2024-2025 Season
About The Concert
Ralph Vaughan Williams "Dona Nobis Pacem”
Ralph Vaughan Williams was intimately familiar with the horrors of war. When World War I broke out, the 42-year old British composer immediately volunteered for service as an ambulance driver on the front lines, where he witnessed unspeakable carnage. He later served as an artillery officer, and the thundering of the big guns would ultimately lead to almost complete deafness in his later years. Vaughan Williams’ wartime experiences affected him profoundly, shaping his entire view of human nature. After the war, he grappled with these experiences through his music, seeking to come to terms with all that he had seen and to rediscover his place in civil society.
Like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, his Dona Nobis Pacem is a work that begins in darkness before rising toward the light. The intent, however, is very different. It delivers an urgent cry for universal harmony in the face of looming horror, and a call to take a stand for peace—before it is too late.
Johannes Brahms "Schicksalslied"
In the summer of 1868, while visiting his friend Albert Dietrich in the North German coastal town of Wilhelmshaven, Johannes Brahms was drawn to the poem, Hyperions Schicksalslied by Friedrich Hölderlin. Buried in the middle of a 1797 novel depicting the Greek mythical titan Hyperion, the poem’s two verses contrast the lives of eternally blissful Immortals enjoying “luminous, heavenly breezes” with the restless existence of human beings, who are subject to the cruel whims of fate.
Schicksalslied is considered to be one of Brahms’s best choral works along with Ein deutsches Requiem. In fact, Josef Sittard argues in his book on Brahms, “Had Brahms never written anything but this one work, it would alone have sufficed to rank him with the best masters.”
Schicksalslied
Ihr wandelt droben im Licht
Auf weichem Boden selige Genien!
Glänzende Götterlüfte
Rühren Euch leicht,
Wie die Finger der Künstlerin
Heilige Saiten.
Schicksallos, wie der Schlafende
Säugling, atmen die Himmlischen;
Keusch bewahrt,
In bescheidener Knospe
Blühet ewig
Ihnen der Geist,
Und die seligen Augen
Blicken in stiller
Ewiger Klarheit
Doch uns ist gegeben
Auf keiner Stätte zu ruh’n;
Es schwinden, es fallen
Die leidenden Menschen
Blindlings von einer
Stunde zur andern,
Wie Wasser von Klippe
Zu Klippe geworfen
Jahrlang in’s Ungewisse hinab.
Song of Fate (Destiny)
Ye wander gladly in light
Through goodly mansions, dwellers in Spiritland!
Luminous heaven-breezes
Touching you soft,
Like as fingers when skillfully
Wakening harp-strings.
Fearlessly, like the slumbering
Infant, abide the Beatified;
Pure retained,
Like unopened blossoms,
Flowering ever,
Joyful their soul
And their heavenly vision
Gifted with placid
Never-ceasing clearness.
To us is allotted
No restful haven to find;
They falter, they perish,
Poor suffering mortals
Blindly as moment
Follows to moment,
Like water from mountain
to mountain impelled,
Destined to disappearance below.
Gloria
Dr. David Guess, Adam Gilliland – Conductors
Concert selections included: Gloria – Randol Alan Bass, Gloria – John Rutter, My Lord Has Come – Wlll Todd.
Monday, December 9, 2024 – 7:30pm
Woodway First United Methodist Church
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Dr. David Guess, Musical Director
Kelly MacGregor, Director
In collaboration with Waco Civic Theatre, members from CTCS joined the ensemble as part of the supporting cast.
October 17-November 3, 2025