My husband, Jon Bittner, and I sang this piece with Musica Sacra shortly after college; we were so moved by Lauridsen's setting of Neruda's poetry that we included a reading of it in our 2012 wedding ceremony. The poet's natural symbols (wheat, wind, sand, flowers) represent both earthly sensations and symbols of the one he loves; the narrator also wishes for his beloved to go on living and savoring the natural world after he is gone. The poem suggests the core of tonight's program: the idea that nature provides a vocabulary for our shared human experiences.

The program opens with Eric Banks' "At All Times" (2015), based on a Buddhist prayer originating in the 8th century and shared by the 14th Dalai Lama. The text imagines human compassion as physical manifestations of aid: a shelter, a bridge, or a ship. The setting of the text in a meditative chant creates a shared focus that pulls the listener into the prayer's intent and call to action.

We then shift to Palestrina's "Sicut cervus" (1604). Here, the simile from Psalm 42 of a deer's longing for water reflects the soul's desire for divine connection. Palestrina uses imitative polyphony, where similarly-shaped musical lines intertwine with one another to mirror the ebb and flow of water. These controlled harmonies contrast with the work of Claudio Monteverdi just a few decades later. In his sestina* Lagrime d'amante al sepolcro dell'amata (Tears of a lover at the tomb of his beloved), Monteverdi employs the later compositional devices of the seconda prattica, which allows the emotional weight of the text to dictate the music unrestricted by the harmony and counterpoint of the earlier prima pratica associated with Palestrina. To capture the narrator's grief, Monteverdi uses unsettled, chromatic harmonies and sharp dissonances, invoking frozen earth, tear-filled rivers, and barren fields as witnesses to human sorrow. Monteverdi composed this piece in memory of Caterina Martinelli, a young singer who died before she could premiere the lead role in his opera Arianna.

In "My Cathedral" (2010), composer Christina Whitten Thomas sets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poetry with expansive harmonies, evoking both the majesty of a forest and the echoes of a choir within the church it symbolizes: "Not art but nature traced these lovely lines." We leave the woods for more spacious environments in Säje's "Desert Song" (2023). The music's constant shifts between major and minor harmony capture the uncertainty of searching for a place to feel valid and accepted as well as the revelation of that place being other than one's expectations. Next comes the previously mentioned Lauridsen setting; then, we hear "As Torrents in Summer" by Edward Elgar. This excerpt from his 1896 cantata Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf envisions divine providence as the relief of summer rain on dry riverbeds (as with the Whitten Thomas, setting Longfellow's poetry).

The namesake of tonight's program, Daniel Elder's "The Heart's Reflection" (2013), sets Proverbs 27:19: "As water reflects the face, so one's life reflects the heart." In the piece, however, the translation appears more descriptively as: "See the waterfront shine forth resplendent; so the heart of humanity to all the earth reflects." Per the composer's original notes, "This beautiful passage serves as a poignant reminder of the spiritual kinship that exists within humanity and the necessity that we must remember to see ourselves in the hearts of others." This work paints the image of rippling water through interweaving vocal parts that rise and fall like waves. The music grows to an impassioned high point on the words "all the earth," beseeching us to see ourselves reflected. In contrast, the water of Brahms' "Sehnsucht" (1888) is more agitated than resplendent; in its text water endlessly running without relief serves as a metaphor for melancholic longing. We hear the river churning in the rhythmic dissonance of the piano against the chorus. The tortured mood intensifies to a climax in a moment of polyphony near the end of the piece, where the vocal parts repeat the phrase "deine Sehnsucht wacht" ("your longing lies awake") before suddenly resolving to a major key, as though the whole thing were a bad dream.

Our program concludes with Frank Ticheli's "Earth Song" (2006). Written as a plea for peace during the Iraq War, it focuses on the endurance of music as a sanctuary. The simple, plaintive text, penned by Ticheli himself, is left to the reader for interpretation; according to the composer: "A poem doesn't have to mean one thing — it doesn't even necessarily have to mean. A poem is. It just is. And Earth Song is the same way. It means different things to different people. I know for me, it sprang out of an intense weariness of war and a wish for peace."

Tonight I hope you hear music that offers some perspective on our world and connection to those we share it with. My sincere thanks to my friend Eric Banks for sharing his advice, compositions, and help in shaping the vision for this performance. I am grateful to the singers of Musica Sacra for their dedication and versatility; they are a constant joy to work with. And, finally, thanks to Mary Beekman for entrusting me with this unique and special opportunity.

About the Composer

Rebecca Blum has directed and performed in vocal ensembles for decades. She majored in music as an undergraduate at Yale, singing with the Yale Glee Club and the a cappella group Out of the Blue, which she music directed for two years. She sang with Musica Sacra regularly for five years and continues to occasionally join for concerts and arrange music for the group. She has arranged a cappella and choral music semi-professionally since 2007 and has founded and directed several small singing groups. Rebecca is currently a software engineer at AllTrails and plays in a two-person band called Flirtation Device. She lives in Providence with her husband Jon Bittner (also a former member of Musica Sacra) and her children Ada and Isaac.