desire / expire
November 22, 2025
Kendra Balmer, Brendan Barker, Michael Blaakman, Sonja Bontrager, Iris Chan, Daya Deuskar, Sam Duplessis, Noah Farnsworth, Julie Frey, Walker Gosrich, Matt Hall, Amy Hochstetler, Elissa Kranzler, Erina Pearlstein, Rebekah Reddi, Joe Rim, Melinda Steffy, John Whelchel, Ben Willis, Caroline Winschel, Michele Zuckman
Morten Lauridsen, “Ov’è, Lass’, Il Bel Viso?” from Madrigali: Six “Fire Songs” on Italian Renaissance Poems
Vaclovus Augustinas, “Tykus Tykus”
Lauridsen, “Quando Son Piu Lontan”
Marques L. A. Garrett, “My heart be brave”
Lauridsen, “Amor, Io Sento L’alma”
Edmund Dumas / The Wailin’ Jennys arr. Jordan Rock, “Long Time Traveler”
Mia Makaroff arr. Mia Makaroff and Anna-Mari Kahara, “Butterfly”
Lauridsen, “Io Piango”
Vicente Lusitano, “Allor che ignuda”
Jacques Arcadelt, “Il bianco e dolce cigno”
Lauridsen, “Luci Serene e Chiare”
Sylvan Esso arr. Chestnut Street Singers, “Come Down”
Erika Lloyd arr. Vince Peterson, “Cells Planets”
Lauridsen, “Se Per Havervi, Oime”
Notes on the Program
Isn’t there something thrilling about wanting? To yearn, to pine, even—gasp!—to burn: these emotional depths almost feel quaint and historic now that we can moderate our sharpest impulses with therapy, group threads, and scrolling.
There is a reason that quests and passions—both fueled by wanting, not by having—are at the core of so many of the world’s oldest stories. We can all resonate with those feelings of seeking, even if many of us today—mindful of so many other wishes and needs—have a tendency to tamp down more visceral pursuits.
And these old stories still spark. We’ve structured today’s concert around Morten Lauridsen’s Madrigali, also called the “Fire-Songs”: so named both for the deeply passionate, borderline overwrought nature of the Renaissance poetry set throughout the six-movement cycle as well as for the composer’s distinct “Fire-Chord,” with which the work’s emotional heights—or perhaps its depths—are captured. Lauridsen’s setting also makes use of common stylistic qualities of the titular early madrigals, contemporary to his poetic choices, like text painting, counterpoint, and hockets.
During the Renaissance, then-new styles of polyphony were reviled by church authorities, who feared that multiple melodic lines and texts sung in vernacular, everyday language—as opposed to sacred Latin—would inflame listeners and distract from more pious pursuits. We know that story, too: it’s the complaint of every elder feeling left behind by a new generation’s approach. We don’t have to be time travelers to appreciate the emotional force of music sung in secular or everyday language, revealing the performer’s innermost self, with memorable phrasing—and so in honor of the timelessness of these emotional depths, this program also invites folk traditions and pop effervescence to take their rightful place in this still-fresh story about want.
So for today, get reacquainted with that deepest, most emotionally raw version of yourself.
Actually, you can do better than mere acquaintance: let yourself linger. Gaze.
You might find someone you’ve been looking for.
1. Ov’è, lass’, il bel viso?
Lauridsen offers an immediate signal of the stakes of his Madrigali with the opening movement, which launches with the titular “Fire-Chord” rendered in fortissimo. He writes, “The Madrigali are designed in an arch form with significant sharing of materials between movements one and six, two and five.” Accordingly, here we also hear introductions of techniques that will recur throughout the work: dramatic text painting and expressive tempi seeming almost to re-inflame the already impassioned text.
Tykus, Tykus
What could be more heart-wrenching than a doomed first love? Contemporary Lithuanian composer Vaclovas Augustinas frequently takes inspiration from his country’s musical heritage, here developing a folk tune about a young lad on a horse—noted as “a common theme in Lithuanian folklore”—and the young woman he seduces and abandons. The lively setting draws upon the Lithuanian tradition of Sutartinės, or multi-part songs, which have been recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage: particularly in the piece’s most dramatic section, when the young lovers are suddenly awakened by a sense of danger, the pealing, overlapping rhythms have a frenzied, bell-like effect. Traditional Sutartinės sometimes include simple movements like stepping or rotating, but Augustinas cleverly invokes a more consequential action: the young man’s horse trotting away, never to return.
2. Quando son più lontan
That sense of longing—verging on betrayal—pervades the second movement of Lauridsen’s Madrigali. The misery of the scenario ratchets up during the repetition of the poem’s opening stanza, with the movement’s original melody re-set in a deliberately see-sawing inverted canon.
My Heart, Be Brave
Amidst the drama provided by other selections today, think of the contemporary American composer Marques L. A. Garrett’s “My heart be brave” as the sensible, been-there-done-that friend in your group chat, providing sound, heartfelt advice and a reminder that yes, even this once-unimaginable challenge can be endured.
Composed in 2022, “My heart be brave” sets “Sonnet” by the American writer and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson, who is perhaps better known as the lyricist for “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” sometimes referred to as the Black National Anthem. “My heart be brave” is similarly stirring, casting struggle and doubt in a more personal lens.
3. Amor, io sento l’alma
True to form, that sense of renewed purpose and focus takes us straight back to the excitement of infatuation: Oh love, I feel my soul / Return to the fire where I / Rejoiced and more than ever desire to burn. Here Lauridsen’s lively dance-like opening brings us so far into enthusiasm as to verge on discomfort, cascading into carnivalesque cross-relations and culminating in stilted, almost gasping rhythms.
Long Time Traveler
This two-part rendering of a classic shapenote hymn offers a different vision of joyous—but still unexpectedly raucous—return. This rearrangement takes its cues from two contrasting settings of the hymn: a lilting, unadorned trio by the Wailin’ Jennys, contemporary Canadian folk singers, and the traditional, four-part version from the nineteenth-century Sacred Harp songbook, which codified the simple, forthright style of shapenote singing as a distinctly American genre. We appreciate the juxtaposition of the lovely, simple trio against the more brazen—and yet more traditional—sound of the original tune, with both perspectives offering a new vision of yearning.
Butterfly
Where “Long Time Traveler” creates plaintive beauty from the hope of a life beyond earthly cares, Mia Makaroff’s infectious “Butterfly” asks us to revel in the ephemeral. The playful, pop-inflected setting was originally developed for the Finnish vocal ensemble Rajaton, but it began as something far more intimate: as Makaroff explained in 2024, “Butterfly” was originally “my self-therapy song . . . because I was just experiencing a divorce and life was still a bit rough then. I found myself just playing this song, it just came out of nowhere . . . . I had so much work to do—I was working as a music teacher and I had two small kids . . . and I was kind of overwhelmed with all the stuff that had to be done.”
4. Io piango
In Lauridsen’s arch-shaped Madrigali, he warns, “The cycle has its dramatic high point in movement four, ‘Io piango.’” The intensity of feeling is furthered and given form by the movement’s steep dynamic shifts, mimicking the poem’s opening line: “I’m weeping.” The Fire-Chord returns as the music reaches a fevered fortissimo: What cruel, unheard-of fate! But true to form, the all-or-nothing defiance doesn’t last; Lauridsen cleverly follows that moment of vitality with a sudden retreat, repeating the lush opening theme as we settle back into familiar—dare we say comfortable?--despair.
Allor che ignuda
A contemporary of many of the poets and lyricists featured in the Madrigali, Vicente Lusitano offers a far more measured approach in “Allor che ignuda,” set for three parts. With its luminous harmonies and the precise, intricate structure of occasional duets among the three parts, the piece certainly sounds like a gem of the late Renaissance.
However, our ability to sing it today, and to know of Lusitano at all, is thanks to much more recent efforts: despite his obvious talents, Lusitano met with only limited professional success during his lifetime in 16th-century Portugal and Italy. Though the documentation is scant, Lusitano was likely of mixed African and Portuguese heritage, seeking to make his living as a musician, priest, and teacher only a few years after Pope Leo X imposed sweeping restrictions on the Catholic Church employing priests of African descent.
A recent article by Early Music America chronicles an almost-cinematic effort to resurrect Lusitano’s work beginning in 2020, when many early music scholars, galvanized by the death of George Floyd, a Black man murdered by police in Minneapolis, sought to showcase Lusitano as the only published composer of African descent in 16th-century Europe. Likely because of the barriers Lusitano had faced in life, his music was still little-known and lesser-documented: tracking down all three parts for “Allor che ignuda,” for instance, required months of searching by American choral directors and researchers Lisa Caliesesi Maidens and Katy Maguire Lushman, who finally found three intact partbooks in a Polish library.
The piece’s measured beauty must have been evident when it was first performed and published in the 1500s, but it is a particular honor for us to share a work that has traveled so far, knowing that this is one of our only glimpses at its creator’s own ambitions and desires.
Il bianco e dolce cigno
We remain in 16th-century Europe with, by contrast, one of the best-known works by one of the most famous early composers of madrigals. Jacob, or Jacques, Arcadelt lived and worked both in Italy and France; he faced none of the discrimination barring Lusitano and was eventually employed by both the Vatican and the French monarchy. Despite these lofty associations, Arcadelt’s madrigals represent classic components of the form, including—as exemplified in “Il bianco e dolce cigno”--unsubtle erotic wordplay. The playful repetition for emphasis—a thousand times a day!--makes for a beautiful cascade as the four voice parts weave towards resolution.
5. Luci serene e chiare
We return to Lauridsen’s contemporary Madrigali with comparable invocations of pleasure. “Luci serene e chiare” unfurls ever-longer, ever-more-expansive melodic lines as Lauridsen takes us into a blissful haze, eventually converging four different melodies together simultaneously. The stop-and-start tempo threatens to lull us at each resolution, only to immediately take off again at top speed: a metaphor, perhaps, for the whirlwind of infatuation.
Come Down
But we know better than to be tricked by a passing flirtation, even if the lure of comfort and companionship endures. The American electropop band Sylvan Esso’s “Come Down” seems to hint at both truths, with its female narrator seeking out a friend or female family member before heading off on a romantic adventure. Our treble arrangement strips out the song’s original accompaniment, rendering it more like a folky younger sister to “Long Time Traveler.”
Cells Planets
Or we can refute the whole idea of categories and classification—let alone conventional approaches to romance. Erika Lloyd’s “Cells Planets,” arranged by Vince Peterson for the American choral supergroup Chanticleer, merges pop influences with gospel style, deliberately breaking down the distances and complications between each of us.
6. Se per havervi, oime
Wouldn’t it be lovely for yearning to be so easily redirected, shared, and made life-giving? Alas, Lauridsen gets the last word, with the aching, melismatic “Se per havervi, oime.” Dedicated to his long-time friend and former classmate Jama Laurent, this final Fire-Song may leave us with a clue. As in the rest of the cycle, Lauridsen closes the piece by repeating some of the earlier text: but here, he chooses to particularly emphasize one phrase: donato il core. I gave you my heart—maybe it is that easy.
Notes by Caroline Winschel