Stroope is 2nd composer-in-residence at Cornell this year
World-renowned American composer and conductor Z. Randall Stroope will spend three days with Cornell College Assistant Professor of Music Christopher Nakielski and the choral program, resulting in a free public performance of his works at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 24, at Mount Vernon United Methodist Church.
This is the second composer-in-residence this year at Cornell. Elaine Hagenberg was on campus in October to work with the Cornell and the Mount Vernon High School choirs in preparation for an Oct. 10, 2023, performance of her masterwork “Illuminare.”
Nakielski and the choirs will host a third residency and joint performance April 27 with The Ambassadors of Harmony. The St. Louis-area chorus is a five-time Barbershop Harmony Society International Chorus Champion. The performance is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 27, in the Anamosa Performing Arts Center. Director Jim Henry will work with the Cornell choirs on campus for three days.
Stroope residency
Stroope will be on campus Feb. 21–24 to work with the choirs and soloists, visit classes, and dine with students. His residency will culminate in a concert of his works at which he will speak and share the conductor’s podium with Nakielski.
“He was a huge influence on me in my early 20s at the very beginning of my choral career,” Nakielski said. “When I was first learning to conduct in college it was his music that was set in front of all of us. Twenty years later I got to meet him—I approached him at the Iowa Choral Director Association Symposium last summer and asked if he would work with us.”
“The Cornell students really care about his music, as they’ve been approaching me in person or sending me emails discussing their love for these pieces,” Nakielski said.
“His music is highly, highly emotional, dramatic, and impactful. It’s about the big moment in his music, and as a listener, even if you don’t know anything about music, you will be able to know when you reach the culmination of his piece,” he said.
The program
Among the works Cornell choirs will perform:
“Dies Irae,” one of Stroope’s best-known pieces, is set to an epic Latin text that translates to the “day of wrath.” First set to music in a Gregorian chant, it is one of the most quoted in musical literature and is still used in popular culture today.
“The end of the world is never a happy song. His piece is in three parts—it comes out guns a-blazing with meter changes, a minor key, and is almost violent. The B section is where they beg God for mercy, only to return to the A section and it’s the day of wrath and all hope is lost,” Nakielski says.
“Dance Macabre” is a newer piece that Nakielski said is very technical, chromatic, and fast. “And to make things more difficult it’s in French. It’s a real showoff piece for a choir that can master it. We’re going for it,” he said.
“And Sure Stars Shining” is set to a hopeful text by Sara Teasdale, one of America’s most storied lyrical poets from the late 1800s.
“Arise My Love My Fair One and Come Away,” is set to text from the Song of Solomon and described as “quick and vibrant, with meter changes throughout, and an attitude of resilience, joy, hope, and a brilliant expectation of great things to come.”
“Abandon,” set to text by the poet Maria Rainer Rilke, is a beautiful work about falling in love.
A four-movement song-cyle titled “Love’s Waning Seasons” will be performed by junior Simon Downs, senior Luke Henson, sophomore Brittni Tieden, and senior Emily Martyka, complimented by a stand-alone work titled “Amor de Mi Alma,” sung by Belou Quimby ’19.
Randall Stroope
Stroope has conducted concerts in 26 countries and published over 200 musical works. He is the artistic director of two international summer music festivals and has directed music for the Vatican Mass 12 times. He has recently guest conducted in Rome, Hong Kong, Barcelona, Dublin, Stockholm, Berlin, and Vienna.
In the United States Stroppe has directed 56 performances at Carnegie Hall and Chicago Orchestra Hall, 48 all-state choirs, and numerous other conducting workshops, clinics, and performances at universities and festivals. He conducts an average of 35 concerts a year.
He is the founder and conductor of The New American Voices, a professional recording/performing ensemble based in Dallas-Fort Worth. This ensemble will tour northern Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands in the summer of 2024.
