"Princeton Singers’ Sentiments

Run To Marital Discord"

February 19, 1999

by Bryan Hay

Allentown Morning Call

Anyone needing an antidote for an overdose of sappy Valentine’s Day cards and chocolate-covered sentiments should seek out the Princeton Singers, who will perform at 8 p.m. today in Lehigh University’s Zoellner Arts Center, Bethlehem.

The 24-voice choir will present “Reincarnations,” part of which will contain what artistic director Steven Sametz calls “a Clinton-esque comedy” by pairing Italian madrigals of the 20th and 16th centuries.

The satirical repertoire will be a like a bucket of cold water to bring even the most passionate of lovers back to a sobering reality.

A large madrigal set written by Luigi Dallapiccola in the early 1930s about unhappily married people will be wedded with madrigals about failed loves from the Italian Renaissance.

Dallapiccola’s set, based on sonnets by Michelangelo, begins with a chorus of unhappily married wives, followed by a chorus of unhappily married men.

“It’s an incredibly fun set of pieces, but also very, very demanding,” says Sametz, who was appointed artistic director of the chamber choir in September. Sametz also is director of choral activities at Lehigh University.

The Dallapiccola choruses will be united with “Chi chili chi” by Orlando di Lasso, a 16th-century Flemish composer who worked extensively in Italy. “It’s a piece about an unhappily married spouse yelling at her husband because he has failed to do his husbandly duties, specifically he’s been bad in bed,” Sametz explains.

Bartolomeo Tromboncino, a rather obscure 16th-century Mantuan madrigalist, also will be introduced for his talents as a musician and his stormy history.

“He killed his wife and her lover in bed -- this is all beginning to sound like a Clinton-esque kind of comedy,” Sametz laughed. “But he was such a good composer and was so highly regarded in the Mantuan court that they forgave him. You can be forgiven anything if you’re talented enough. That’s the message.”

Not all the concert is like this, he assures.

“On the Death of a Friend,” a moving piece Sametz wrote last year as a memorial for a member of a choral group in San Antonio, Texas, will be performed for the first time in this part of the country.

Elliott Carter’s “Musicians Wrestle," set to Emily Dickinson’s poem of the same name, a set of three “Reincarnations” by Samuel Barber, the namesake of the concert’s theme, will anchor the first half with the Italian madrigals.

“Lamentations of Jeremiah,” considered a gem of the English cathedral literature, by Tudor composer Thomas Tallis will open the second half of the concert, followed by other sacred works by Palestrina, Biebl and Sametz. A set of European and American folk songs arranged by Sametz, including the popular “Shenandoah,” will complete the program.

The Princeton Singers, founded in 1983, has a reputation for brilliant performances of English cathedral music. But it is adaptable enough to find intimacy with any genre, says Sametz, whose connections with other preeminent choral organizations such as Chanticleer have expanded the artistic boundaries of the Princeton Singers.

“It’s been fun. They’re very adventurous, virtuosic and have good ears,” he adds. “This is a very pure sound for this ensemble -- very clean in a kind of English tradition.”

The Lehigh Valley has a large, knowledgeable choral music audience; the visit by the Princeton Singers “is one more piece of the treasure,” Sametz observes.

The Princeton Singers will perform at 8 p.m. today in Zoellner Arts Center, 420 E. Packer Ave., Lehigh University, Bethlehem. Tickets: $28, $25, $10 (students). Seniors and groups receive a $2 discount. 758-2787.