CHORAL SOCIETY CONCERT PROGRAMMES
Christine Headley writes and designs programmes for choral societies. Please contact her at chps@chps.co.uk
Programmes are printed in A5 size on 130 gsm paper with a pastel cover in top-quality 160 gsm card. Eight sides of material cost £80 plus 20p per copy printed, twelve £120 plus 30p and sixteen sides £160 plus 40p. Postage and packing extra.
Christine likes to know at an early stage which work or works are to be sung, and appreciates full information about works and soloists eight weeks in advance. There is a rush fee for jobs with less than eight weeks notice.
Christine has written notes about a wide variety of works - from Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 to John Sanders' The Cotwolds, commissioned by Stroud Choral Society and first performed in 1996. Christine is an experienced choral singer and looks forward to writing notes to works she hasn't covered before.
Christine can also provide choral society annual leaflets and concert A4 posters in a uniform colour at competitive prices.
Christine can also quote for individual covers and handsewn programmes for special guests/participants. Information about Christine's bookbinding activities here.
Some extracts:
(c) Christine Headley 2005
Mendelssohn's St Paul (December 2000)
All numbers were listed, together with participants, e.g.
And all that sat in the council - Recit (Soprano)
Men, brethren, and fathers - Stephen (Tenor)
Take him away! - The Hebrews (Chorus)
Lo! I see the heavens opened - Stephen (Tenor)
The Note reads: "Much of the libretto of Saint Paul is taken from the Acts of the Apostles, though Mendelssohn and his librettists also found material to use in other books of the New Testament, the Old Testament and the Psalms. Paul himself is sung by the bass soloist and much of the narrative is provided by soprano recitative. In the first dozen numbers, the tenor soloist sings Stephen. Later on he sings Barnabas. Both bass and tenor soloists also sing some of the recitative: the list of numbers overleaf indicates which role is being sung. The chorus also has several roles, indicated overleaf.
"The overture opens with a statement of the popular chorale theme 'Sleepers wake'. Part I opens in Jerusalem, where the persecuted Christians pray for strength and joyfulness to preach the Word of God. Much of the narrative is contributed by the soprano soloist. The climax of the first section is the trial and stoning to death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Some of the mob (referred to as 'witnesses' in the Bible and in the libretto) leave their coats 'at the feet of a young man named Saul, who was consenting unto [Stephen's] death'. The chorus that follows, 'Happy and blest are they', was played at Mendelssohn's funeral. Saul proceeds to 'make havock of the Church', then departs for Damascus to bring Christians back to Jerusalem for the High Priest to deal with. A short recitative for tenor and bass then tells of a light from heaven, portrayed by the women of the chorus. A joyful chorus is followed by the famous chorale 'Sleepers Wake'. By the final chorus of Part I Paul, with the help of Ananias, has seen the error of his ways, been baptised and 'preached Jesus in the synagogues'.
"Part II opens with the chorus ‘The nations are now the Lord’s’. Together with Barnabas (tenor), Paul preaches the gospel, incurring hostility from both Jews and Gentiles. After a miracle at Lystra (in modern Turkey), the Gentiles proclaim Barnabas and Paul to be incarnations of the Roman gods Jupiter and Mercury, to the apostles' alarm. Paul himself narrowly avoids being stoned by a mob of Jews and Gentiles. At Ephesus (also in Turkey) Paul announces his decision to return to Jerusalem, risking imprisonment and death. After his departure, the chorus sings 'See what love hath the Father'. The final chorus opens with words from Timothy and concludes with a quotation from Psalm 103, 'Bless thou the Lord, O my Soul'."
* * *
"Conversion to Christianity was a subject close to Felix Mendelssohn's heart, as his parents were Jews who had arranged for him and his siblings (one older, two younger) to be baptised in 1815, when he was six, though they had themselves not followed suit until 1822. In addition, Felix’s grandfather, Moses, was a distinguished philosopher. Felix’s immediate family moved to Berlin in 1811, as the French had occupied Hamburg, where they lived.
"Saint Paul was first performed in Düsseldorf as part of the 1836 Lower Rhine Music Festival. Mendelssohn was 27. By this time he had conducted a groundbreaking performance of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, and made arrangements of several of Handel’s devotional works. He had conducted Handel's Israel in Egypt at the same festival in 1833. St Paul was soon performed in Liverpool, Birmingham and London, and encouraged the Birmingham Festival to commission Elijah for 1846.
"Saint Paul represents an interesting stage in the development of ‘the oratorio’. Mendelssohn was the first person after Bach to use chorales in large-scale works, but did not repeat the experiment in Elijah, and the practice never caught on, first being tried again - in a manner of speaking - by Michael Tippett in A Child of Our Time and Benjamin Britten in Noye’s Fludde."
John Sanders' The Cotwolds (May 2001)
1 ‘The Valley’ (Ivor Gurney)
2 Cotswold Choice (Frank Mansell)
3 Market Day (Maurice Broadbent)
4 Birdlip Hill (Leonard Clark)
5 A Canticle of Praise (from the Book of Common Prayer)
All the poems set were quoted in full in the programme. The programme note read: "In association with the Stroud Festival, Stroud Choral Society commissioned The Cotswolds for a first performance in October 1996, not long after Dr Sanders’ retirement as Organist and Master of the Choristers at Gloucester Cathedral. Ivor Gurney appears to have written ‘There was such beauty’ in the early part of 1919, while he was living in Gloucester. It was eventually given by his mother to his staunch friend Marion Scott, usually the immediate recipient of his poems, twenty years later. Frank Mansell lived at The Camp and published ‘Cotswold Choice’ with others in a slender volume in 1969 to which Laurie Lee contributed a foreword.
Maurice Broadbent was Director of Events for the Stroud Festival and wrote ‘Market Day’ specially for The Cotswolds. Leonard Clark grew up in the Forest of Dean and his first poems were published when he was only 15 years old. He became first a teacher and later a School Inspector. In 1967 he was one of the adjudicators of the Stroud Festival Poetry Competition. He was a major contributor to a book, Poems of Ivor Gurney 1890-1937, published in 1973.
Pergolesi's Stabat Mater (May 2003)
The text was reproduced in full, together with a line-by-line Latin translation compiled by Christine herself. Space precluded anything but a short paragraph about the work.
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This page was most recently updated on 9 March 2009.