Lyric Fest: 'I'll Make Me a World'

For their season finale, Lyric Fest joined forces with the Singing City chorus in a program devoted to a portrait of the wondrous, difficult world humans inhabit. The title I’ll Make Me a World comes from James Weldon Johnson’s folksy retelling of the Book of Genesis. Baritone Randall Scarlata gave the afternoon a perfect launch with a reading of Johnson’s version of the Creation story, supported by musical amens from the chorus.

Scarlata creates appropriate characters when he sings songs like the manly German hiking song he sang later in the program. As a narrator, limited to the spoken word, he captured Johnson’s portrait of a God who creates the world out of loneliness. When Johnson’s God finds he’s still lonely after he’s built the world, he kneels down in the dust “like a mammy bending over her baby. . . toiling over a lump of clay” as he creates the first human.

Scarlata added similar touches to the Depression anthem “Brother, Can you Spare a Dime?” and a driving setting of a Robert Frost poem about the workmen who erect telephone poles and string the wires. For a song of the pampas by the Argentine composer Carlos Guastavino, Scarlata adapted a soaring Spanish troubadour style that is as old as the saga of El Cid.

From Haydn to Irving Berlin

You know you’re attending a Lyric Fest event when a song by Stephen Foster follows pieces by Mahler and Schoenberg. I’ll Make Me a World presented solos and choruses by 18 different composers, and soprano Elizabeth Weigle sang four pieces that spanned the whole range, from Haydn to Irving Berlin. Her performance of César Franck’s “Nocturne” created one of the program’s loveliest interludes. In Irving Berlin’s “Manhattan Madness,” she celebrated the uninhibited vitality of a city where “buildings go up with wrecking crews waiting to tear them down again.”

Some of the most memorable items on the program showcased Chrystal E. Williams, an up-and-coming young mezzo with a big, beautifully colored voice. Her lighter numbers included Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” and a wry “American Lullaby” by American composer Gladys Rich. Her darker contributions included Mahler’s Das Irdische Leben (This Earthy Life) and a duet with Randall Scarlata, Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More.”

“American Lullaby” soothes the baby with lines like “Daddy is down at his stockbroker’s office, a-keeping the wolf from the door” and “Mother has gone to her weekly bridge party to get her wee baby the prize.” The Mahler is a dialogue between a baby who begs for bread and a mother who keeps promising she’ll get it as the wheat goes through each stage of the breadmaking process, starting with the planting of the seed; naturally the baby dies just as the bread is finally baked. The duet arrangement of the Foster is a fervent prayer for relief from the hardships of poverty.

Wonder and toughminded awareness

The choral works on the program added to the overall blend of wonder tempered by a toughminded awareness of the harsher realities. “Sure on This Shining Night” by the contemporary American composer Morten Lauridsen creates a firm musical setting for a gentle poem by James Agee. Cloudburst by a younger American, Eric Whitacre, paints a stark picture of drought followed by a cloudburst portrayed by voices, bells, and the thunder of simple, effective percussion. Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth) turns the message of the angels into a clear-eyed, cautiously hopeful plea.

BSR contributor Kile Smith finished his season as Lyric Fest’s composer-in-residence with a small piece with big impact — a simple melodic setting of the first lines of Psalm 19, The Heavens declare the glory of God, the skies announce the work of His hands. Conductor Jeffrey Brillhart led the chorus through several repetitions as they sang from the balconies that line the sides of Holy Trinity. Then, when everyone in the church had it fixed in their heads, Brillhart led the audience, the soloists, and the chorus through four more repetitions.

It was a straightforward bit of audience participation, but it created a highly emotional ending for the first half of a highly emotional event.