamber choir, the piece follows a person who longs for the presence of a lost partner so intensely that the partner’s footprints are imagined on surrounding leaves.
class=""MsoNormal"">“The music conveys a sense of insecurity and ambiguity because it is created through a woven texture of three very contrasting tonal regions (the keys of E major, G minor, and F-sharp major),” said Tabor.
class=""MsoNormal"">By the work’s end, the subject realizes that in his partner’s absence, another partner has emerged, helping him endure the loss and sadness, which turns to joy and laughter. “The music then crystallizes the 3 key areas into a single jazz-like harmony which allows them all to exist simultaneously,” said Tabor.
class=""MsoNormal"">The program includes Brahms’ “Schaffe in mir, Gott, ein rein Herz, op. 29, No. 2,” Ernst Toch’s “Geographical Fugue,” Elgar’s “The Snow,” Craig Courtney’s “A Musicological Journey Through the Twelve Days of Christmas,” P.D.Q. Bach’s “Throw the Yule Log on, Uncle John,” Herbert Fromm’s “Hanukkah Madrigal.”
class=""MsoNormal"">Works performed by the chamber choir include Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s “O che splendor,” Samuel Barber’s “The Coolin” and “Twelfth Night, Op. 42, No. 1.”
class=""MsoNormal"">The chorale and chamber choir combine to perform Morten Lauridsen’s “O Magnum Mysterium” and Franz Gruber’s “Silent Night.”
class=""MsoNormal"">Korey Cunningham and Susan Zimmer provide piano accompaniment.
class=""MsoNormal"">Sponsored by the Department of Music the performance is free and the public is invited. For more information call 410-543-6385 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu. "