Today we begin rehearsals for our joint concert with Finchley Symphony Orchestra on Saturday 4 July under FSO’s conductor Chris Stark. The choir will be working with guest conductors Olivia Tait and Douglas Tang to prepare for the concert.
The two main choral-orchestral works in the programme are lesser-known pieces by two beloved composers, Johannes Brahms and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Both were written while the composers were in their 30s and are inspired by poems exploring the condition and potential of the human spirit, and the mystery of what is to come.
Friedrich Hölderlin’s verse Hyperions Schicksalslied (Hyperion’s Song of Destiny) formed part of his 1797–99 epistolary novel Hyperion and contrasts the timeless serenity of the gods with the chaotic, tragic reality of human existence. In the first two stanzas, the gods are depicted as “free from fate” and compared to sleeping infants protected in a modest bud. Meanwhile, the third stanza shows humankind “like water flung from cliff to cliff endlessly down into the unknown”.
Perhaps it is no surprise that the composer who had previously offered such life-affirming solace in A German Requiem struggled to leave his audience with so bleak an ending. It is thought that the three-year gap between Brahms first sketching the work and completing its final version reflects his desire to offer a more consoling, humanistic message. Wanting to remain faithful to Hölderlin’s poem, Brahms instead leaves it to the orchestra to provide this uplifting vision at the close of the work.
Meanwhile, Vaughan Williams found his inspiration in a poem by Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass, originally self-published in 1855 when Whitman himself was in his mid-30s. Whitman continued revising and expanding the collection throughout his life. The poem Darest thou now, O soul calls on the soul to venture out on an exploration of spiritual fortitude, leaving behind the physical world and reaching for transcendence. The poem becomes a secular, mystical journey into the afterlife, with the “unknown region” symbolising the vast cosmos, eternity and the divine.
Vaughan Williams loved Whitman’s poetry throughout his adult life, having been introduced to it by Bertrand Russell while they were undergraduates at Cambridge. The musicologist Elliott Schwartz has suggested that Vaughan Williams was particularly drawn to Whitman because of qualities paralleled in his own music: “the concern for the development of a national art independent of foreign influences and the recurring theme of mysticism and exploration”. Vaughan Williams’ setting, Toward the Unknown Region, is a sweeping, spiritually uplifting work that progresses from quiet, questioning uncertainty to a blazing, triumphant explosion of freedom and joy.
These are works that challenge and inspire performers and listeners alike: music that confronts uncertainty while still reaching towards consolation, wonder and joy. As we begin rehearsals, we are excited to bring these rarely performed masterpieces to life with Finchley Symphony Orchestra, and we look forward to sharing that journey with our audience in July.