Recently named Musical America’s 2024 Ensemble of the Year, Donald Nally’s chamber choir The Crossing stuns with their latest studio album, WAYS YOU WENT. Vibrant, exhilarating, and uplifting, this new release features original compositions by composers Martin Bresnick and Mason Bates.
WAYS YOU WENT is a yin and yang of interconnected opposites. Bresnick’s song cycle Self-Portraits 1964 exclusively deals with the life and personality of a single man: young and intellectual, working as a trash collector to put himself through college, and escaping into literature at night. Bates’ trilogy Mass Transmission takes a telegraph conversation between mother and daughter in the 1920s and sets it to music, contrasting the warmth of human communication and a mechanistic medium. Both of these cycles, one introspective, the other socially oriented, are snapshots of a time gone by. The Crossing brings both to life with perfect mastery.
Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished
music by Martin Bresnick
words by Herman Melville, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Hardy, and James Joyce.
Commissioned by The Crossing, Donald Nally, conductor, and PRISM Quartet, with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia.
a note from the composer:
When I was seventeen, I was living alone, working as a maintenance man and trash collector in one of the city’s Housing Projects to earn enough to attend a new school. I would rise in darkness and travel to my job by train. In breaks, high on rooftops where sea birds took refuge in the hot summer of 1964, I read books carried in my back pocket and reflected on others I had studied in my first year at university. After work, at small clubs and coffee houses, I listened to music with others of my kind, returning late at night.
Now a much older man, I imagine that the texts I read and the music of the six movements of Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished, are a memoir evoking my youthful state of mind then – rising before dawn, traveling, working, reading, listening, coming home.
In the rattling train, I remember
The long day and night.
Music, friends, lovers,
Words understood
And misunderstood
Ride with me,
Connecting and disconnecting
As the train sways.
Thoughts arising, fading,
Falling toward sleep, I consider
"What I do is me:
For that I came."
– Martin Bresnick, February 2023
I. His Own Identity
No man can feel
His own identity aright,
Except his eyes be closed,
As if darkness were indeed
The proper element
Of our essences.
–Herman Melville (1819-1891), Moby Dick, Chapter 11, “Nightgown” (1851)
II. I Wake
I wake and feel
The fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours
We have spent this night!
What sights you, heart, saw;
Ways you went! And more
In yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this.
Bitter would have me taste:
My taste was me;
Bones built in me,
Flesh filled, blood brimmed
The curse. Selfyeast of spirit
A dull dough sours.
I see the lost are like this,
And their scourge to be
As I am mine,
Their sweating selves;
but worse.
–Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day” (c. 1886)
III. Where Lies The Final Harbor
Where lies the final
Harbor where we unmoor
No more? In what rapt
Ether sails the world,
Of which the weariest
Will never weary?
Where is the foundling’s
Father hidden?
Our souls are like
Those orphans whose
Unwedded mothers
Die in bearing them:
The secret of
Their paternity
Lies in their grave, and
We must there to learn it.
–Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 114, “The Gilder”
IV. The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a woodland gate
When frost was spectre-grey,
And winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit on the earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak trees overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small ,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or near around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
–Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), “The Darkling Thrush” (Poems of the Past and Present, London MacMillan, 1901)
V. Of Mortal Beauty
He was alone. He was unheeded, happy,
And near to the wild heart of life.
He was alone and will-full and wild hearted.
She was alone and still, gazing out to sea.
She stood before him alone and still in midstream, gazing out to sea.
She seemed like one whom magic had changed
Into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird.
Her long slender legs were delicate as a crane’s
And pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed
Had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh.
Her thighs, fuller and soft hued as ivory,
Were bared almost to the hips,
Where the white fringes of her drawers
Were like the feathering of soft white down.
Her slateblue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist
And dovetailed behind her.
Her bosom was as a bird’s,
Soft and slight, slight and soft
As the breast of some darkplumaged dove.
But her long fair hair was girlish:
And girlish, and touched
With the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.
Long, long she suffered his gaze
And the worship of his eyes
And then quietly withdrew her eyes from his
And bent them towards the stream,
Gently stirring the water with her foot
Here and there, here and there.
And a faint flame trembled on her cheek.
–James Joyce (1882-1941), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Chapter 4 (1916)
VI. To Fling Out Broad Its Name
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells
Selves goes itself, myself it speaks and spells.
Crying - what I do is me:
For that I came.
–Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” (1877)
Mass Transmission
music by Mason Bates
words from various sources
From the composer:
Mass Transmission tells the true story of a distantly-separated family communicating over the earliest radio transmissions. It’s 1920’s-era Skype: on one end of the line is a Dutch girl sent to be a page in the colonial government of the East Indies; on the other end is her mother, thousands of miles away in the Dutch Telegraph Office. The piece explores the warmth of human emotions pulsing through a mechanistic medium.
Two obscure texts are set to music. The texts for outer movements are adapted from a 1928 government publication about the technological advances made by the Dutch in communicating with their colonists, compiling transcripts of these ground-breaking communications, and giving us the mother’s perspective. The central movement gives us the daughter’s perspective of jungle-life in Java, drawn from the diary of Elizabeth van Kampen about growing up there.
The chorus sings these texts, comprising the ‘animal warmth’ of the piece, while the electronics give us a ‘musical scrim’ of static and short-wave radio sounds. The organ connects the two: sometimes it supports the chorus, sometimes it plays the toccata-like music of the Dutch Telegraph Office.
I. The Dutch Telegraph Office
The miracle still lies in my memories like a dream.
Slowly layers of mystery unveil. Gradually my eyes alight as if recovering from a dream.
A bit fearfully, I speak into the microphone:
“Hello? Hello? Are you there, my child?”
12000 Kilometers, not a single wire. The air is what transmits the message. A miracle.
My voice travels to the Indies, which took my daughter weeks to reach on a steamboat. Days and nights, the endless sea around her. Now I can speak to that distant land, and my voice travels there wirelessly.
“Hello! Hello! Are you there, my child?”
But the reality around me is sober and mechanical. I’m in the headquarters of the Dutch Telegraph Office, in a small lifeless studio. A strange apparatus before me. A technician nearby. The earphones, the microphone on the armchair. It is very cold.
This is where Holland converses with its colonists in Java.
My child has been sent to be a page in the government in Java. It is a great honor, but it is hard on a mother.
A bit fearfully, I speak into the microphone:
“Hello! Hello! Are you there, my child?”
In a single second, I have crossed 12000 kilometers, as if it were the distance between two rooms.
And within that second, my daughter’s voice comes back:
II. Java
What I love most about Java are the moments I wake up.
I stay just a little longer in bed to listen to all the tropical noises. Birds twittering, monkeys echoing through the jungle. I hear soft, strange, beautiful music coming from the village. Gamelan music. Then I go outside, enjoying the fresh morning fragrance and admiring all those colorful flowers and the Durian trees.
My house is built on poles and made of stone and bamboo. The doors and windows are painted green. On top of the house is a red zinc roof. Underneath the house I often hide with the other children.
Sometimes we go right into the jungle. It is always hot and magical, and it always has a special smell—a bit of snakes and all sorts of plants. I watch my steps in this strange, lovely kingdom. The atmosphere is so unreal, like a paradise or Eden.
In the evening, lying in bed, I listen again to the gamelan in the village, and I miss you. You are so far away.
III. Wireless Connections
Are you there mum? Yes, my child. I can definitely recognize your voice!
Is everything fine with you, mum? Yes, dear…so good to hear your voice.
I miss you mum! I miss you too, my child.
Well…it is hot here in Java. And it’s storming here in Holland!
Is granddad with you? Nope, he has not come.
Okay, have a good night then. Good night, my child.
The voice from the East. Nothing is farther apart than the two straits that separate us. In this way the world grows closer and closer, even as we move further apart.
Each phone call was allowed to last 6 minutes at most. Six minutes, it seemed far too short. The six minutes passed, and the voice comes to a halt. The headphone is silent, the microphone lies on the table in the Dutch Telegraph Office.
Later, when I lie in my white bed, I can still hear my child’s voice: the memory, the ecstasy. No poem, no music is more beautiful than that. Holland and Java lie in the deepest part of a mother’s heart, and in every sigh is a wireless signal: Hello, oh, my child…
–“The Dutch Telegraph Office” & “Wireless Connections” adapted from Hallo Bandeong, hier Den Haag! (1928). Translation by Jerry Chu. Used by permission. “Java” adapted from Memories of My Youth in the Dutch East-Indies by Elizabeth van Kampen. Used by permission.
THE CROSSING
Walter Aldrich MT • Isobel Anthony MT • Katy Avery SP MT • Nathaniel Barnett SP • Kelly Ann Bixby MT • Karen Blanchard SP MT • Steven Bradshaw SP MT • Aryssa Burrs * SP • Matthew Cramer MT • Micah Dingler MT • Ryan Fleming SP MT • Joanna Gates SP MT • Michael Hawes * SP • Steven Hyder SP MT • Michael Jones SP MT • Lauren Kelly SP MT • Anika Kildegaard SP MT • Heidi Kurtz MT • Elijah McCormack SP • Maren Montalbano SP MT • Rebecca Myers * SP • Daniel O’Dea MT • James Reese * SP • Daniel Schwartz SP MT • Thann Scoggin SP MT • Rebecca Siler ^ SP MT • Tiana Sorenson SP MT • Daniel Spratlan SP MT • Elisa Sutherland ^ MT • Daniel Taylor SP MT • Jackson Williams SP • Shari Wilson SP
* soloist, Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished
^ soloist, Mass Transmission
SP = Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished
MT = Mass Transmission
PRISM Quartet (SP)
Timothy McAllister soprano saxophone
Zachary Shemon alto saxophone
Matthew Levy tenor saxophone
Taimur Sullivan baritone saxophone
Scott Dettra (MT) organ
Donald Nally conductor
Kevin Vondrak assistant conductor & artistic associate
John Grecia (MT) & Chuck Foster (SP) project keyboards
John Conahan, Tim Lambert & John Walthausen guest keyboards
Paul Vazquez sound design
Benjamin Perri (MT) production assistant
Recording Producers: Paul Vazquez, Donald Nally & Kevin Vondrak
Recording Engineer: Paul Vazquez
Assistant Recording Engineers: Codi Yhap
Editing, Mixing, and Mastering: Paul Vazquez
Album artwork by Christopher St. John – https://christopherstjohn.art/
Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished was recorded March 21-23, 2023 at St. Peter’s Church in the Great Valley, Malvern, Pennsylvania.
Mass Transmission was recorded live in concert December 18, 2022 during The Crossing @ Christmas at The Crossing’s home, The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
This album was made possible through the generous support of Carol Westfall.
We are grateful for:
our artists, composers, audience, friends, and supporters;
the staff and congregation at our home, The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill;
Heidi Kurtz and Beth van de Water for hospitality;
those who opened their homes to our artists during the recording of this album: David and Rebecca Thornburgh, Jeff and Liz Podraza, Corbin Abernathy and Andrew Beck, Dan Schwartz and Michael Rowley, Lauren Kelly and Henry Koch, Rebecca and Mark Bernstein, Steven Hyder and Donald Nally.