Sven-David Sandström Commission on the Horizon
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"God Be Merciful"
by Sven-David Sandström
It is with great pleasure that Soli Deo Gloria announces its next world premiere, a commission, in collaboration with the Sacred Music Department of Westminster Choir College, of God Be Merciful by Sven-David Sandström for a cappella choir. As one of Sweden’s most performed living composers, Sandström has an impressive catalog of works that includes some 300 compositions, ranging from operas and oratorios to intimate choral and chamber music. In recent years, he has been focusing especially on sacred choral music, which makes it is especially fitting that his new work, a six-minute a cappella choral piece based on Psalm 67, is the third release in Soli Deo Gloria’s Psalms Project.
The premiere performance also takes place in a very fitting setting, at Westminster Choir College of Rider University (Princeton, NJ), one of the world's leading schools of music. Preceding the concert on Saturday, October 29, 2011, will be a day-long Symposium on Music for the Modern Church. This is a continuing education seminar (9:30-4:30) for college students and is also open to church musicians. The sessions offered include:
Contemporary Trends in Sacred Music - Steve Pilkington, Associate Professor of Sacred Music, on the role of music in worship today, changes in the American church and how music still plays a vital role in the life of the church
Sandstrom on Sacred Music - Sven-David Sandström, composer, discusses his sacred music Music for the Modern Church - panel discussion: Gordon Graham, theologian; Penna Rose, conductor; Sven-David Sandström, composer; Andrew Megill, conductor
Adult Choir Rehearsal Techniques - Andrew Megill, conductor, Westminster Kantorei
Bringing Worship to Life with Handbells - Kathy Eberling Shaw, conductor, Westminster Concert Bell Choir
Pursuing Excellence in Service Playing - Ken Cowan, Assistant Professor of Organ and Coordinator of Organ and Sacred Music, Westminster Choir College
Creative Ways of Making Worship - Steve Pilkington and the choir of Christ Church, NYC
You can register online or by calling 609-924-7416.
Westminster Kantorei
The evening concert features three world premieres of sacred music. For the premiere of God Be Merciful, Andrew Megill will be conducting Westminster’s Kantorei choir, a chamber choir specializing in early and contemporary repertoire. Dr. Megill has been on the faculty of Westminster Choir College of Rider University for 20 years, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in conducting, choral literature, and performance practice. Mr. Megill also serves as Chorusmaster for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and as Associate Conductor and Director of Choirs for the Carmel Bach Festival. He has prepared choruses for many leading conductors and orchestras, including Boulez/Cleveland Orchestra, Dutoit/Philadelphia Orchestra, Masur/New York Philharmonic, and Nagano/Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He has also been a guest conductor and teacher for the Juilliard Opera Center,
Yale Insitute of Sacred Music, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
8:00 Concert
Westminster Kantorei
Andrew Megill, conductor
Bristol Chapel
Westminster Choir College
Princeton, NJ
Sven-David Sandström: God Be Merciful (world premiere)
Sven-David Sandström: Hear My Prayer
Daniel Kellogg: Preserve Me, O God (a 2009 SDG-commissioned work)
Daniel Elder: O magnum mysterium (world premiere)
Blake Henson: Hodie Christus natus est (world premiere)
Jonathan Dove: “Gloria” from the Missa brevis
Stephen Paulus: Hymn to the Eternal Flame
Tickets: $20 adults and $15 students/seniors
Tickets available online or by calling 1-609-921-2663
Psalm 67 (King James Version)
1 God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us; Selah.
2 That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations.
3 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee.
4 O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Selah.
5 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee.
6 Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us.
7 God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.
Sven-David Sandström
Sven-David Sandström
(Photo: Mats Bäcker)
No composer has made such an impression on contemporary Swedish musical life as Sven-David Sandström. With his unlikely combination of creativity and diligence in the craft of composition, restless curiosity and firmly-rooted mastery of form, Sandström alternates, to all appearances unconcerned, between a sophisticated orchestral texture and musical melodies, film music and music for the church.
Internationally, his breakthrough came at the 1972 ISCM Festival in Amsterdam with the orchestral work Through and Through, which led to a commission from the BBC, Utmost, premiered by members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez.
A turning point came in the early 1980s, when his musical form of address became simpler, more emotional. The epoch-making Requiem De ur alla minnen fallna, a mighty fresco over the infanticide of the Holocaust, stands out today as one of the most prominent works in 20th-century Swedish music. Twelve years later, he composed High Mass, a monumental work for five female vocal soloists, large choir and orchestra modelled on J.S. Bach´s Mass in B minor. When it was performed in Minneapolis 2003 under Philip Brunelle, Bruce Hodges wrote in his review, “This might possibly be one of the greatest choral works of the last twenty years or so.”
After High Mass, Sandström started to feel an affinity with the old masters, especially Bach. He wrote Ordet (The Word) (2004), a large-scale "passion," a Christmas Oratorio (2004), the cantata Wachet auf (2008) and, commissioned by Helmuth Rilling´s Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, a Magnificat (2005) with an orchestral texture for baroque period instruments. Rilling and the Oregon Bach Festival were also behind the commission of Sandström’s Messiah (2009), set to the same text as Handel´s well-known version, to commemorate the Handel anniversary year 2009. When his ten-year professorship in composition at Indiana University in Bloomington came to an end, Sandström was able to realise a long-cherished dream: to compose, like Bach, for all the feast days of the ecclesiastical year. He has gladly taken upon himself to deliver music on a regular basis: one work every other week.
For ordering information on Sandstrom's scores, contact his publisher, Gehrmans Musikforläg.
Enjoy a sample of Sandström’s work in this performance of Hear My Prayer, O Lord, which will be featured on the Westminster College Choir program on October 29, 2011, alongside the premiere of Sandström’s God Be Merciful. Hear My Prayer, composed in 1986, presents Henry Purcell’s late-17th century eight-part anthem in its entirety and then extends its emotional and harmonic language into contemporary musical language.Performed by Swedbank Choir, Arturs Ancans, conductor
