Scotland Tour 2025

Eliav Goldman, Margaret Jenks, Michael Ross, Randal Swiggum, conductors
Michael Ross and Randal Swiggum, piano
Milo Burns, violin; Duncan Charles, recorder

Magno Gaudens Gaudio…Anonymous, ca. 1180-1220
(sung in Latin)
Rejoicing with great joy, let our company of boys
Celebrate with song and dance this anniversary feast!
In honor of the Innocents let harps and drums sound.
Let songs and instruments bear witness to a happy mind.
[Refrain:] Rightly festive, with the court of heaven
Let us rejoice and be merry. Eya!
Let our family of boys be made up of games and gladness,
Laughter, peace, and grace, to eternal glory.
Let us rejoice, boys! Herod is dead!
We have conquered, our enemy is overcome.
Suffering eternal torment, he will not rise again,
And we shall follow the immortal Lamb wherever he may go [Refrain]

Imagine a few leaves of parchment folded together, poorly written, decayed by dampness, marred by stains and the ravages of time. “Magno gaudens” comes from such a songbook, probably copied around 1200, but discarded within a generation or so and used as flyleaves for another book. This was fortunate: by repurposing the paper (which was expensive), some unknown benefactor preserved for us over thirty medieval songs and poems. The songbook was then discarded and remained hidden for some six hundred years.

Most of the songs were created to mark the very festive period between Christmas and New Year’s. The tone of this song is joyful—suggesting great celebrations in the darkest, coldest, and deadest time of the year.

We know that this song was sung by boys because of its opening lyrics. We also know the occasion: the Feast of Innocents (December 28) which marks Herod’s massacre of children to destroy the Christ Child. Did the boys dance to it? Sing it in processional? We can’t know for sure. But we do know that these boys, far from their families and hometowns, growing up in a monastery or cathedral school, certainly formed their own little “family” characterized by “games and gladness, laughter, peace, and grace.” 

Laudamus Te (from Gloria)..Antonio Vivaldi 
(sung in Latin)
We praise you, we bless you, we worship you, we glorify you.

This little Baroque gem (a duet from Vivaldi’s Gloria) creates a stunning show of decorative musical beauty, using ornamentation, long stretches of notes on single syllables (melisma), voices that imitate and cross over each other in a playful way, suspensions and sequences which build excitement, and alternating between polyphony (voices moving at different times) and homophony (voices moving together).

Exultate Justi in Domino…Lodovico Grossi di Viadana (c. 1560-1627)
(sung in Latin)
Rejoice in the Lord, you who are just;
Praise befits the upright.
Praise the Lord with the lyre;
Make melody to him on the ten-stringed harp!
Sing to him a new song;
Play skillfully with loud shouts of joy. (Psalm 33)

In this motet from 1602, Viadana uses “word painting” on chitara (harp) with its fancy flourishes, and in psalterio decem chordarum (on a ten-stringed harp) with its ascending and descending scales, like student exercises. Vociferatione (loud shouts) gets a bombastic, “vociferous” melody. The whole piece is a perfectly symmetrical ABA structure, with the energetic middle section framed by a dancelike opening in triple meter, which also rounds out the ending, like two strong pillars anchoring the front and back. Viadana was a Franciscan monk who held musical posts in large churches throughout Italy but whose influence was felt throughout Europe in the 16th century.

We Are Weaving Our Lives…Alexa Sunshine Rose

We are weaving our lives, we are weaving our hearts and our minds,
We are weaving the bright and dark threads of our journeys through.
We are weaving our lives, we are weaving a blanket of light.
We are weaving a basket to hold all that’s true. 

Skye Boat Song…Traditional, arr. Althouse

“Skye Boat Song” is an example of how a melody, apart from the text, can be beloved and meaningful. Originally a Gaelic song about unrequited love (Cuckoo of the Tree), the melody was paired with a text about the escape of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” from Benbecula to the Isle of Skye after the loss at the Battle of Culloden in the 1870’s. About ten years later, Robert Louis Stevenson, feeling that the lyrics were unworthy of the wistful tune, wrote another set of lyrics. The piece remained connected to the Isle of Skye with many verses and alternate lyrics in existence. Now, as then, the melody is the big draw to this piece as it captures yearning, nostalgia, and a simple beauty simultaneously.

Bright is the Ring of Words…Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Even when we don’t always consciously hear them, the use of motifs (3-5 note musical patterns) helps complex music make sense to our brains, which are always searching for meaning and coherence. In this art song, first performed in 1904 and originally for solo baritone voice, the composer uses a 3-note motif we like to call the “knight’s move”—a move of one step and then two steps, like a knight in chess. This figure can be heard in the first three notes (“Bright is the”) and then more than two dozen times as the melody unfolds over time. The listener might be unaware of this powerful unifying device, but Britten singers took special delight in uncovering the way the piece is saturated with this tiny musical building block. The text is by Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), whose life and work will come alive this summer when MYC tours Edinburgh, his hometown. Through rich, multi-layered images, the poem explores the idea of the poet or composer’s artistic works living on even after the artist dies.

The Vagabond…Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Along with Sir Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams was one of the composers most responsible for the reemergence of British classical music in the 20th century. A notable contributor in virtually every field of composition, his Songs of Travel, written between 1901 and 1904, represent his first major foray into song-writing. Drawn from a volume of Robert Louis Stevenson poems of the same name, the cycle offers a rather different take on the wayfarer cycle. “The Vagabond,” the first song in the cycle, introduces the traveler, heavy chords in the piano depicting a rough journey through the English countryside. (Program notes by Ahmed Ismail.)

Boswell (world premiere)…Randal Swiggum

In 1773, the young Scotsman James Boswell persuaded his older friend, Dr. Samuel Johnson, to leave London and travel with him around Scotland, a country which Johnson disdained and considered wild, remote, and uncivilized. Johnson was just curious enough to say yes, and the two embarked on an 83 day journey, starting in Boswell’s native Edinburgh and including Aberdeen and Stirling (also highlights of our tour). Both wrote best-selling accounts of the tour, Johnson’s in 1775 and Boswell’s in 1785, both still considered among the best travel diaries ever published.

One detail in Boswell’s journal from October 2 shows him a “expert noticer” (in the MYC tradition). After a dinner in Armadale, Isle of Skye, everyone danced. The dance was called “America” and Boswell had an insight: he saw the dance as a metaphor for emigration, the movement of families, even whole villages, from Scotland to the American colonies. It’s a beautiful reminder of a time when America welcomed thousands of refugees and immigrants–even often destitute Scots–with open arms.

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Ave Maria…Franz Biebl (1906-2001)

Biebl’s work is a beloved standard of 20th century choral music. Combining the traditional “Ave Maria” and “Angelus Domini” texts, he weaves Gregorian chant melodies in between homophonic sections to create a link to the musical past.

Kin…Timothy Takach 

you are all my kin

in the small hours
I claim you

set out in your shadow boats
let us meet

arriving
by sail, by paddle, by oar

on a vastness of water
however wild it may be

all of you my kin
and I claim you. (-Michael Dennis Browne)

“There is something intangible about getting…together to sing. It’s empowering…and totally unique…To me, this poem embodies what it’s like to sing in a room full…Most people will never know what that feels like. But that’s okay. Because we know.” -note from the composer, 2015.

dominic has a doll…Vicent Persichetti (1915-1987)

Persichetti’s setting of E.E. Cummings’ poem about the wistful memory of childhood is based on several small music ideas, or motifs: one focused on the intervals of the perfect fifth and major/minor third and a recurring rhythmic motif that refers to the poem’s namesake, Dominic. These small musical building blocks work together to evoke a child-like melody supported by a more adult-sounding piano accompaniment.

Between the Wars…Billy Bragg, arr. Scott Gendel 

Billy Bragg, English singer, songwriter, and political activist, wrote this classic folk/punk anthem in 1985. Inspired by the 1984-1985 miner’s strike in the UK, Bragg donated a portion of album sales to the striking miner’s fund. “Revolutions do not start in record shops. But if you write a song like ‘Between the Wars’, you have to come up with the actions to meet it.”

Helplessly Hoping…Crosby, Stills, and Nash, arr. Home Free

In 1968, three members of successful bands (The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and The Hollies) began singing together informally. They knew immediately that they had that special “something”…and became the folk-rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, and Nash. And we love singing their parts—here in an arrangement adapted from the acapella group Home Free.

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Now is the Cool of the Day…Jean Ritchie (1922-2015), arr. Swiggum

Jean Ritchie was one of America’s most beloved folk singers. As part of the 1960s folk music revival, she introduced a new generation to the mountain dulcimer and the rich singing tradition of her native Appalachia. However, this song was not (as many suppose) an old folk song, but a completely original composition, saturated with melodies of her childhood in Kentucky.

The Cuckoo…Traditional American song, arr. Robert Hugh

Hugh arranges this old American tune, transplanting it from the hills of Appalachia into the concert hall, while still maintaining its groovy, “twangy” roots. The middle section employs scatting to imitate the rhythmic cadence of guitars and banjos. The use of repetition in folk songs of this nature was essential to their survival as cultural artifacts. Songs like “The Cuckoo” would have been played all over the eastern and southern United States, relying on repetitive melodies and “ear-worm-ability” as they traveled from state to state.

Bar’bry Allen…Traditional, arr. Joshua Shank

Who determines the hero? Shank’s setting of this famous English folk song allowed us to dissect this question. What we discovered is that perspective and context are paramount. When we look at this story from Jimmy Grove’s perspective, we see Bar’bry Allen as the villain and Jimmy as the hero. He is a poor man slighted by the one he loves, which leads to his eventual death. But when we look at it from Bar’bry’s perspective, we see a man who acts disrespectfully to someone he supposedly cares about and then guilts her for not being by his side despite not taking accountability for his actions. The story of Bar’bry Allen and Jimmy Grove reminds us that, while we are all the heroes in our own personal journeys, we can also play a significant role in another hero’s journey.

Johnnie Cope…Ken Johnston (b. 1960); poem by Adam Skirving (1719-1803)

Sometimes pieces of music are literally about heroes, and commemorate their valor, or cause us to recall them. Britten figured out early on that the namesake of this song was actually not the hero, however. Sir John Cope (d. 1760) was commander-in-chief of the English army defeated by Bonnie Prince Charlie and his Scottish rebels at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 22, 1745. According to legend, Cope challenged Prince Charlie to a battle and then—losing his nerve–secretly deserted his own troops in the night. “Johnnie Cope” has been “skeired” (mocked) as a coward in this famous poem ever since. The poem itself, as well-known to Scottish schoolchildren as “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” was to earlier generations of Americans, was composed by a literate farmer, Adam Skirving, whose fields were trampled in the battle. The martial music, with its fanfares and marching beat, was composed in 2001 by Scottish composer Ken Johnston for the National Youth Choir of Scotland. (Ken has become a good friend to MYC, typically attending at least one of our concerts every tour.) Learning to sing the piece in Scots dialect was a fun challenge, bringing life and energy to the story. The taunting “Are ye waukin’ yet?” means “Are you awake yet?”

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Nda Wana…Traditional South African, arr. Michael Barrett
(sung in Venda)
I found the children playing
while the birds were singing
by the river (mulambo) as they resisted sleep.

This traditional South African song is considered game-like in nature. The repetitive and familiar melody is made increasingly more complex as new layers of rhythm are added, both by the singers’ clapping and by the djembe. The game culminates in a call and response section, followed by one last reflective iteration of the melody.

The Fox…Traditional American song, arr. Swiggum

This bluegrass gem of a song is an entire hero’s journey in one piece! A fox and his family, living their ordinary life experience a call to action (hunger). The struggle is getting to town and back with dinner without being caught, shot, or unsuccessful in finding food. The fox overcomes the struggle by evading the farmer and returns with a “couple o’ geese” from the farm. Mrs. Fox and the little ones all eat and declare that the town must be “very fine”. This mini-hero’s journey is simple enough, but what makes it intriguing is that the fox–typically the villain–is here the sympathetic hero. It brings awareness to the notion of perspective and how whoever is telling the story (or is centering the story) controls the emotional impact of the narrative.

Homeland…Mick Hanly, arr. Swiggum

The longing for home, the deep need for a homeland, seems to be universal. Although the homeland in this song is Ireland, the sentiments described are familiar to each of us; this is an example of the specific in a work of art actually making it universal.

The song has a simple, folk-like quality, in keeping with its simple message but our performance carries several deeper, perhaps more timely, layered meanings. First, travel can awaken a sense of homeland in a place that is not technically one’s home. This phenomenon has awakened a strong nostalgia and “love for home” not based on actually having lived there.

The other challenge is singing something which might sound naive or insensitive in its nationalistic fervor, at a time when many displaced people are far from their homeland, not because they want to be, but because they felt they had no other choice. For the vast majority of immigrants and refugees, leaving their homeland is a decision full of grief.