ÿþ<html> <head> <title>Forest Hill Chamber Music Festival 2004</title> <style> a:link {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:active {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:visited {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:hover {color:000000;text-decoration: none} </style> </head> <body bgColor=ffffff topmargin=15 leftmargin=0 text=555555 link=000000 alink=000000 vlink=000000> <center> <a href="index.html"><img src="title01w.gif" border=0></a><BR> <BR><font size=3> { <a href="p1.html">6/11</a> &nbsp; <a href="p2.html">6/12</a> &nbsp; <a href="p3.html">6/13</a> &nbsp; <a href="p4.html">6/13</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="artists.html">artists</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="notes.html">program notes</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="photos.html">photos</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="contact.html">tickets</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="ack.html">acknowledgements</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="intro.html">about</a> } <BR><BR><BR> <table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0> <TR> <Td align=right valign=top> <table border=0 cellpadding=15 cellspacing=0><TR><TD align=right> <a href="n01-bach.html">Johann Sebastian Bach </a><BR> <a href="n02-beet.html">Ludwig van Beethoven </a><BR> <a href="n03-berg.html">Alban Maria Johannes Berg </a><BR> <a href="n14-druk.html">Jacob Raphael Druckman </a><BR> <a href="n04-dvor.html">Antonín DvoYák </a><BR> <a href="n05-hind.html">Paul Hindemith </a><BR> <a href="n06-mech.html">Kirke Mechem</a><BR> <a href="n07-mess.html">Olivier Messiaen</a><BR> <a href="n08-moza.html">Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart </a><BR> <a href="n09-rohde.html">Kurt Rohde</a><BR> <a href="n10-ss.html">Charles Camille Saint-Saëns </a><BR> <a href="n11-scho.html">Arnold Schönberg </a><BR> <a href="n12-schub.html">Franz Peter Schubert </a><BR> <a href="n13-schum.html">Robert Schumann</a><BR> </td></tr></table> </td> <TD valign=top> <img src="black.gif" width=1 height=310><BR> </td> <TD valign=top width=500> <Table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=15><TR><TD> <font size=5><center><b>Kirke Mechem</b><font size=2><br><i> b. 1925 Wichita, Kansas</i></center><font size=3><br><br> <b>Wedding Madrigal For Flute and Piano, Op. 56 (1992 93)</b><br> <br> A composer of considerable international prominence and stature is represented in this year s program, who is also a resident of Forest Hill. <br><br>Kirke Mechem is the composer of more than 250 published works in almost every form. Last season his three-act opera  Tartuffe was performed 18 times by the Vienna Chamber Opera in its  20th Century Classics series to rave reviews and  frenetic applause. It has had some 270 performances in six countries. <br><br> Songs of the Slave, a suite for bass-baritone, soprano, chorus and orchestra from Mechem s opera  John Brown, has been performed in every part of the country, most recently by the Detroit and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras, and in many universities and conservatories. <br><br>ASCAP registered performances of Mechem s music in 42 countries last year. He was guest of honor at the 1990 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and was invited back for an all-Mechem symphonic concert by the USSR Radio-Television Orchestra in 1991. The concert was recorded by Melodiya and released on the Russian Disc label. <br><br>The composer grew up in Topeka, was educated at Stanford and Harvard universities. He conducted and taught at Stanford and was for several years Composer-in-Residence at the University of San Francisco. He lived in Vienna for three years where he came to the attention of Josef Krips, who later championed Mechem s symphonies as conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. <br><br>Mechem s talents have been acknowledged through numerous honors, including retrospectives, grants, commissions, and special anniversary performances, coming from the United Nations, the National Gallery, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Choral Directors Association, the Music Educators National Conference, and the National Opera Association (lifetime achievement award), among others. <br><br>He has just completed a comic opera,  The Newport Rivals, an American update of Sheridan s classic play,  The Rivals. After a highly successful reading in the New York City Opera Showcase, a premiere for the 2005-2006 season is being planned by a consortium of opera companies. <br><br>According to the composer:  Wedding Madrigal was written for the wedding of my niece, Penelope Dow, and William Armstrong. It is based on music from  The Shepherd and His Love, a work for mixed chorus, piccolo, viola and piano on two Elizabethan poems. The men in the chorus sing the words of Christopher Marlowe s  Come Live with Me and Be My Love; the women respond with Sir Walter Raleigh s rejoinder,  The Nymph s Reply. <br><br> The Shepherd and His Love was composed in 1967 as a wedding gift for Betsey Kady and Carl Schmidt, son of my friend and mentor, the late Harold C. Schmidt, then choral conductor at Stanford University. I wrote the following note to Betsey and Carl; it applies just as well to the next generation  to the new bride and groom and to this  Wedding Madrigal : <br><br>The music is built around the superimposition of the dominant and tonic chords. In every marriage  so learned doctors tell us  only one partner can be dominant. The other must obviously be a tonic. That the two can live together in harmony is the burden of this wedding song. But in the end  and I am sure the worthy doctors would agree  each must learn to be a tonic to the other. Accordingly, at the close of the piece, the dominant chord merges into the tonic. <br><br>The work was first performed June 13, 1992 at Penny and Bill s wedding on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, by Deborah Nathan Charness, flute, and Wyatt Insko, piano; it was somewhat revised in 1993. <br> </td></tr></table> </td> </tr> </table> </body></html>