Podcast Episode: A Musical Exploration of the Bible's Love Poetry
A concert this semester at Duke Chapel explored “700 Years of a Biblical Love Song.” The performance was the culmination of a yearlong exploration of musical settings of the love poetry in the Bible’s “Song of Songs” (or “Song of Solomon”). In this episode of our Sounds of Faith podcast, we hear musical highlights from the concert and learn from Dr. Philip Cave, the Chapel's conductor-in-residence, about the pieces' passion, composition, history, and inspiration.
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James Todd: Welcome to Sounds Of Faith, a podcast exploring traditions of faith, sacred music and spoken word here at Duke University Chapel. A recent concert at Duke Chapel explored 700 years of a biblical love song. The song being song with portions of the Bible's Song of Songs or Song of Solomon with its verses of love poetry. At the concert, each text was introduced by a reading in the original Hebrew by Duke graduate student Jacob Egol.
Jacob Egol: [foreign language].
James: In English these verses from the second chapter of Song of Songs say, "I am the flower of the field in the lily of the valley as the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters." The even song singers then performed a setting of the text in Latin by the Franco Flemish Renaissance composer, Antoine Brummell. The choir then moves through three other settings of the same verses ending with a piece by the contemporary English composer John Barber. In total, the performance comprised three languages, 10 scripture verses, and 700 years of music. I'm James Todd, director of Communications at Duke Chapel, and I am here with the concerts director, the Duke Chapel conductor in residence, Dr. Philip Cave who's going to report on what has been a year long musical journey of singing the Song of Songs? Dr. Cave, welcome back to Sounds of Faith.
Philip Cave: Thank you, James.
James: Well, we've just heard two settings of verses from the Song of Songs, but there are many more and apparently enough to program an entire concert and dozens of worship services. So how did you hone in on this idea of focusing on texts from the Song of Songs for a year's worth of music?
Philip: The Song of Songs is unique in the biblical canon. It's a poem about love and longing using language that's both literal and symbolic about human intimacy and an image of divine devotion. There are well over 2000 musical settings of verses from the Song of Songs ranging from antiquity to the present day. So there's a huge corpus of intriguing and beautiful music to explore and share.
James: 2000 is quite a a range of selections. So how did you pick of from the more than 2000 these pieces for this concert.
Philip: I wanted to explore a range of texts and then a range of settings of each of those texts. The idea grew that we would perform the pieces during our regular even songs. As an introduction I would say that a certain amount of self-serving because we had then learned the pieces and were able to perform them.
James: This is so they were often sung in the inch the first sung piece at the core even song.
Philip: The verses of course don't have any real reference to the liturgical calendar. Each of them I think was a sort of capsule looking at this particular book of the Bible and delving into how composers had responded to these texts.
James: Let's take up an example. I'm going to play it and then I want to hear you talk about it. The text here for this piece is the third chapter of Song of Songs, which begins, "I will rise and will go about the city in the streets and the broadways. I will seek him, whom my soul loveth. I sought him and I found him not." The musical setting here is from the late Renaissance in Latin by Thomas Lewis Victoria. So the text is given from the Bible, but then what is Victoria doing with it musically in this piece?
Philip: What we hear in the Renaissance pieces from Bruel that you first played and now Victoria is that these words were often set within a framework of sort of balanced polyphony that invites contemplation and if you like spiritual order.
James: Polyphony being with multiple melodies, weaving it at once.
Philip: That's right. The same melody spread between different voices of the ensemble and each new set of words has a new set of musical material. This polyphonic style, which was very popular for 15th, 16th century has this rather dreamlike mood, I think, which supports the idea of the rather timeless nature of it all. Tomas Luis de Victoria was a Spanish composer of what we call the Golden Age, and I think we use that term really to indicate the great flowering of sacred and secular choral music in the 16th century. This particular piece has a distinct story to tell. Going out, searching, looking around corners of the city for the missing beloved. Victoria responds to this text in very subtle ways. His word painting is very clear. Once you understand the code, if you like. So at the very beginning we've just heard the opening melody.
That musical shape is like something going out and coming back. It's a very subtle gesture if you like. Then the search goes on and gets more anxious. That going looking in circles.
James: Those are the Latin words of going looking.
Philip: Yes. Going around in a circuitous way. You get the contrast between the very smooth opening and then the very disjunct figure of [foreign language]. Victoria adds to the interest with a very subtle use of texture. We sometimes just hear one voice coming in after another and the texture's quite thick. Sometimes there's a sort of block of high voices versus a block of low voices, and sometimes he has different subdivisions which change the color and the texture of the music.
James: How are you training the choir to be able to sing this music? That's not what we hear regularly on Spotify and also is anchored in this text that has its own passion. Like what direction are you giving sort of technically or qualitatively.
Philip: I think the key is encouraging the singers to listen to each other and to respond to each other. Not to be focused entirely on their own part in a kind of horizontal direction, but to be scanning the score. We're lucky these days to sing from scores rather than just individual parts. And so getting the singers to respond who has got the important material, the thematic material, who has got something more interesting to say, and which parts have got something perhaps more like a, if I could say a filler without being disrespectful to Victoria. So that it's tiered. There are things which are the more important and things which are less important. One builds this texture of listening and responding. I think that's the essence of singing this kind of music. If you don't do that, the danger is that it just becomes a kind of wallpaper. Rather pretty wallpaper perhaps but it loses its clarity.
James: Yes. Part of the theme of this concert in this year long musical journey was chronological. So go through the years how these texts have been treated different musically so in the concert what follows the Victoria piece is the same text, but set by the British composer, Jonathan Dove, who's living today. So this is a contemporary piece. Can you explain how Dove's piece relates to the Victoria piece?
James: This is really interesting. Jonathan Dove, young British composer really a successful, a lot of vocal music opera choral music and music theater and he has a wonderful understanding and a skill in writing choral music that expresses the text. The challenge that he takes on here is that he uses the same melodic material as Victoria did from 400 years before him. You can hear [foreign language] over and over and over again to illustrate this ongoing search, this sending people out and looking for the beloved. Then of course you get [foreign language] comes again over and over. His music is sometimes very organic. The repetition of phrases like this is sometimes rather mesmeric. There's a sort of imperceptible rise in tension. Almost the sort of sense of panic of the lover looking for her beloved. The piece ends with just the most beautiful expression where she says, if you find him tell him that I languish for love.
James: Boy.
Philip: But it's a startling change from Victoria's setting of the piece.
James: Dove is very much conscious that he's working in a tradition and that he's using many elements from Victoria, but then obviously working with his own sense of composition.
Philip: Yes. In actual fact, Dove's setting was commissioned to pair with Victoria's setting on a recording that featured that idea that composers would be linked, if you like to earlier expressions of the piece.
James: That's very intentional. Let's listen to Jonathan Dove setting Vadam et circuibo. So Dr. Cave, there are of course also English translations of the Song of Songs, and the concert presented a number of them. So one of them is set me as a seal by the contemporary Canadian composer, Eleanor Daley. Let's listen to the start of her piece and then I'd like to get your insights. That has set me as a seal by the contemporary Canadian composer, Eleanor Daley, and she is setting a text from the Song of Songs from the eighth chapter that begins set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm for love is strong as death. Dr. Cave, what is she doing with the music, with that text?
Philip: Eleanor Daley is a prolific writer of choral music. I would say that, she specializes in accessible tonal works for choirs. Very expressive sensitivities to the text. Some lovely harmonic language. So what you hear in this piece is something that is basically homophonic rather than the polyphonic style that we heard earlier.
James: Homophonic would be where used to see hymns or other types of modern music.
Philip: Yes. Where whether all the voices are singing more or less the same rhythm at the same time. Within that framework, she has some very interesting sort of moving parts in the middle. This sort of simple but beautiful style. I thought this made a really nice contrast to some of the complex music that we heard elsewhere in this program.
James: Does the English text make a difference? I don't know in its rhythm or just in its contemporary sensibility?
Philip: There is something more direct, more immediate for the singers and probably for the audience as well. Where there isn't that step to take inside the language that's being performed. It's very direct. Even just the words at the beginning of this set to me as a seal, it has a sort of rhythm coming from the actual words. There's some alliteration which grabs the attention I think of the listener. You really have to think, what does this mean, set me as a seal. Eventually it becomes clear that this seal is the seal of love. And going on to say many waters cannot quench love neither can the floods drown. This is very picturesque language. I think it gives composers a real opportunity for some color for some expression. I think Eleanor Daley really nails it in this piece.
James: Yes. So we've been talking about music from this recent concert, but you and even song singers have been singing these texts from Song of songs throughout the year in choral even song. That's a liturgical worship context. I'm wondering how you approach this music in the context of the liturgy.
Philip: I'm going to say it's all about love.
James: That's hard to go wrong with love poetry and love.
Philip: Well, because there is that balance in these texts between the sort of human response and the notion of spiritual love. I think that's what's key and what has inspired us to do this selection of pieces. As I say, there are so many to choose from. It's impossible to cover all the bases. But what I've tried to do over the year and in the concert is to give a variety of expression. In the concert it was especially good to be able to have several different settings of texts, one after another which of course you can't do in the service. But I hope that cumulatively one gets an idea of the beauty of this music. As I say, from a human and a spiritual level.
James: You've spent a year with these texts one book of the Bible, the Song of Songs. So from this year is there a message or an emphasis or an image that's really stood out to you from the texts?
Philip: I think what has stood out to me is the idea of inspiration. I think these pieces have inspired us, the singers, in a very particular way. I think people have committed to works which demand more than just a kind of nodding acquaintance. Either they are technically challenging or they have a musical message that people can relate to or both. I think that the corpus of music that we've sung has greatly enriched our sense of worship as a choir and also our skillset as singers.
James: Musician. Singers.
Philip: I've asked people to step outside their comfort zones sometimes and say, "look this is not monochrome music." It demands color, it demands more physical commitment perhaps than what normally expects of singers in the choir stalls.
James: If it's love poetry and has that kind of pathos then that should be reflected in the music.
Philip: Yes. I think we would be doing the music a disservice if we didn't try and characterize it to us as far as we possibly could.
James: Yes. Now, wrapping up here, I would never ask you to choose a favorite song from among all of these. But if you had a preferred one for ending here, what would be one that you would leave us with?
Philip: I think what I would finish with is another English setting of the same text sent me as a seal by William Walton. I have a long association with this piece as I learned it when I was singing as a student. I think it's the most brilliantly written piece. There is a combination of solo music, of chorus reinforcement, there is some great drama in what is really quite a short piece. It was written as a commission for a wedding and so the text is of course very relevant to that. It's just I think a perfect, if I could say a perfect miniature without trying to in any sense devalue the piece. I think it's something that we, as a group and many choirs love to sing because it's modern, because it's accessible without being, it's not easy. But on the other hand it's well it repays the effort.
James: Excellent. Let's listen to Set me as a Seal by William Walton. Dr. Philip Cave is conductor in residence at Duke University Chapel and he was the director of the recent singing Song of Songs concert. You can watch the entire singing the Song of Songs concert on the Duke Chapel YouTube channel. Dr. Cave, thank you for sharing your music and your insights.
Philip: My great pleasure. Thank you very much.
James: This has been Sounds of Faith from Duke University Chapel. Learn more about the Chapel's mission ministry events and programs at chapel.duke.edu.
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