Rutland’s Grace Congregational Church is celebrating the coming spring in the way it does best, with music. “Five Mystical Songs,” and other works by Vaughan Williams, Gwyneth Walker and Alastair Stout, will be performed at 4 p.m. Sunday, May 21.
“It’s beautiful music for the spring ahead of us,” explains Stout, the church’s minister of music.
“I’ve always been a fan of Vaughan Williams anyway, and I thought these post-Easter celebratory pieces would be a wonderful thing for the choirs to perform.”
The program features two world premieres, Walker’s “A Lament” in memory of Salmon and Stout’s own “Sing a Song of Seasons.” Performers include mezzo-soprano Amy Frostman, baritone David Rugger, the Rutland Area Chorus and Grace Festival Orchestra, all directed by Stout.
Perhaps the impetus for this program came with the arrival of a new baritone and his wife in Wallingford coming from Indianapolis last year.
“David Rugger appeared at the church one day and sang for me with a wonderful voice during COVID,” Stout said. “We wanted to feature him, and that was why the ‘Five Mystical Songs’ was particularly apt.”
The “Five Mystical Songs,” written by the English Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), set four poems (“Easter” divided into two parts) by 17th-century Welsh poet and Anglican priest George Herbert (1593–1633), from his 1633 collection “The Temple: Sacred Poems.” Written for baritone solo with various accompaniments, Stout is using that for chorus and strings.
When asked about a piece to complement the work, Rugger chose Vaughan Williams’ setting of “The Turtle Dove.” Also known as “Fare Thee Well,” this is an 18th-century English folk ballad, where a lover bids farewell before setting off on a journey, and the lyrics include a dialogue between the lovers. Vaughan Williams arranged the song for baritone and SATB chorus.
The Walker premiere came about when Salmon, a member of the choir here who also sang with the VSO Chorus, passed away on New Year’s Day.
“He was obviously well-loved,” Stout said. “Many people came to his memorial service and they very generously gifted a lot of money in his memory.”
With that funding, Grace Church commissioned Walker, a composer well-known to Vermont, to write a piece to partner “The Turtle Dove” for strings and oboe.
“Gwyneth has written a very beautiful piece,” Stout said of “A Lament.” “It’s typical Gwyneth Walker music in that she states it simply and develops it, but really, underneath there’s a lot going on. I love the transparency of her string writing.” (Unfortunately Walker will be at another premiere of her music that weekend, and won’t be able to attend.)
“I talked to Gary’s wife Margery, who sings in the choir here, about this commissioning project, and she thought it was a very apt tribute to remember Gary,” Stout said.
Directly following the premiere of “A Lament,” Rugger and the choir will perform “The Turtle Dove.”
Stout wrote his new song cycle “Sing a Song of Seasons” last year for mezzo-soprano and piano originally, but he has since arranged it for mezzo, strings and oboe. Frostman will sing the part, and her husband Dan is the oboist.
“I found poems that talk about each of the four seasons,” Stout said. “My pieces are folk-like in nature. The music is all original but certainly it draws on my upbringing in Shetland, the fiddle music especially in the last movement, which is all about spring.
“The poem by George Mackay Brown, who’s one my favorite Orcadian writers in Orkney (in the Northern Isles of Scotland), sets a wonderful Christmas poem to do with winter,” Stout said. “And I set an old German text for the summer, and the autumn poem is by Robert Louis Stevenson, where the title of the song cycle comes from.”
The program will open with Peter Warlock’s famous 1926 “Capriol Suite” for strings.
“All of the music has a sort of folk element to it,” Stout said. “Next summer, I’m taking the choir on a tour to Ireland, and we are taking a folk music-ish program. We’ll take a lot of (Robert) De Cormier and other Vermont folk-like music. So, this concert is a kind of lead-up to that time next summer when we explore much more folk-oriented music. I think that this concert is a great way to start this off.”