This month, Cedille Records launches its new, mid-price label Cedille FOUNDation with a recording of live performances by the venerable William Ferris Chorale singing masses by Gian Carlo Menotti and Louis Vierne. Cedille FOUNDation will allow us to issue or re-issue great performances by the musicians and ensembles with which we work, that were not originally produced by Cedille Records. (We plan to record a new disc of music by William Ferris sung by "his" Chorale, including Ferris's Snowcarols, for release late in 2007.)
To explain the pieces on the new disc and how the Chorale came to perform them, I call upon William Ferris Chorale Artistic Director John Vorrasi:
Washington Post Music Critic Paul Hume once asked what inspired me to write librettos, and why I was interested in opera. “I’m Italian” was my quick reply.
My earliest memories are of making music with my family. My Mother sang to me and at family gatherings my Grandfather and Great Uncle played mandolin/guitar duets. Everybody sang – even the neighbors looking over their fences. My Aunt Valda and her husband Attilio were founding members of the Verdi Opera Society, an amateur performing ensemble in Rochester, NY. I vividly remember sitting with my cousin in the front row of the audience for their concerts – the men in tuxedos and the women in their colorful 1950s ball gowns. But most of all I remember the music.
My fascination with opera continued throughout my junior high and high school years, when I was at last old enough for an “adult” library card and could borrow audio recordings as well as orchestral and vocal scores from the Rochester Public Library. How wonderful to hear that magnificent music and follow along with these beautiful and exotic books, books that I could never afford to own, but that were readily available for me to study.
I was addicted to opera. My favorite composers? – Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, Gounod, Blitzstein, Barber, Britten, Berg (about as close to the German wing as I get), and of course, Gian Carlo Menotti. (I shouldn’t leave William Ferris out of that litany. When I first met him in 1966 I was amazed to find someone who knew as much about opera and loved it as much as I did! He had a passionate operatic spirit and we collaborated as composer/librettist/singer on two operas and many cantatas). So I guess it should come as no surprise that Bill and I invited one of our heroes, Gian Carlo, to participate in the Chorale’s Composer Festival Concerts – week-long celebrations with the composer in residence.
Menotti staged the Chicago premiere of his one act opera The Egg, for us and a year later returned to stage Amahl and the Night Visitors (“I want a good Amahl” he admonished me) and to supervise the Chicago premiere of his Missa “O Pulchritudo”. His visits to our home in Chicago and our visits with him at the Spoleto Festival are the source for many an hour of delightful cocktail party conversation. All frivolousness aside, Menotti is an amazing and charismatic genius whom I am honored to call a friend.
"Bill, you love my Missa — you’ll perform it for me won’t you?" an agitated Gian Carlo Menotti implored William Ferris. It was at that moment on a sweltering summer afternoon in Charleston, South Carolina, that Menotti, upset over the way another conductor was interpreting his Missa, inspired our performance of the work. Ferris did indeed love the Missa, and his overtly passionate spirituality was a perfect match for Menotti’s equally passionate yet covert one. Both men, each in his own way, shared the belief that beauty was a pathway to God.
As Verdi did with the Requiem, Menotti turned his operatic skills to a large scale setting of the Catholic Mass, but with one telling exception: he replaced the Credo movement (the catalog of religious beliefs) with an adaptation of a passage from the Confessions of St. Augustine, “O Beauty, ever ancient ever new, late have I loved You.” This, coupled with the dedication of the work “In honor of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus,” makes for an extremely compelling testament of faith.Although Menotti feigned embarrassment at my assessment and even downplayed his own dedicatory inscription, the emotional intensity of his expression during the dress rehearsal of the Missa belied his words. I recall watching him closely as he sat in the darkened church listening intently. At the climactic moment of the Sanctus (a drum stroke on the phrase “heaven and earth are full of your glory”) he fell forward to his knees, his head bowed down. I was truly moved at the sight: a man whose genius had created a work of profound beauty, humbled by a sense of Beauty itself.
On the evening of May 20, 1988 the William Ferris Chorale scheduled the first in what would become a series of successful concerts titled “Let the Organs Thunder”, music for choir, brass and two organs. The programming made great sense given the two magnificent instruments in the Chorale’s performing home, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. The mighty E. M. Skinner pipe organ had recently been fully restored to its original tonal specifications by the firm of Gustav Fabry and, as the result of a bequest from parishioner Helen Kellogg, the church had installed a three manual tracker action pipe organ built by Pieter Visser.
Aside from normal concert day concerns (would it rain? would traffic be heavier that usual? would both parking lots fill too quickly?) all seemed in order. The dress rehearsal had been splendid, ticket sales were brisk, the printed programs had arrived, God was in his heaven and all was well with the world. The next day Ferris and I were heading off to Rome – he to give master classes at the Vatican and I to prepare for a recital of his music that would be broadcast world-wide by Radio Vaticana. I had been working hard. I was tired. With a sense of serenity I left the Chorale office and went home for my traditional concert day nap.
I was blissfully ignorant of all the activity going on in Lakeview that afternoon. A squirrel, either suffering from severe weltschmertz or just plain naivety, decided to electrocute himself by gnawing into the electrical connections of a ComEd transformer. Zap. No more squirrel. Zap, zap. No more power in a good chunk of Lakeview – including Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church.
Father Thomas Healy, the pastor of Mt. Carmel, immediately called ComEd, and he was assured that the problem would be resolved quickly. He decided not to call me but rather let me take my rest. At 6:00 PM, when I arrived back at the church, it became all too horribly clear that we were in trouble: we had a sold out house and no electricity to make the organs thunder! I was making frantic calls to electric generator companies (who found my request and my panic quite amusing) up until 7:00 PM when the lights finally went on again.
The centerpiece of the concert that evening was Louis Vierne’s Messe Solennelle. Perhaps it was because Vierne was born nearly blind that his music is so filled with color and imagination. He studied at the Paris Conservatory with César Franck and Charles-Marie Widor. In 1892 he became the assistant organist at St. Sulpice and in 1900, was appointed organist at Notre Dame. Vierne was a brilliant virtuoso and had great success as a recitalist in both Europe and the United States.
He was also a master of improvisation, and as early as 1895 had begun to compose in earnest. The Messe Solennelle, opus 16, for four part chorus and two organs, was written in 1899 to showcase the instruments and acoustics of Notre Dame and in many ways was an audition for the post there. With its sweeping melodies and harmonic grandeur, the work has justifiably been called “a triumphant counterpart to Fauré’s Requiem.”
All in all, I’d say the evening was a thundering success.
--John Vorrasi, Artistic Director, William Ferris Chorale
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Guest (not verified) | Mon, 10/16/2006 - 4:02pm
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