Program Notes
Enchanted Worlds
Enchanted Worlds invites you into music shaped by imagination, where fairies move through moonlit forests, ancient myths linger, and familiar melodies take on new life. Drawing on Shakespeare, classical mythology, and English folk tradition, these works move between fantasy and reflection, bringing to life fairies and spirits, ancient heroes, and scenes of human celebration. Together, they trace a path from enchantment and transformation to memory and joy, inviting the listener into worlds that feel both distant and familiar.
Songs of Magical Creatures
Will Todd’s Songs of Magical Creatures sets three passages from Shakespeare, drawing on two of his most imaginative plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. The work is scored for choir with strings, harp, piano, and percussion—an ensemble that plays a central role in shaping its atmosphere from beginning to end.
The opening movement comes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where a fairy describes her restless movement through the natural world: over hill, through water and fire, in constant motion. Todd immediately establishes a sense of enchantment through rhythmic, rising chord clusters and bright, shifting textures. The choir’s uneven meter and buoyant energy bring the fairy’s character vividly to life.
The second movement sets Ariel’s song “Full Fathom Five” from The Tempest, and the mood changes completely. Muted instrumental textures create a haunting stillness, out of which the altos introduce the text with a dark, resonant color. The music unfolds in gently undulating phrases, with chromatic harmonies suggesting the slow movement of deep water. Shakespeare’s image of transformation—“a sea-change / Into something rich and strange”—is reflected in the music’s shifting, suspended quality.
The final movement returns to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Puck’s closing speech to the audience. The setting begins more hesitantly, supported by light, arpeggiated figures in the accompaniment, before gradually gaining confidence. As in the play, Puck breaks the boundary between performer and listener, offering reconciliation and release after the illusions of the drama.
Todd includes a brief reprise of the opening material, bringing the work full circle. What begins in restless motion returns in a spirit of playful closure, as if the magical world, like Shakespeare’s dream, has only momentarily come into focus before slipping away again.
Nänie
In ancient Rome, the dead were sometimes honored with a nenia, a sung lament. Friedrich Schiller’s poem Nänie (1799) reflects on the universality of death, though it was not written for a specific person. Johannes Brahms later set it to music in memory of the painter Anselm Feuerbach (1829–1880), whose classically inspired work he admired.
Schiller’s poem draws on Greek mythology to express a central idea: even beauty and greatness cannot escape death. Figures like Eurydice, Adonis, and Achilles—symbols of youth and beauty—are all lost too soon. Even the gods cannot prevent their fate. The poem suggests that while death is inevitable, being mourned and remembered gives meaning to a life lived.
Brahms responds to this text with music of restraint and breadth. A spacious piano introduction establishes a calm, elegiac tone, avoiding overt drama in favor of something more inward and reflective. When the choir enters, the music unfolds in three broad sections. The opening presents the mythological examples with a steady forward motion, each phrase deepening the sense of loss without exaggeration.
At the emotional center of the work is the image of Achilles’ mother, Thetis, rising from the sea to mourn her son. Here Brahms introduces one of his most radiant melodies. All voices begin in unison, lending the moment a sense of clarity and collective expression, before the texture opens outward. This passage marks a turning point in the piece, articulated by a shift in meter and key, and stands out as one of the few places where Brahms allows the music to bloom into fuller intensity.
In the final section, Brahms returns to the opening musical material, restoring a sense of stillness. Rather than building to a dramatic conclusion, he allows the music to settle, creating a sense of quiet acceptance. The closing measures do not resolve the tension between beauty and mortality, but they offer something more enduring: a sense of dignity, shaped through remembrance.
Fantasia on Greensleeves
Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Greensleeves is drawn from music he wrote for his opera Sir John in Love, based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. Like much of his music, it reflects his deep connection to English folk song.
The piece is built around the familiar melody “Greensleeves,” which many listeners know as the Christmas carol “What Child Is This?” Vaughan Williams presents the tune simply and directly, allowing its natural shape and lyricism to speak for itself. A contrasting middle section introduces a second folk tune, “Lovely Joan,” before the return of “Greensleeves.”
Scored for strings and harp, the music has a warm, transparent sound, with the harp gently supporting the flowing lines in the strings. Rather than developing the material in a dramatic way, Vaughan Williams lets the melodies unfold with ease, creating a brief moment of calm and reflection in the program.
In Windsor Forest
Like Fantasia on Greensleeves, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ In Windsor Forest brings together music from his opera Sir John in Love. While the opera itself is not often performed, Vaughan Williams recognized the strength of this material and reshaped it into a concert work that has taken on a life of its own.
Rather than telling a single story, the cantata moves through a series of scenes and texts, some by Shakespeare, others by his contemporaries, each with its own distinct character.
“The Conspiracy” sets Sigh no more, ladies and is sung by the women’s voices alone. The text suggests that “men were deceivers ever,” but the music quickly turns away from complaint. The recurring refrain “hey nonny no” introduces a lighter tone, set with a gentle lilt that makes the mood playful rather than resigned.
The “Drinking Song,” sung by the tenors and basses, provides a clear contrast. Here the men bluster about their circumstances, encouraging one another with the repeated refrain of “jolly good ale.” The music is grounded and strongly rhythmic, matching the text’s insistence that, whatever the hardship, a drink will set things right.
“Falstaff and the Fairies” unfolds in a series of sharply contrasted sections. It begins with the fairies’ ring dance, set in a buoyant triple meter that suggests their circling movement. A solo voice then interrupts in a more speech-like style, calling the group to order. The upper voices take over as the fairies gather, their lighter, quicker lines suggesting movement as they prepare their lanterns. When Falstaff is discovered, the lower voices enter more forcefully, marking him as the intruder. A second solo voice urges the fairies on, and the chorus responds with increasingly insistent, rhythmically pointed “pinch hims” as they carry out their mock punishment.
In contrast, the “Wedding Chorus,” set to a poem by Ben Jonson, offers a more sustained and expansive musical style. Jonson’s text is a stylized wedding ode, presenting the bride as an ideal of beauty and love. She is imagined riding in a chariot led by swans and doves, while vivid sensory images—her shining eyes, star-like hair, and skin compared to snow or a lily—attempt to capture her beauty. Vaughan Williams reflects this in longer, smoother musical lines, creating a moment of stillness within the larger work.
The final “Epilogue,” on a text by Thomas Campion, steps back from the action but not in tone. Vaughan Williams sets these lines in a bold, declamatory style, with the full chorus delivering the text directly and with energy. The phrases are broad and clearly shaped, and the music builds to a confident, emphatic close, underscoring the idea that “the world is but a play” with a spirited, theatrical, curtain-call finish.