WCC Conductor Comments for 2014-15 Season
Mark Bartel
Sept. 13, 2014
The Sound and the Silence
Each year the Wichita Chamber Chorale brings you the finest choral singing and exciting music in beautiful concert venues. We proudly feature the talented singers and musicians of our region and make a vital connection with an ever-widening range of listeners and participants in our community. But we do that every year—that’s our “job.” In fact last season’s performances and partnerships explored that very idea with our season theme “Your Choir. Your Music.”
So what is unique about the 2014-15 season of the Wichita Chamber Chorale? Taking that theme as an ever-present mission, the Wichita Chamber Chorale is excited to bring to our audiences two distinctive concerts which explore the very basics of music itself: sound, and silence.
I remember my middle school band director telling me and the other members of our 6th grade band that the rests were as important as the “music.” In teaching us to play the musical score correctly he helped us understand that music is made up of sound and silence. While silence is an integral part of music, we also experience the relationship between silence and sound in another way: In musical language the transition from nothingness (silence) to “something-ness” (sound) is represented by the manipulation of sound-silence interaction. Among the most famous of such statements in classical music is the orchestral introduction to Joseph Haydn’s oratorio Creation, called “The Representation of Chaos.” To depict the transition from darkness to light of the Creation story, Haydn composes the corresponding emergence of sound out of silence and the music itself grows and transforms itself, seemingly out of nothing. Haydn then proceeds to depict his vision of the creation of the world based upon John Milton’s famous Paradise Lost.
A Spring performance of Haydn’s fast-paced and ever-changing “soundscape” matches both the organized chaos of the creation account and the seasonal renewal of the natural world. But as nature retreats into a state of rest, the approach of Winter calls for music in which time stands still, and we can revel in the stillness and beauty typified by a cold and silent night. Such stillness and beauty calls for a simpler sonic palette—the unaccompanied choir in the so-called stile antico tradition that has attracted composers and singers since Medieval times. This concert—with carols and motets at its core but enriched by a ‘commentary’ of other texts and tunes—will offer sounds that are not so far removed from actual silence and which leave room for the ‘silence’ of inner reflection.
And so the singers of the Wichita Chamber Chorale perfect their performance and understanding of music not only to master its delivery, but to explore its real impact upon us as performers and upon you, our audience. We hope that you will share this journey of discovery by joining us at our concerts and by inviting your friends and family to experience “The Sound and the Silence.”
