Choir Sings Works by British Composers
Milwaukee Chamber Choir's 27 members are professional-level singers.
Milwaukee Chamber Choir 2026. Photo by Eric Natamihardja
Choral music about music is featured in a performance by the Milwaukee Chamber Choir on Sunday afternoon, April 19.
The concert title, “And All of Winged Delight,” comes from a poem by Ursula Vaughan Williams, the second wife of composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. She wrote, “Wind and sea and all of winged delight live in the octaves of man’s voice …”
Milwaukee Chamber Choir was founded in 2013 and sings music for mixed voices from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Artistic director Jeremiah Cawley, completing his first season with MCC, designed the program to explore “the way we connect music to different parts of our lives,” he said. The 27-voice choir, made up of professional-level singers, will perform with violinist Frank Almond and pianist Jessi Kolberg.
In this concert, short works by Alonso Lobo (1555-1617) and Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) that link music to death and grief represent the Renaissance period.
Much of the program pairs poetry by British writers with music by 20th century British composers. “I am always on the hunt for composers who love words,” Cawley said. Their musical settings succeed when “the composer has found something in the text that matches their compositional voice.”
Cawley cites “Seven Poems of Robert Bridges” by Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) as a particularly effective example. Finzi suffered profound losses in his youth and found solace in poetry. Robert Bridges, poet laureate of the United Kingdom from 1913 to 1930, wrote lyrical verse that reflected his Christian faith. The union of Bridges’ poems and Finzi’s a cappella settings created “sensitive, melodically disarming miniatures,” according to composer Francis Pott. British opera tenor Mark Padmore writes that “in performing and listening to Finzi’s songs, you have the impression that the voice is the shared instrument of poet and composer.”
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), whose prodigious output included symphonies, chamber music, choral works and ballet scores, loved poetry and wrote that the voice “can be made the medium of the best and deepest human emotion.” His “Serenade to Music” for voices was written in 1938 for a concert honoring conductor Henry Wood. The text is from Act V of William Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice. Characters in the scene are listening to music and speaking of its power to change a man’s nature. “The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds, is fit to treasons, stratagems and spoils; the notions of his spirit are dull as night … let no such man be trusted.”
The newest piece on the program, “Five Hebrew Love Songs” by American choral composer Eric Whitacre (born 1970), sets to music short Hebrew poems written by soprano Hila Plitmann, his former wife. Whitacre describes the pieces as postcards that capture moments they shared. The fourth vignette includes aleatoric sections, in which singers are instructed to sing notes individually at their own pace.
“And All of Winged Delight” will be performed at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 19, at Wauwatosa Presbyterian Church, 2366 N. 80st St., Wauwatosa. The concert is free and tickets are not required. Freewill donations are welcome.
If you think stories like this are important, become a member of Urban Milwaukee and help support real, independent journalism. Plus you get some cool added benefits.
