Stacy Garrop: Terra Nostra
Cedille Records

Hundreds of oratorios have been created over the past six hundred years, and the proliferation of modern-day treatments by Julia Wolfe, James MacMillan, Philip Sawyers, and others shows no sign of weakening interest in the form. Adding her name to the list is award-winning composer Stacy Garrop (b. 1969), whose Terra Nostra was premiered in late 2015 by the San Francisco Choral Society and the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir and is now performed on this world premiere recording by the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra, Northwestern University Chorale, Alice Millar Chapel Choir, Chicago's Uniting Voices, and soloists soprano Michelle Areyzaga, mezzo-soprano Leah Dexter, tenor Jesse Donner, and baritone David Govertsen, all under the expert guiding hand of conductor Stephen Alltop.

Consistent with the epic scope of the oratorio tradition, Garrop's environmentally themed opus tackles the relationship between humanity and the planet we call home. It's no one-dimensional celebration, however: while the work's opening part does rejoice in the earth's beauty, its second addresses the profound and in many ways destructive impact our presence has exerted on the planet. The third ponders how a healthier and more harmonious balance might be re-instated and how we might take greater responsibility in how we manage the earth's resources. Emerging during a time of dramatic climate change, her provocative creation is, needless to say, timely.

Structured in three multi-movement parts, Terra Nostra draws for its libretto from The Bible and the poetry of Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Lord Byron, Wendell Berry, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Esther Iverem, and others, all such material carefully chosen to reinforce the message associated with each part and movement. Garrop has written a powerful score that complements the texts with music that's at one moment tender and lyrical and at another towering in epic force and sweep. Were the texts delivered in some alien tongue, the character of the music would still clearly express the essence of the narrative as it unfolds through its parts.

Aptly titled, “In the Beginning” introduces the first part, Creation of the World, with biblical text and creation myths from India, North America, and Egypt; as ear-catching are the downward-swooping string figures accompanying the chorus during the opening minutes and the percussive-driven thrust of the music. Reflecting the expansive scope of the work, the movement weaves solo episodes for Areyzaga, Dexter, and Donner into its oft-foreboding and at times harrowing presentation. The tone shifts dramatically for the exuberant uplift of “God's World” and text by St. Vincent Millay that describes the woods as “cry[ing] with colour.” After earth's glories are extolled, the work turns gently radiant for Garrop's treatment of Shelley's “On thine own child,” in which children's voices sing earth's praises and flutes and triangles dance. “Smile O voluptuous cool-breathed earth!” gives Govertsen his turn in the spotlight, with Whitman's ardour for the planet expressed by the baritone with intense feeling.

The onset of the work's middle part, The Rise of Humanity, brings with it considerations of human achievement and the increasingly rapid acceleration in technological advances associated with the Industrial Revolution. The forward momentum of the era is conveyed by three movements focusing on train, car, and plane developments, Charles Mackay's “Railways 1846,” William Ernest Henley's “A Song of Speed,” and John Gillespie Magee, Jr.'s “High Flight.” With Hopkins' “Binsey Poplars,” things begin to take an ominous turn (vividly mirrored in the tone of Garrop's score) when the felling of trees anticipates environmentally damaging directions to come. That impression of downturn is even more forcefully expressed in Shelley's “A Dirge,” which concludes the second part on a note of alarm.

The anxious tone carries over into the desolate opening of part three, Searching for Balance, with Lord Byron's “Darkness” describing the panic caused by a volcano blotting out the sun and Iverem's “Earth Screaming” calling out the damage our “foolish species” has done. After the turmoil of Wordsworth's “The World Is Too Much With Us” pushes the work to its most extreme state of despair, the mood pivots and recovery, however tentative, is initiated with Berry's “The Want of Peace” and its message of harmony. As it reaches its triumphant conclusion, Terra Nostra fittingly ends with three Whitman-based affirmations that stress that we not only hold a deep connection to the earth but are of it, just like everything else (“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love / If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles”).

July 2024