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Songs of the Soul The St. Louis Chamber Chorus Directed by Philip Barnes Works By:   Carlos Surinach (1915-97) Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548-1611) Alan Ridout (1934-96) Sasha Johnson Manning (b. 1963) Clare Maclean (b. 1958) Geoffrey Burgon (b. 1941) Carl Rütti (b. 1949)   Soloists (in sequence) Burgon: Amanda Meinen; Elise Ibendahl; Kathleen Mead Surinach, no. 2: Nathan Ruggles; Mark Poe; Susan Greene § WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING ON CD All pieces scored for SATB choir (with divisi), unless otherwise stated.

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DDD 58:09  Recorded: St. Margaret of Scotland Church, St. Louis USA, 23–25 May, 2004

The title for this collection of pieces is the English translation of "Canciones del Alma," four songs by Carlos Surinach which set the poetry of St. John of the Cross. This Spanish saint from Avila has been somewhat overshadowed by his more famous contemporary, St. Teresa. With her he founded the Discalced (barefoot) Carmelites, and devoted himself to the promotion of this holy order of nuns and friars. The success of their order led to several struggles for its control within the wider Catholic church, and in 1577 St. John fell afoul of one such dispute. He spent much of the following year imprisoned in a tiny, stifling cell in Toledo. Far from breaking his resolve, the incarceration led to a series of ecstatic poems which describe the soul's love for God. The vocabulary and imagery used in such verses, written either in prison or shortly after his escape and during his recuperation, are extraordinary. They use the language of earthly love, and must have struck his contemporaries as either inspired or inappropriate, or both.

Certainly, there were no musical settings of these verses made during his lifetime. An obvious candidate to set them would have been another Avilan, Tomás Luis de Victoria; yet all of his compositions use only biblically based texts. The four works of his recorded here demonstrate a facility for polyphony perhaps influenced by Palestrina, with whom he may well have studied during his many years living in Rome. With the exception of "Senex Puerum Portabat" (included to complement the two texts of "Romança VI"), the antiphons were all composed to honour saints. Some were written for the choir of Madrid's Monasterio de las Descalzas, where Victoria served as choirmaster for his last twenty-four years.

St. John's canonisation in 1726 obviously came too late for Victoria, and for two or three centuries after the saint's death composers were either unaware or intimidated by his writing. Gradually, though, in the twentieth century interest grew in this mystic poet, and there have since been many attempts to marry his verse to music. The most extended setting for unaccompanied choir is that by Surinach, and is set in the original Spanish. He was born in Barcelona, trained in Germany, and was active as a composer in the USA. Surinach established a reputation through his works for dance, collaborating extensively with both Martha Graham and with the Joffrey Ballet. The rhythmic vitality that characterises his dance suites is never far away from these choral pieces. They were commissioned in 1964 by CBS Television and dedicated to its vice president for cultural and religious broadcasting, Pamela Ilott.

The final poem set by Surinach has received a more recent treatment by the New Zealand composer, Clare Maclean. Her setting of "Aunque es de Noche" pays homage to Spanish music through its imitation of a lightly plucked guitar and swaying rhythm, punctuated by flamencan outbursts. Maclean trained first in Wellington, then moved to Sydney, Australia, where she studied with Peter Sculthorpe. She has enjoyed a close relationship with the Sydney Chamber Choir, and has a growing association with the St. Louis Chamber Chorus.

A similar relationship has existed for several years between the St. Louis Chamber Chorus and British composer, Sasha Johnson Manning. She has been commissioned to write a Requiem sequence for the Chorus, and "Romança VI" is coincidentally its sixth movement. Scored for two choirs of upper and lower voices, the men sing the Latin "Song of Simeon," while the women declaim St. John's Spanish description of Simeon's appeal. Sasha Johnson Manning was born in Manchester, and studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Roger Steptoe. She is now active as a singer and composer in the North of England.

Two other British composers are represented on this recording, both of whom set St. John's songs in the celebrated translation by Roy Campbell. He was considered by many of his contemporaries, including Dylan Thomas, Edith Sitwell, and St. Louis's own T. S. Eliot, as one of the finest poets of their century. Raised in South Africa and educated at Oxford, Campbell eventually left England first for Provence, and then Spain, where his experience of the Civil War and his conversion to Catholicism drew him to the poetry of St. John.

Like Campbell, the composer Alan Ridout also left England for France, where he died in 1996. Ridout was born in Kent, and studied at the Royal College of Music under Gordon Jacob and Herbert Howells. He won numerous accolades for his orchestral and vocal music, and developed a close association with the choir of Canterbury Cathedral. His setting in English of the first three stanzas of "Llama de Amor Viva" clearly suits a resonant cathedral space, with its dynamic swells and fanfares.

This piece is sharply contrasted by "But have been found again," an extract from Campbellís version of the longest single poem by St. John, the "Cantico Espiritual." The composer is Geoffrey Burgon, most recognised for his music for film and television, but also a prolific writer of choral music. The St. Louis Chamber Chorus has given the American premieres of two Burgon works, including this setting of St. John that he composed in 1983 for the Southern Cathedrals Festival in Chichester.

Another composer whose works have been premiered by the Chorus is Carl Ruetti, a Swiss musician who has been greatly influenced by the English choral tradition. His music is remarkable for the manner in which he blends this influence with other genres including jazz and the blues. Some of this can be heard in his own homage to the Soul, "An den Geist." Though the text is by Rilke, the language and metaphors are certainly redolent of St. John's mysticism, and so make a happy complement to this recording, released by a Swiss label, directed and produced by two Englishmen, and sung by an American choir.

Page revised 03.03.06