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Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-fourth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,555th Concert

The Howard University Choir

J. Weldon Norris, music director and conductor

Honoring the seventy-seventh anniversaiy of

the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

January 15, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfixe
Program

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Four Songs, op. 17

For female chorus, harp, and two French horns

Es tont ein voller Harfenklang (The Harp Resounds with Wild Refrain)

Lied von Shakespeare (Song from Twelfth Night)

Der Gartner (The Gardener)

Gesang aus Fingal (Song from Fingal)

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Festgesang an die Kixnstler (Festival Song in Honor of Artists)

For male choms and solo male quartet, accompanied

INTERMISSION

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

A Serenade to Music

For sixteen solo voices, unaccompanied

Ballet music for Revelations, arranged by Howard A. Roberts

Selections for accompanied mixed chorus and soloists

Shelton Becton, featured guest soloist

From Part 1: Poor Pilgrim of Sorrow

Fve Been ’buked

Fix Me, Jesus

From Part 2: Take Me to the Water 

Honor, Honor

Wade in the Water

I Wanna Be Ready

From Part 3: Move, Members, Move

The Day Is Past and Gone

God a-Mighty

Rock-a-My Soul

The Musicians

THE HOWARD UNIVERSITY CHOIR

Resident choir of one ofthe nation’s preeminent African American universities, the Howard University Choir ranks among the finest choral groups

in the United States. The ensemble attained this national distinction under

the leadership ofits former conductor, the late Dr. Warner Lawson. Since 

the appointment of Dr. J. Weldon Norris as its conductor in 1973, the choir

has expanded its focus, singing in international choral festivals in Krakow,

Rome, Toronto, Tokyo, and Valencia, Spain. The group has been critically 

acclaimed for its performances of choral works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, 

Brahms, Mendelssohn, Poulenc, and Rachmaninoff. True to its singular

legacy, the Howard University Choir has become the definitive interpreter

of Negro spirituals and work songs as well as choral works by composers

of African descent. A recent review in the Washington Post described the

choir’s performance ofspirituals as “mesmerizingly beautiful.”

Recent honors for the choir include providing the choral music for the

funeral ofthe late Ossie Davis (February 2005) at the Riverside Church in

New York City and performing for the fifth time at the Kennedy Center

Honors Gala (December 2004). In 1999-2000 the ensemble appeared on

“Good Morning America” and the “Las Vegas Vocal Extravaganza in Black.”

That busy season also included a tour of Switzerland and Germany with

the Chicago Sinfonietta and participation in the Festival des Artes Negres in

Libreville, Gabon. In 1998 the choir was invited to Venezuela for a choral

festival at the University of Caracas, and in 1997 the group sang in Nizhny

Novgorod and Amaras, Russia, in Belfort, France, and in the chapel of

Oxford University’s Balliol College.

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Leaders and staff ofthe Howard University Choir are:

Tia Edwards-Brock and Renee Harris, soprano section leaders

Chelsea Young, alto section leader

Clifton Ross, tenor section leader

Gregory Watkins, bass section leader

Andrea Hogan, student administrative assistant

Joseph Smith, student librarian and general manager

Andre Briscoe, assistant to the conductor

Gregory Watkins, student conductor

David Lang, accompanist

J. Weldon Norris, music director and conductor

The following musicians are assisting the choir in this performance:

Max Cripe and Mark Questad, French horn

Suzanne Robinson, harp

Gregory Watkins, piano

John Pollard, bass guitar

Dianne Grainger, set drums

Joel Holmes, conga drums

Russell Carter, bongo drums

J. WELDON NORRIS

A native of South Carolina, J. Weldon Norris graduated from South Carolina State College in 1955, having earned a bachelor ofscience degree in

chemistry and biology. After a tour of duty as a commissioned officer in

the United States Army Reserve, Norris matriculated at Howard University,

earning the bachelor and master of music degrees in 1959 and i960,

respectively. At Howard, Norris studied with Professors Vada E. Butcher,

Evelyn White, Warner Lawson, and Mark Fax. From 1969 to 1973 he served

as director of choral activities, chairman ofthe department of humanities,

and acting academic dean at Morris College in Sumter, South Carolina. In

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1975 he culminated a Ford Foundation Fellowship by earning a doctor of

music degree from the School of Music at Indiana University, where his 

teachers were Julius Herford, Fiora Contino, and Hugh Johnson.

Norris was appointed director of choral activities and professor of music

at Howard University in 1973. He pursued postdoctoral studies at the Internationa] Bach Academy in Stuttgart and at the International Haydn Congress

in Austria and Hungary. He has also studied with the eminent choral conductors Robert Shaw and Eric Ericson. A published arranger and scholar of 

Negro spirituals, Norris was asked in 1986 to deliver lectures on that genre 

in Germany at the Amerika-Schule and the Amerika-Haus in Hamburg

and at the University of Gottingen. He also gave lectures on this theme in

connection with the Howard University Choir’s performances in Krakow,

Caracas, and Valencia.

In addition to his busy schedule of performances with the Howard 

University Choir, Norris often serves as an adjudicator and guest conductor 

at choral festivals. He recently appeared as a commentator for the bbc in

films on the lives of Al Green and Jessye Norman. He has served on the 

educational and choral panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the

District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the 

Maryland Commission on the Arts.

Program Notes

Music, especially singing, held particular importance in the life of Martin

Luther King Jr., who was born on January 15, 1929. The hymns and spirituals that he learned as a child in the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta,

Georgia, were essential threads in the fabric of his philosophy, his strength 

of purpose, and his stirring oratory. In its artistic excellence and dedication 

to the definitive interpretation of spirituals, the Howard University Choir 

pays implicit tribute to Martin Luther King whenever it sings. The National

Gallery is honored to be presenting the Howard University Choir in this 

explicit tribute to that great champion of civil rights.

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Although Johannes Brahms is best known for his profound and serious

choral works, such as his Schicksalslied (Song of Fate) and The German

Requiem, the great composer wrote many part songs on secular texts,

intended for performance by a quartet or other vocal chamber group. One 

ofthe innovations ofthe nineteenth century, when it became commonplace

for women to sing in public, was the formation of choirs of women’s voices.

Brahms founded and directed such an ensemble early in his career and 

wrote a considerable number of works for it, including Four Songs, op. 17,

Three Sacred Choruses, op. 37, and Twelve Songs and Romances, op. 44.

Mendelssohn composed several choral works for festive occasions,

including a setting of Friedrich Schiller’s An die Kunstler, written in 1846

for a men’s chorus in the city of Cologne. Mendelssohn was drawn to poetry

that dealt with romantic themes, such as springtime, forests, and wandering. He was deeply influenced by the writings of Shakespeare, Goethe, and

the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), the

latter being a personal acquaintance. From them, Mendelssohn garnered

ideas about the independence of musical form and the importance ofthe

classical tradition. He was the first major composer to organize “historical”

concerts, in which the aim was to introduce listeners to the music of earlier

times. In the course ofthose concerts, he conducted (and trained choirs to

sing) works by Handel, Haydn, Cimarosa, Mozart, and Salieri that had been

forgotten by the public and most fellow musicians.

Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote his Serenade to Music in 1938 as a tribute

to the revered British conductor Sir Henry Wood (1869-1944) on the occasion of his golden jubilee as a conductor. After shocking the musical world

with his dissonant Fourth Symphony, Vaughan Williams gradually reverted to a

more traditional style. His music ofthe late 1930s and the years ofthe Second

World War is reassuring and euphonious, conveying a sense ofspiritual security. The harmonic language is modal and diatonic, with occasional contrary

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elements providing variety and interest. The text for the Serenade is a conversation among four ofthe characters in Shakespeare’s Merchant ofVenice, who

share their thoughts on music as they pause in a nighttime journey.

The ballet Revelations was a favorite of the late African American choreographer Alvin Ailey. The music for the ballet was arranged by Howard A.

Roberts, a professor of music at the Borough of Manhattan Community

College in New York City. Earlier in his career Roberts had served on the

faculties of North Carolina Central and Morgan State Universities. A jazz

trumpeter as well as a singer, he was the first African American tenor to

be accepted into the famed Robert Shaw Chorale. Roberts also composed

and arranged for the Boys Choir of Harlem and founded and conducted

his own choral group, the Howard Roberts Singers.

Revelations consists ofthree parts, designed to portray the religious convictions of African Americans as they would have been celebrated in the

black churches ofthe southern United States in the nineteenth century. The 

first part, “Poor Pilgrim of Sorrow,” bemoans the people’s trials and tribulations but always maintains the strong conviction that things will change

for the better. The second part, “Take Me to the Water,” declares salvation

through baptism. “Move, Members, Move,” probably the most popular

section ofthe ballet, takes the listener to a revival meeting in the heat of

an August evening. After greeting each other, the church members listen

to a fiery sermon, after which the meeting turns into a shouting jubilee.

Roberts’s music includes arrangements ofthe music of other outstanding

composers, including James Miller and Hall Johnson.