Monday, October 25, 2021

SaltLakeSymphony.org: Adolphus Hailstork "Sonata da Chiesa for String Orchestra" Saturday November 13, 2021, 7:30 pm, Midvalley Arts Center

Adolphus Hailstork

Salt Lake Symphony Orchestra

Midvalley Arts Center
Matthew Makeever, Robert Baldwin, conductors
Kathryn Eberle, violin

Giovanni Gabrieli Two Canzoni for Brass
Respighi Concerto Gregoriano
Adolphus Hailstork Sonata da Chiesa for String Orchestra
Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Weber

Here is an excerpt from an essay by The Orchestra Now dated September 12, 2020 titled "Adolphus Hailstork's 'Sonata da Chiesa'":

Notes by Kyle Gann, Taylor Hawver and Frances Bortle Hawver Professor of Music at Bard College

Adolphus Hailstork was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in Albany, singing in his youth in the choir of the Episcopalian cathedral, which became a formative experience. 

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As a composer Hailstork is postmodern, pluralistic, and above all pragmatic. He has written much for orchestra, also for amateur choruses, and a surprisingly large amount of organ music. Much of his music refers to spirituals and African American subject matter, but not exclusively. His style is fluid, ranging from a boisterous modernism to a delicate atonality, to devoutly reverent tonal counterpoint. Sonata da Chiesa illustrates mostly the last mode. The 17th-century term “sonata da chiesa” denoted instrumental chamber music suitable for religious meditation; Hailstork has expanded on the concept to give us an orchestral analogue to a choral Mass. The piece’s seven sections, played without pause, have titles taken from liturgical music: Exultate, O Magnum Mysterium, Adoro, Jubilate, Agnus Dei, Dona Nobis Pacem, Exultate (reprise). The Exultate is a vigorous chorale verging on ecstasy. O Magnum Mysterium is in quieter counterpoint, quite chromatic, yet without abandoning a sense of tonality. Adoro is like a slow dance, with an insistent melody introduced in the viola solo, and in fact the entire work gains color from frequent solos for the first-chair players. The Jubilate is more energetic and highly syncopated with changing meters. The Agnus Dei, the emotional center of the work, is a soft chorale in a minor key, limned by gestures of melodic filigree. Dona Nobis Pacem, a chantlike chorale often in 5/4 meter, gradually crescendos to a final statement of the opening Exultate.

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