Vespers
Phila. composer beautifully blends old and new
ecstatically beautiful … fine compositional talent blessed with inspiration and strategy … making ancient things modern is more common in Europe, but few such endeavors by Peteris Vasks, Giya Kancheli or Arvo Pärt have Smith’s lyrical immediacy and ability to find great musical variety while maintaining an overall coherent personality … elements were assembled and juxtaposed with intelligence and originality. Most immediately apparent … was the harmonic sensitivity lavished upon the blended Piffaro winds. Thus, the piece prepared your ears to hear matters of religious importance conveyed in miniature Schütz-like strokes—as well as instilling confidence in what was to come. The choral entrance on the word “Alleluia” was seamless, and all the more breathtaking for being so cleanly vocalized by the Crossing (Philadelphia’s best chorus), conducted by Donald Nally.
Choral sections were punctuated by instrumental movements also inspired by religious texts, but in music that had subsumed the words but projected them in spirit. At times, the winds had a gently bleating quality (as in Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ), but they never lapsed into potentially cheap picturesque effects. Though a concert work, Vespers was close in spirit to liturgical-minded composers who wouldn’t let effects eclipse words.
But you’d never say that Smith kept a respectful distance from the text. The German-language “Our Father” had block chords whose power came from their inner voices and their almost processional rhythm. Other texts took on subtle narrative with a variety of vocal solos and duets and use of recurring refrains. Formality was there, but it was completely negotiable.—David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer
Magnificent concert at Hill Presbyterian Church
Smith’s Vespers … turned out to be one of the finest concerts I’ve heard in at least the last decade … The idea of Piffaro—an ensemble specializing in performances of music composed during the Renaissance of the 15th, 16th & early 17th centuries—commissioning a living composer to write a score to add to its repertoire is almost a contradiction in terms. And yet, Piffaro’s directors, Joan Kimball and Robert Wiemken, didn’t shrink from that contradiction. In fact, they embraced it with the same level of conviction that has characterized Piffaro’s development into one of the world’s premiere period instruments ensembles.
Remaining in context even while breaking new ground was their motto when they commissioned Kile Smith to compose a setting of the Lutheran Vespers Service to celebrate Epiphany, the manifestation of God in the flesh as the Infant Jesus, the final feast of the Christmas season. And, recognizing the need for a chorus with which to perform the score, Kimball and Wiemken couldn’t have made a better choice than The Crossing, with Donald Nally set to conduct the actual performance.
Smith met the daunting challenge of composing new music in an old form as though it were second nature to him. He has taken hold of the complex structure of 12 individual and varied movements to construct a score that proffers both cohesion of intention and diversity of expression. By opening and closing with music based on Latin Gregorian chant, he establishes the larger historical context of Vespers as an evening service of the Roman Catholic Church from which the new Lutheran Vespers has developed. By maintaining the Latin Vulgate texts of Psalms 70, 27 & 113 and the Magnificat, Smith honored Luther’s intention to retain as many as possible of those portions of the Latin Rite that he considered apostolic treasures. By employing the newly written German texts of hymns, Smith acknowledged the new vernacular style of the Reformation. And by interspersing three purely instrumental sonatas within the progression of the choral movements, Smith tipped his compositional hat to both the historical tradition and Piffaro’s musical prowess.
The score, itself, is a marvelous marriage of the old with the new. Smith has beautifully combined Renaissance modality and polyphonic voice leading with modern dissonance and resolution, all with a bracing ear for blending and contrasting the tart timbres of Renaissance instruments, often sensitively supporting the choral singing but occasionally coming to the fore to dramatic effect.
His writing for the chorus is no less masterful. From delicately shaped single lines of music through complex yet transparent counterpoint into full throttled chorale-like harmonizations, Smith never fails to free the human voice to soar with the soul’s inspiration. While maintaining the primacy of projecting the text, Smith’s choral writing also proffers music that moves from start to finish in an unbroken arch of exposition, development and resolution that seems to unfold naturally before your eyes. The music envelops you and carries you along with its narrative, never more magnificently than in the Hymn “Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn” (God’s only Son, from all time).
Under Donald Nally’s direction, The Crossing and Piffaro gave Smith’s Vespers a sterling performance Sunday afternoon before an audience that packed Chestnut Hill Presbyterian and rewarded the musicians with an ecstatic standing ovation. Piffaro played with consumate skill and engaging vibrancy and The Crossing sang with the technical immaculacy and interpretive intensity that has become its hallmark. Pitch, balance, blend, tone and diction were all impeccable, with soprano Shari Alise Wilson and tenor Steven Bradshaw particular standouts.
It was an altogether stunning concert that effectively brought the holiday season to a memorable consumation and that enhanced the repertoire of music for chorus and instrumental ensemble with a gem of a score.—Michael Caruso, Chestnut Hill Local
Back to the future: The renaissance meets the New Millennium
Piffaro, Philadelphia’s Renaissance band, took a big risk when it devoted an entire program to a commission by a single Philadelphia composer. I thought they’d made a promising choice in giving the commission to Kile Smith, based on previous pieces he’d written and the fact that he actually sings and plays percussion with an early music group. But they were still laying a heavy bet on one composer.
In composing a work for Renaissance instruments and chorus, I figured Smith could take one of four possible approaches:
1. Evoke a glamorized, sentimentalized vision of a past that never was. Popular music groups have done this in the past, to produce novelty items that resemble real early music in about the same way Norman Rockwell illustrations resemble real American small town life.
2. Create his best imitation of a piece done in authentic Renaissance style. Make a belated addition, in other words, to a tradition that expired centuries ago.
3. Cut all ties to the past. Treat the instruments as an interesting new set of toys. Write in one of the standard modern avant-garde modes.
4. Work with his own taste and musical imagination. Follow his own personal vision and try to create the best music he could, according to his own standards.
When Smith’s Vespers opened with four unrelated blasts from the instruments, I succumbed to a momentary fear that he’d chosen the third course. Fortunately, I was overreacting. Smith chose Option Four, and produced the kind of success I hoped he’d give us when Piffaro first commissioned this project … overall, his Vespers is a triumph. Piffaro took a risk on Smith and he gave them one of the major events of the music season.
In the eighth section, the entire band plays a beautifully serene instrumental sonata for seven recorders. In the sixth section, five of the same musicians produce a rousing piece for recorders, guitar and dulcian (the ancestor of the bassoon). In other sections, they support the vocalists with a sonic kaleidoscope that includes shawms (the forerunner of the oboe), sacbuts (early trombones), harp and two kinds of lute. The Deo gratias was the kind of exultant blast that Piffaro usually uses as a finale, with shawms, dulcians and sacbuts working all-out. But this time the music was written especially for them, with that kind of finale in mind, and some great voices magnifying the effect.
Exsultet
Smith’s concerto is the latest entry in a series of [Philadelphia Classical Symphony] commissions that pairs Philadelphia composers with principal players from the Philadelphia Orchestra. Concertos written for specific players are a fruitful musical tradition…. [the Symphony] unveiled another success, a concerto for horn and orchestra by Kile Smith, a veteran Philadelphia composer who is the Curator of the Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music at the Free Library. The soloist was Jennifer Montone, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s new principal horn, and Smith gave her a score worthy of her abilities. [It] is based on a liturgical ceremony that some churches hold on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. The ceremony consists of a candle-lighting ritual outside the church, a procession into the darkened sanctuary, and a climax in which the lowest ranking cleric steps up to the pulpit and proclaims Exultet—rejoice! The first two movements of Smith’s work evoked the subdued mood of the candle-lighting and the procession. In the finale, the horn led the orchestra in a big, swaying dance—a celebration, as Smith explained in his remarks, in which even the angels are supposed to join the ball. It was played…by a musician who understands the essentially poetic nature of her instrument and possesses all the necessary qualities of power and control.—Tom Purdom, Broad Street Review, Philadelphia
Exsultet
[Preview] The opening of Kile Smith’s new work for solo horn and strings, Exsultet, is meant to capture the drama and emotion of a darkened church, with an almost claustrophobic shroud pierced only by the lights of candles. The music is an evocation of the wonder and mystery that the composer experienced at Lutheran Easter ceremonies that he remembers growing up. The second of its three sections is less solemn, but also long-lined and broadly paced. After Smith first showed these parts to Jennifer Montone, dedicatee of the work and the superb new principal horn player for the Philadelphia Orchestra, she gingerly suggested to him that “you can make it harder if you want.” Don’t worry, he assured her, it’s coming. That would be the conclusion, a rollicking tour de force that represents the actual Exsultet, that is, an unbridled expression of spiritual fervor. “In one sense, writing for Jennifer is easy. Anything I put on paper, she’ll be able to play,” says Smith. “But I also wanted to do justice to her abilities. It has been a very inspiring process.” Montone will also solo in a concerto by 20th-century British neo-classicist Gordon Jacob. The New Philadelphia Classical Symphony, as conducted by Karl Middleman, will round out the concert with works by Ernst Dohnanyi and Clifford Taylor. That’s right, folks, a classical music concert without a single Top 20 composer. For now, that is.—Peter Burwasser, City Paper
Symphony: Lumen ad revelationem
at once appealing and challenging…the work passed my test for something new: I’d love to hear it again.—Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.
Three Dances for orchestra
good tunes, finely set, and arresting timbres…spiraling motion…Smith moves instrumental lines as if they were Renaissance voices—Lesley Valdes, Philadelphia Inquirer
subdued…appealing…accessible—Express-Times, Allentown, Pa.
Of the commissions recently heard, this is among the most successful—Morning Call, Allentown
A Song of Sonia Sanchez for Latin band, vocalist
The most dramatic piece of the evening…lively…a deafening performance, physically and emotionally—The Temple News, Temple University
One of the most powerful pieces of the evening…it made a strong emotional impact—Latinoamérica, Philadelphia
Poems of Stephen Berg for soprano, clarinet, piano
Smith’s approach was jazz-influenced both in its rhythmic activity and in the rich-voiced sonorities that created engaging musical constructions—David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer
Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra
creative and effective…particularly American—Peter Dobrin, Philadelphia Inquirer
melodic…exuberant…populist energy—Wilmington News Journal, Del.
Hymn and Fugue No. 1 for string orchestra
emotion-laden…boldly lighted…celebrates the bright, clear sounds of high strings—Daniel Webster, Philadelphia Inquirer
supple…fascinating…ingenious—Playbill
Hymn and Fugue No. 2 for piano trio
double kudos—Philadelphia Daily News
Sinfonietta for orchestra
the stuff of appealing performance—Daniel Webster, Philadelphia Inquirer
Come, ye Sinners for SATB choir, organ
compelling…attractive…straightforward, driving rhythm—Journal of Church Music
Three Songs, No. 5 for high voice, piano
All three of the Hopkins settings in this little cycle are memorable for their charm and poetic focus. His style is a welcome mixture of classical and “popular” elements that makes one wish for him to write an opera.—Prof. Nancy Ellen Ogle, soprano, University of Maine
