It’s familiar to many people. The opening movement, starting like a distant echo, then growing, getting louder, voices blending into voices, sweeping into a musical maelstrom.
This Saturday, June 26, the Falls Church Community Choir, Choralis, and the students of the Choralis Summer Festival will join together to perform German composer Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. It will be taking place at Woodson High School, 9525 Main St, Fairfax, VA at 8 pm.
The performance will be the culmination of an intense week of study for the students in the summer program. After a week of classes and rehearsal, they will be singing alongside the experienced musicians of Choralis.
The choice of Carmina Burana is particularly relevant to end the week, in light of the composer’s own focus on education. Orff was a lifetime proponent of music education. In1924, he founded a school of music and gymnastics with Dorothee Guenther, later closed by the Nazis.
Carmina Burana, Orff’s most famous work, has become one of the best known compositions of the 20th century. Most wouldn’t recognize the title, but they’ve heard the opening movement, O Fortuna, in everything from movie soundtracks, to product advertisements, selling everything from video games to potato chips.
Gretchen Kuhrmann, Artistic Director and conductor of Choralis, talked to the News-Press this week about the period in which Orff composed the piece. “It was Orff’s quiet protest,” said Kuhrmann. She talked about how Orff presented the piece as a celebration of life and freedom, amidst Hitler’s growing tyranny.
Kuhrmann founded Choralis four years ago in Falls Church. The group which now consists of an 80 voice choir and a smaller chamber group, “Echos,” rehearses at Falls Church Presbyterian Church.
A year after founding Choralis, Kuhrmann decided to go further promoting music in Falls Church, by starting the Choralis Summer Music Festival. The festival is a program, where as Kuhrmann said, “outstanding young high school students with a love for music, can do more than they do in high school,” as they receive instruction from professional area musicians.
During the week, the students rehearse with Choralis, to prepare for the final concert Saturday. They study subjects from music history and theory, to private voice lessons and sight singing. The program has been steadily growing from its first year, when 13 students took part in the festival. This week, 30 students will be attending classes and singing in the choir.
Marijke Armstrong has been part of the festival since it was started three years ago. A member of Choralis and one of two high school students in Echos, Armstrong talked about how much she has enjoyed the classes. “[The classes] give you a chance to branch out and learn from a different perspective,” she said.
Armstrong said in previous years, when students first heard they would be taking music history, they were worried about it being boring, but by the end of the week, it was one of the most popular classes.
The class pushed Armstrong’s education beyond music. “I picked up a love for history through the music history class,” she said. Things that she had learned in high school, “suddenly clicked,” she said.
A senior, Armstrong will be attending George Mason University next year. She talked about past years in the festival and how beneficial the older members of Choralis have been to the young musicians.
“This is a very welcoming group,” said Armstrong. “It makes for a real homey kind of atmosphere.”
Kuhrmann added that the young singers have likewise helped the Choralis regulars. “The kids bring an infusion of energy…they have a pure genuine love for music,” said Kuhrmann.
She talked about working with singers. She pointed out, that while a piano makes the same sound, whoever presses the keys, each voice has a different sound. “There’s nothing more personal than singing,” she said. “We all have a very unique and personal gift.”
For Armstrong, the festival has allowed her to blend with the older members of the group. She said she gets to combine her voice with, “a broad spectrum of different kinds of voices.”
The festival provides the opportunity for students and Choralis veterans to work together getting the final piece ready. The singers work across, what is normally, a divisive generation gap, to create a work of art. Seldom do young people get to work on an equal level with people of a significant age difference. The experience helps both groups get a different perspective on music and each other.
The festival is selective in choosing their students. In order to take part in the Choralis Summer Music Festival, students have to receive a recommendation from their teachers and then fill out an application detailing their musical interests and abilities.
After being accepted the students get to choose the classes they will be taking for the week. In addition to the history and theory classes, they can choose an area of study including piano accompaniment, conducting, or private voice lessons.
In an interesting opportunity, over the period of the week, the advanced conducting students will be competing for the chance to conduct part of Carmina Burana during the final dress rehearsal on Friday night. Kuhrmann talked about the rush of conducting over 100 voices and a full professional orchestra. “They get that power trip,” said Kuhrmann. “It’ll fix them for life.”
The program has been tremendously successful in supporting students in their musical education. Next year three seniors will be attending Oberlin and Shenandoah music conservatories, two to Oberlin and one to Shenandoah.
Also, on Saturday, in addition to Carmina Burana, Choralis will be presenting Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. Kuhrmann said that the two pieces are intricately linked. Both were written by Europeans during the period before WWII, Symphony of Psalms in 1930 and Carmina Burana in 1937. Each expresses the atmosphere of the increasingly violent times. Although Stravinsky's music sounds different, Orff’s choice of pulsation and rhythms are said to be influenced by the Swiss composer.
Kuhrmann also pointed out a practical reason why the two pieces would be presented together. “The [orchestral] requirements are the same,” said Kuhrmann, noting that the group was able to use the same musicians for both pieces.
While the festival will be ending on Saturday, Choralis is already gearing up for its next season. In October they will be presenting a concert featuring an all British cast of composers, including, they claim, the Washington area premiere of John Rutter’s The Mass of the Children.
Kuhrmann emphasized the unrewarded work that goes into a choir. She said that while community orchestras often get community funding, the choirs tend to be on their own. “There’s no glory in it,” Kuhrmann said.
Despite the lack of financial support, the Choir has continued to get good crowds at its concerts, consistently attracting hundreds of music fans.
In front of those fans, this Saturday, the voices of the students will blend with the Choralis singers, creating a harmony that will exemplify the experiences shared over the past week. Even as the final notes fade into the rafters of Woodson High School, it’s those that will continue to resonate.