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Lift Every Voice Program Notes
Tina Sandor Bunce, mezzo-soprano

Tina Sandor Bunce is primarily known for her work in oratorio and on the concert stage.  She has excelled as soloist in performances of many of the great works for choir and orchestra, including Verdi’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s Requiem, Mahler’s Second Symphony, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony, and the St. John and St. Matthew Passions of J.S. Bach.  Ms. Bunce has also made a number of appearances as a guest soloist on the annual New Music Festival at Bowling Green State University, at the Heidelburg University New Music Festival and was the mezzo-soprano in the world premiere of the intermedia-dance-opera Lives in Crisis; Jesus’ Daughter by BGSU composer Burton Beerman.

Ms. Bunce holds degrees from Olivet College and BGSU.  Her teachers include Andreas Poulimenos, Beverley Rinaldi and Virginia Starr.  She is a member of the Bowling Green vocal ensemble Opus 181, directed by Mark Munson, and the Canterbury Singers, USA, with which she participated in a weeklong residency this past summer at Ely Cathedral in England.  The voice coordinator for the Creative Arts Program at BGSU, she maintains a private voice studio in Findlay.

Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78
Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka, Ukraine in 1891 and died near Moscow in 1953.  He composed the music for Sergei Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky in 1938. The following year Prokofiev created a “dramatic cantata” from the film score using texts by himself and by Russian poet Vladimir Lugovskoy (1901-1957); the composer led the first performance in Moscow in 1939.  The score of this work calls for mezzo-soprano soloist,  chorus, 3 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, tenor saxophone, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

Prokofiev enjoyed composing film scores, and when offered the chance to compose the music for a major film by Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948), he jumped at the opportunity.  The collaboration resulted in not only one of the great films of all time, but also one of the most brilliant film scores ever written.  Prokofiev clearly thought so, too, for he immediately turned the music into a “dramatic cantata” for the concert hall.
The story of the film concerns the heroism of the title character, a thirteenth century Russian prince.  Faced with a horde of Knights of the Teutonic Order poised to invade, Alexander Nevsky raised an immense army and met the invading Germans on the ice of Lake Chud.  The invaders were dealt a crushing defeat, and Nevsky was credited with saving his country from the brutality of the invaders.

In art and in politics, timing is everything.  When Eisenstein began filming in 1938 the fear of another invading horde of Germans was very real.  However, by the time the film was completed, Hitler and Stalin had signed a non-aggression treaty and the film was suppressed by Soviet authorities.  After Hitler invaded Russia, the film was finally released, for it had become a made-to-order propaganda tool.
 
Prokofiev’s cantata is in seven parts.  The bleak music of “Russia Under the Mongolian Yoke” accompanied the opening images of the film, full of burned villages, piles of bones, and rusted weapons.  This music is full of dread and anticipation.

The chorus in “Song about Alexander Nevsky” begins by telling how Nevsky had previously defeated the invading Swedes at the river Neva, and ends with a call to arms to the people of Novgorod.

“The Crusaders in Pskov” depicts the oppression of the invading Germans; “Arise, Ye Russian People” is a more elaborate call to arms.

“The Battle on the Ice” begins with the morning mists on the frozen lake. The battle commences as the music representing the Russians and the music of the Germans create a battle scene that needs no film to understand. This powerful, cinematic music climaxes when we hear the horrific sound of the ice breaking up and consuming the invading knights.
“The Field of the Dead” is the score’s most touching moment.  The mezzo-soprano becomes the voice of a Russian girl, searching through the piles of bodies for the “valiant warriors” to whom she feels betrothed, that she may kiss their eyelids; she vows not to marry a handsome man, but rather “a man who’s brave.”

Nevsky is welcomed as a hero in “Alexander’s Entry Into Pskov,” the city he saved.  The Russian themes from previous movements combine in a grand celebration of victory.  Here, for the first time, Prokofiev allows the music to become lighter, almost flippant, as if those who have survived can finally remember joy.  This remarkable work then closes with a final hymn.

Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, “Organ”
Charles Camille Saint-Saëns

Saint-Saëns was born in Paris in 1835 died in Algiers, Algeria in 1921.  He composed his Third Symphony in 1886, and conducted the first performance in London later the same year.  The work calls for 3 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, organ, piano four-hands and strings.

Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy of the Mozartean class.  He was picking out tunes at the keyboard at age two-and-a-half, composing at three, studying Don Giovanni in full score at five.  He had a photographic memory and absolute pitch.  He astonished the audience at his debut piano recital, given at age ten, by offering to play any of Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas from memory.

In an era of increasing specialization, Saint-Saëns became a general practitioner:  he was a composer, conductor, pianist, organist (“the best in the world,” said Liszt), musicologist and critic.  While French tastes demanded opera, opera and more opera, he led a revival of instrumental music.  To that end, he founded the Société de Musique, lending support (and performances) to such composers as Charbrier, Chausson, Dukas, d’Indy, Franck and Ravel.

Of his own music, he said, “I ran after the chimera of purity of style and perfection of form.”  But that put him behind the times in the eyes of other musicians and the public, and his works never reached the popularity achieved by those he had helped.  Saint-Saëns was guilty of the one crime composers are never allowed to commit:  he was old-fashioned.

Yet clarity, restraint and elegance aren’t ever old-fashioned, and Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony has these in abundance.  “This symphony,” he wrote, “is divided into two parts.  Nevertheless it embraces in principle the four traditional movements, but the first is altered in its development to serve as the introduction to the Adagio, and the Scherzo is connected by the same process to the Finale.  I have sought to avoid to some extent the interminable reprises and repetitions which are leading to the disappearance of instrumental music.”

The name for how this symphony works is “thematic metamorphosis.”  All the major themes of the work derive from the first few notes of the first movement’s Allegro.  This music evolves continually throughout the symphony, appearing in many guises and underlying all the work’s varied moods.  It engenders the fury of the first movement, the serenity of the second, the propulsion of the third, and the triumph of the last.

Saint-Saëns’ Third is known as a sonic spectacular.  A symphony orchestra and a big pipe organ are each capable of shaking a room.  Together they can make a glorious racket, as the finale demonstrates.  But note the subtlety of the organ’s first entrance in the second movement; here it is just another voice in the orchestra, a wind instrument of unique color.  The entrance of the piano in the Scherzo’s trio is just as surprising, and just as vital to the tone of the music.  For all the bombast, this is a work about nuance, control, honest romanticism and love of melody.  Saint-Saëns had found his “chimera of purity” well within his reach.
                                                                        —Mark Rohr
                                                                        Questions or comments?
                                                                        mrohr@comcast.net

Alexander Nevsky (Prokofiev)
English translation of the original Russian

1. Russia Under the Mongolian Yoke

2. Song about Alexander Nevsky

Yes, ‘twas on the river Neva it occurred,
On the Neva’s stream, on the waters deep.
There we slew our foes’ pick of fighting men,
Pick of fighting men, army of the Swedes.

Ah, how we did fight, how we routed them!
Yes, we smashed their ships of war to kindling wood.
In the fight our red blood was freely shed,
For our great land, our native Russian land.

Where the broad axe swung was an open street,
Through their ranks ran a lane where the spear was thrust.
We mowed down the Swedes, the invading troops,
Just like feather-grass, grown on desert soil.

We shall never yield native Russian land.
They who march on Russ, shall be put to death.
Rise against the foe, Russian land arise!
Rise, to arms, arise, great town Novgorod!

3. The Crusaders in Pskov

As a foreigner, I expected my
feet to be shod in cymbals.

4. Arise, Ye Russian People

Arise to arms, ye Russian folk,
in battle just, in the fight to death;
arise ye, people free and brave
defend our fair native land!
To living warriors high esteem
immortal fame to warriors slain!
For native home, for Russian Soil,
arise ye people, Russian folk!

In our Russia great, in our native Russia
no foe shall live:
Rise to arms, arise, native mother Russia!

No foe shall march across Russian land,
no foreign troops shall raid Russia;
unseen are the ways to Russia,
no foe shall ravage Russian fields.

5. The Battle on the Ice

A foreigner, I expected my feet
to be shod in cymbals.
May the arms of the cross-bearers conquer!
Let the enemy perish!

6. Field of the Dead

I shall go across the snow-clad field,
I shall fly above the field of death.
I shall search for valiant warriors,
my betrothed, my stalwart youths,
Here lies one felled by a wild saber;
there lies one impaled by an arrow.
From their wounds blood fell like rain
on our native soil, on our Russian fields.
He who fell for Russia in noble death
shall be blest by my kiss on his eyes
and to him , brave lad, who remained alive, I
shall be a true wife and loving friend.
I’ll not be wed to a handsome man;
earthly charm and beauty fast fade and die.
I’ll be wed to the man who’s brave.
Give ye heed to this, brave warriors!

7. Alexander’s Entry into Pskov

In a great campaign Russia went to war.
Russia put down the hostile troops
In our native land no foe shall live.
Foes who come shall be put to death!

Celebrate and sing, native Mother Russia
In our native land foes shall never live,
Foes shall never see Russian towns and fields.

They who march on Russia shall be put to death.
Foes shall never see Russian towns and fields.

In our Russia great, in our native Russia no foe shall live.
Celebrate and sing, native Mother Russia.
To a fete in triumph all of Russian came.
Celebrate, rejoice, celebrate and sing, our Motherland!