Enjoy a breadth of classic musical beats in Wicker Park...melodic to industrial

Symphony Sounds String Quartet and Wicker Park Choral Singers will present a concert in Wicker Park’s Schiller Grove, corner of Damen and Schiller, 1425 N. Damen, Sun., Aug. 12 from 11 a.m.to12:30 p.m. This third free admission concert  is part of a four-part series for the 2012 season presented by Wicker Park Advisory Council and Wicker Park Garden Club in collaboration with the Chicago Park District and WPB SSA#33 with sponsorship from various community organizations.*

Works by Bach, Mozart, and Dvořák will be presented by the string quartet which this month will include: Madeline Capistran (Violin), Rachelle Elizabeth Puccini (Violin), Ryan Loeckel (Viola), and Sarah Marsh (Cello). Puccini will play 1st violin in the Bach and Mozart works; Capistran will play 1st violin in the Dvorak.

Works by Wilbye, Morris and Britten will be performed by the 18-member Wicker Park Chorus directed by Mark Tomasino.

Depicting the last movement of Dvorak’s American String Quartet, the latest concert banner designed by children will hang behind the performers. This is the third kid-designed banner  created during pre-concert music, dance, visual art and history educational program presented by Magic Boat, Easel Art Studio, Dance to Evolve, and the Culture Lady. From the Sun., Aug. 5, event, the banner displays movement of a train layered on top of a romantic period pastel wash.

Learn about and listen to the music
Symphony Sounds String Quartet will open the performance with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G major, BWV 1048. Bach completed a group of six concertos and delivered them to Christian Ludwig, the margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721; therefore, the set of concertos were named Brandenburg. Together the six concertos are considered to be among the finest compositions of the Baroque era (1600 to 1750). Written for three violins, three violas, three cellos, and basso continue (including harpsichord), Concerto #3 will be performed in a special string quartet arrangement. Next, the quartet will play Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quartet #4 in C Major K. 157 (1772). This composition is one of Mozart’s six Milanese Quartets (K. 155-160) written in 1772 and 1773. These quartets feature three movements, rather than four.

During those years, Mozart, a teenager, lived in Milan and was composing his opera Lucio Silla. Music critics believe that writing the opera at the same time had a profound influence on these six string quartets. They note that the first movement (Allegro) of K. 157 uses intervals "reminiscent of vocal duets" and that the expressive, second movement (Andante written in C Minor) ‘evokes an opera aria’ (James Reel, Rovi). The work is an excellent example of music of the Classical period (1750 – 1820).

Wicker Park Choral Singers will perform three works: John Wilbye’s Flora Gave Me Fairest Flowers (1598), Thomas Morley’s O Grief, E'en on the Bud (1594) and Benjamin Britten’s Five Flower Songs (1950). John Wilbye (1574-1638) and Thomas Morley (1557 –1602) wrote madrigals, secular vocal music composition of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. These three compositions all comment on the botanic and seasonal elements of nature, so they will be great to hear outside in Wicker Park.You will hear three compositions that span a period of 350 years that express three composer’s interpretations of how nature affects people and vice versa.

Wilbye is considered the most famous of the English madrigalists. His style is characterized by "delicate writing for the voice, acute sensitivity to the text, and the use of ‘false relations’ between the major and minor modes.” The text of the composition: "Flora gave me fairest flowers, none so fair in Flora’s treasure. These I placed on Phyllis’ bowers, She was pleased, and she my pleasure. Smiling meadows seem to say: 'Come ye wantons, here to play.'”

LISTEN TO Flora Gave Me Fairest Flowers performed by Wicker Park Choral Singers:

Morley was a composer, theorist, editor, organist and the also member of the English Madrigal School. He was known as the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England. Morley’s text: "O, grief, e’en on the bud that fairly flowered, the sun hath lowered, and, ah, that breast which Love durst never venture, bold Death did enter. Pity, O Heav’ns that have my love in keeping, my cries, my cries and weeping."

The chorus will then turn to the 20th century repertory and perform Benjamin Britten’s Five Flower Songs (1950): I. To Daffodils II. The Succession of Four Sweet Months III. Marsh Flowers IV. The Evening Primrose V. Ballad of Green Broom. The work draws its text from 3 poets and one anonymous writer (Movement 5): Robert Herrick (1591-1674 – Movements I & II), George Crabbe (1754-1832 – Movement III), John Clare (1793-1864 – Movement IV). For a complete text – here.

 In this case, Britten (1913 - 1976) a 20th century English composer wrote a work in 1950 that combined 16th – 19th century concepts, illustrations, and interpretations of nature and seasonal change. He composed the work for Leonard and Dorothy Elmhurst’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They were English "amateur botanists and founders of the Dartington Hall project which was dedicated to the development of the arts.

Each of these songs is a masterly characterization of its subject, from the darkly dissonant Marsh Flowers and the lyrical Succession of the Four Sweet Month to the exuberant Ballad of Green Broom," (John Bawden.) The works describe changes in seasons and growth, the shortness of life cycles, special times of the day, and compare the cycles of nature to the cycles of our lives. This is really a great work and Wicker Park Choral Singers does a great job performing it. It will be great when heard in the park.

LISTEN TO Movement I -To Daffodils performed by Wicker Park Choral Singers

Symphony Sounds String Quartet will present Antonín Leopold Dvořák’s Quartet #12, op 96 (American) (1893) as the final work of the day. Czech composer Antonin Dvořák came from a period (last 19th and early 20th century) where composers were intensely interested in American music, especially American folk music. In addition, eastern European composers of that time period had turned to their own folk music with the goal of developing a "national identity."

Smetana, whose work we heard last month was a composer who fit this profile. Jeannette Thurber invited Dvořák to come to New York City to serve as the director of the National Conservatory of Music and develop an "American sound." He held that position in New York from 1892-1895. “During his three years at the Conservatory, Dvorák explored what he considered to be the unique folk music of America: the music of Native Americans and the African American spiritual.” He suffered from homesickness and each year took a vacation trip to Spillville, Iowa, a Czech community. In Iowa, he wrote and completed the Quartet #12 (American) in fifteen days.

There are numerous essays and debates on how American the quartet really is! Dvořák said it was “composed in the spirit of American national melodies” but denied any literal borrowings. All artists are always looking for ways to increase the vocabulary of their art forms. He was interested in adapting the "new vocabulary" that he could obtain from studying these American musical forms. He would then work to incorporate the elements of this vocabulary into his compositions to enrich them, rather than directly quoting them.

Particularly interesting was the use of pentatonic scales (five note scales verses seven notes per scale) and flattened leading tones. The quartet is filled with melodies based in the pentatonic idiom. “Nevertheless, a range of specific New World sources have been suggested: the theme of the incredibly beautiful Lento second movement has been likened to an African American spiritual, and the rhythmic accompaniment in the Finale fourth movement to Native American drumming. Only one example of local color is beyond question: the birdsong that appears high in the first violin in the Scherzo third movement. This is the song of the scarlet tanager, indigenous to Iowa and a familiar sound on the plains around Spillville.” (Gavin Dixon 2011) Others say the last movement depicts a train; Dvořák was in love with trains. So, let us know what you think when you hear the performance.

*SPONSORS: WPB SSA#33, WPB Chamber of Commerce, Cat & Mouse Game Store, Chicago Park District, Friends of the Parks, CCI-Greenheart, Wicker Park Apartments, Friends of Bloomingdale Trail, The Trust for Public Land, Littlerock Construction, Mosaic Church, Urban Encounter, Wicker Park Advisory Council, Wicker Park Garden Club, Our Urban Times and Pipeline