Hopkins Center for the Arts

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Dartmouth Chamber Singers

Dr. Robert Duff, conductor

A Woman's Inspiration:

Choral Music by Women Composers

with special guest Sally Pinkas, piano

Friday, MAY 23 • 8 pm
Rollins Chapel
$16 • Dartmouth students $3
All other students $6
General admission

Since Hildegard of Bingen took up the pen in the 11th century, women composers have produced stunning choral works, many of which have received acclaim only in modern times. A visionary German abbess, Hildegard was also the author of treatises on everything from theology to botany, medicine and sex—and composer of scores of sacred compositions. When she heard a heavenly voice say, “Write down that which you see and hear,” perhaps she wrote her O Frondens virga (For the Virgin), highlighting the celestial purity of the female voice, with such divine inspiration. The Chamber Singers also perform Drei gemischte Chore nach Gedichten von Emanuel Geibeli by Clara Schumann and Gartenlieder by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, exemplary 19th-century German pianist/composers, the brilliance of whose works is now considered to equal or surpass that of their male counterparts, Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. French composer and child prodigy Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) accomplished much in her tragically short life of 24 years, including the creation of such lovely choral pieces as Soir sur la Plaine. Twentieth-century American composer Willametta Spencer's At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners closes the concert with its sublime union of the spiritual and the choral.

Stages Family Series