Things That Never Die

Empire City Men's Chorus will sing Lee Dengler's Things That Never Die on our Free and Easy Concert on May 7 and 8, 2016.  Tickets are on sale now with a 15% discount available if you purchase tickets before April 23, 2016. 

Things That Never Die is a setting of the poem The Pure, The Bright, The Beautiful by Charles Dickens.

The pure, the bright, the beautiful
That stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulses to wordless prayer,
The streams of love and truth,
The longing after something lost,
The spirit's yearning cry.
The striving after better hopes;
These things can never die.

The timid hand stretched forth to aid
A brother in his need,
A kindly word in grief's dark hour
That proves a friend indeed;
The plea for mercy softly breathed,
When justice threatens high.
The sorrow of a contrite heart;
These things shall never die.

Let nothing pass, for every hand
Must find some work to do,
Lose not a chance to waken love;
Be firm and just and true.
So shall a light that cannot fade
Beam on thee from on high,
And angel voices say to thee,
These things can never die.

—Charles Dickens

Here's a performance by the Baldwin Wallace Men's Chorus:

Lee Dengler received both his Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from West Chester University School of Music in West Chester, PA. He studied choral composition and arranging with Alice Parker at Westminster Choir College as well as in her home in New England where he participated in the Melodious Accord Fellowship program.

Mr. Dengler and his wife, Susan, live in Goshen, Indiana where they are Ministers of Music and Arts at College Mennonite Church. Together, they oversee a fully graduated vocal and handbell choir program, and Mr. Dengler directs the 60-voice adult choir.

Carmina Juventutis by David Conte

Carmina Juventutis (Songs of Youth) for TTBB Chorus and Piano Four-hands by David Conte was commissioned by the Cornell University Glee Club in celebration of its 125th Anniversary.   Carmina Juventutis comprises three songs.

Omittamus Studia (Student Song) is taken from the Carmina Burana, a collection of Medieval Latin verse dating from the late thirteenth century.  This piece alternates stanzas in popular Latin meter with a "Goliardic" couplet refrain:  "Life passes away swiftly when absorbed in study: Tender youth is a time to be merry."  The music is fast, energetic and a touch irreverent.  The music turns slightly jazzy when the students go into the streets to dance with the "wanton maidens." The piece owes a debt to Walter Piston's Carnival Song.

Levis exsurgit zephirus (Love Song) is taken from the eleventh century Cambridge Songs.  This love song is in rhymed couplets written in Ambrosian quatrains—the most common of all forms used for Latin hymns.  The music has a gentle undulating quality as the speaker is "possessed by deep sighs in the midst of all this beauty" for his soul languishes.  The opening music returns in the minor mode, accompanied by sighs in alternating solo trios of tenors and baritones.

Vinum Bonum (Drinking Song) opens with a majestic flourish as the singers praise "wine, the blessed creature which the pure vine produced."  Following this introduction, there is a sudden change of tempo to Allegro; at several passages the joyous singers clap.  The majestic opening music returns as the singers entreat "the whole world to drink equal draughts, now and forever."

David Conte (b. 1955) is the composer of over eighty works published by E. C. Schirmer Music Publishing, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp.  He has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the Dayton, Oakland and Stockton Symphonies, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera and the Gerbode Foundation. He is Professor of Composition and Chair of the Composition Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and has taught at Cornell University, Keuka College, Colgate University and Interlochen.  In 2010, he was appointed to the composition faculty of the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, and in 2011, he joined the board of the American Composers Forum. In 2014, he was named Composer in Residence with Cappella SF, a professional chorus in San Francisco.  (Click on David Conte's name and photo to visit his website, where you can read a more detailed biography, view a list of his compositions, read reviews, articles, and theses, listen to music, and more.)

Franz Biebl's Ave Maria

Tickets are on sale now for ECMC's Free and Easy: Songs of Youth and Pleasure. There's a 15% discount on tickets purchased by April 23, 2016.  We're busy preparing for the concerts on May 7 and 8.  In the meantime, we'd love to share Franz Biebl's Ave Maria from our Thrive Concert in December 2015.

Our performance of Biebl's emotional arrangement of "Ave Maria". This 7-part rendition was sung live at our THRIVE concert in Dec 2015, live at Church of the Holy Apostles. Featuring the voices of ECMC and our octet, OTTO