Wisdom of the Ages: Sages and Seers

Thought-provoking works on texts drawn from Eastern and Western traditions, from the great poets, sages, thinkers, and mystics.

Highlighted are world premiere works written for these concerts: Super Cuncta, written by Henry Mollicone, SFCA’s 2006 Composer in Residence, on a 12th century text of Abélard; De Humanitate by Peninsula composer, L. Peter Deutsch, on a text by Hildegard of Bingen; Benjamin Taylor’s set of 3 pieces on Japanese texts; The Evidence by Frederic Himebaugh. Wayne Eastwood’s I Died for Beauty, on an Emily Dickinson text; and selections from Sojourner Songs by well-known Bay Area composer and San Francisco State University Professor Emeritus, Herbert Bielawa, on texts by John Gracen Brown.

Also on the program: Gideon Klein’s Madrigal, written while he was a young man in the German prison camp where he perished at age 24; selections from Renaissance composer Leonhard Lechner’s Deutsche Sprüche von Leben und Tod; Peter Schickele’s After Spring Sunset, based on Japanese haiku from a collection entitled ’Cherry Blossoms,’; New Zealand composer Christopher Marshall’s A Voice from Heaven on a text of Hildegard; Robert Starer’s It is an Easy Thing on a William Blake text from ’The Four Zoas’; works by Renaissance composers Johannes Eccard, Melchior Franck, and Claude Le Jeune; and works by Ysaye Barnwell, Leonard Bernstein, Theodore Morrison, Linda Hirschhorn, Quincy Porter, others.