Geneseo Symphony Orchestra performed with Geneseo Chamber Festival Chorus (pictured above) in Wadsworth Auditorium on Nov. 18. They played “Ashes of Roses,” which has not been performed since it was written in 2007 (Josie Kwan/ assoc. photo editor).
Ebbing and flowing like a sea of sound, the Geneseo Symphony Orchestra and Geneseo Chamber Festival Chorus joined together in a performance of composer Jocelyn Hagen’s “Ashes of Roses” on Nov. 18. The presentation in Wadsworth Auditorium marked the piece’s premiere in the Eastern United States.
Geneseo Symphony Orchestra conductor Leah McGray explained how composer Jocelyn Hagen’s piece became the selection for this particular performance.
“Jocelyn Hagen as a composer and a writer is melodically and lyrically oriented. What she’s writing is beauty, that’s something musicians love to do. So in that way, it was an easy sell for this piece,” McGray said.
In seven movements, the performance meditated on death, life and love, reflecting the Requiem ritual in Catholic tradition. Composer Hagen notably created “Ashes of Roses” in 2011, making the piece a much more recent selection than the Geneseo Symphony Orchestra generally performs, according to violinist junior Shotaro Toyoda.
“No one has ever listened to this piece before so it’s pretty hard,” Toyoda said. “I had to listen to the recording many times to know this piece well before playing it for the audience. If we play an [older] famous piece, we’ve heard the piece before so we kind of know how to play it. This piece was really new, so it was harder.”
McGray said that they partly chose the newer piece because it exposed the players and singers to a newer sound that they hadn’t been exposed to previously.
“There’s a new avenue and a new opportunity [with a new piece],” McGray said. “That’s one of the things I love about being at a liberal arts college. You have that freedom to express the repertoire and to explore new ideas.”
As the chorus and orchestra alternatively built upon and broke with one another, the sounds shifted. The singers could be triumphant in one movement and despondent in the next.
McGray felt that the shifting sound strengthened the piece.
“All of the movements had something very different to say. Finding out what the message was in each one is heavily embedded in the text,” McGray said. “One of the fun things about working with a chorus is that the mystery is taking out of some of that. You get to see the direct connection between the text and how it’s set into the music.”
The concert began with three movements that take their text from the Requiem mass itself, starting with an introduction (Introduction) before shifting into movements devoted to a “Day of Wrath” (Dies Irae) and “Weeping” (Lacrimosa).
The last three movements more clearly mirror portions of mass. Movement five reflects the offertory (Offertorium) in mass, where the participants receive communion, Movements six and seven interpret the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei) and eternal light (Lux Aeterna) sections of the mass.
Couched in between these interpretations of the traditional Catholic mass is the poem “Ashes of Roses.” Hagen’s inclusion of the poem, which was written by Elaine Goodale Eastman more than a century ago, diverges from the Latin lyrics that populate the rest of the piece. “When love’s warm sun is set/Love’s brightness closes,” the chorus sang. “Eyes with hot tears are wet,In hearts there linger yet—Ashes of Roses.”
The Requiem is often performed to memorialize a death in someone’s life, according to McGray. These themes felt salient for many in the orchestra since adjunct professor of music Martha Sholl had recently experienced two deaths in her family.
Flautist junior Katherine Cotten emphasized the impact this song had on the players during the performance.
“It was definitely very emotional since our professor had just lost her parents,” Cotton said. “We dedicated the performance to her so that was very moving.”
McGray believed that all of the performers connected with the piece in an individualized way.
“It was a piece of music that I think everyone really found something personal in,” McGray said. “It was one of those situations where every time we rehearsed it, it got better and better and stronger. I’m pretty proud of what we put on with the presentation.”