Maine composer’s carol celebrates peace

BAR HARBOR – Edna St. Vincent Millay wasn’t the first poet who came to mind when local composer Tom Wallace was seeking text for an original Christmas carol.

Millay is known more for her melancholy themes than for holiday cheer. But the Maine poet’s visceral images of the preparation for a dark New England winter in the short poem “Winter Night,” provided a perfect foil for the sacred text “Gloria” in Wallace’s new choral piece “Winter Night Gloria.”

Wallace plays the two works against each other, juxtaposing Millay’s description of a solitary man finishing his winter chores, with the celebratory Latin Mass.

“We’re all given so much to be thankful for, yet we’re all wanting what we don’t have,” Wallace said. “I want to show how the divine, the sacred, is accessible in daily life – and this poem is all about daily life.”

“Winter Night Gloria,” will be performed for the first time at the Acadia Choral Society’s annual holiday concert this weekend in Bar Harbor.

Millay’s words are sung in English, while “Gloria” remains in Latin. Only on the word “peace” do the secular and sacred portions of the work merge.

“It’s all balled up in my own journey,” said Wallace, whose personal religious faith influenced his piece. “That’s when you really find God, or the divine, or peace – whatever you want to call it – when you recognize and accept the sacred in everyday life.”

Ironically, the society’s first rehearsal of “Winter Night Gloria” took place Sept. 11. Since Wallace and his wife do not have a television in their rambling farmhouse, he didn’t learn of the World Trade Center disaster until society director Shirley Smith called to ask whether they should cancel the rehearsal.

“We have to affirm life,” Wallace responded. “I feel like global peace isn’t really a possibility without more people with a sense of personal peace in the world,” he said.

Wallace has served as accompanist and assistant conductor for the chorale for several years, and has composed pieces for the Acadia Children’s Choir, which he directs, and for Singin’ Local, a vocal quartet that he sings with.

But “Winter Night Gloria” – a four-part choral piece in eight movements, with accompaniment on brass and pipe organ – is of a scope that Wallace had never before attempted.

“It took hundreds of hours of composing,” he said. “She [Smith] asked me to write a Christmas carol. She wasn’t expecting a 17-minute work.”

The Latin portions of “Winter Night Gloria” have a delicate sound, which, according to Wallace, has a baroque feel. Alternately, Wallace uses “sound pictures” to bring Millay’s verse to life with a dark, mysterious tone.

“But even the darkest moments have a light heart,” he said.

Wallace wrote tenor and soprano solo parts specifically for society members whose voices he knows as well as his own – Jay Emlen of Somesville and Sarah St. Denis of Town Hill.

“I had never heard their two voices together, but I knew it would be beautiful,” he said.

Professional musicians from The Juilliard School in New York will perform the brass parts for “Winter Night Gloria,” while Wallace plays the pipe organ. Seven Juilliard musicians agreed to participate in the Acadia Choral Society concert after conducting workshops in Hancock County schools sponsored by the Mark Woolman Horner Music Education Fund last March.

“For me to have the opportunity for my first work to be accompanied by such high-end musicians is quite incredible,” Wallace said.

In addition to “Winter Night Gloria,” the society will perform a second major work with brass accompaniment, “Gloria” by contemporary English composer John Rutter. Shorter pieces by John Jacob Niles, Giovanni Gabrieli, Georg Philipp Telemann and others also will be featured.

Performances are scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 8, and 3 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 9 at St. Saviour’s Church in Bar Harbor. Admission is $12 adults, $10 for students and senior citizens. Tickets are available from chorus members, the church office, or from Eve Harrison at 276-5035.