Sunday, November 15, 3:00 pm

State College High School Performance Hall

650 Westerly Parkway, State College, PA 16801

Erik Clayton, Artistic Director

Nelson Mass

Franz Joseph Haydn

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight

Florence Price

Chariot Jubilee

R. Nathaniel​ Dett

In November, we will present To Sing in Times of Trouble, featuring Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Florence Price’s Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight. Both works were written during the great conflicts of their age, the Napoleonic Wars and World War I respectively, and both eloquently express the tension of their time. Originally titled “Mass in Time of Stress,” Haydn wrote the Nelson Mass in 1798, during a time of economic and political hardship in Austria. Napoleon’s French forces seemed unstoppable, when on the day of the Mass’s first performance, word of Admiral Nelson’s great victory at the Nile reached Vienna. The work's association with the great Admiral remains to this day. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight is a poem written in 1917 during the darkest days of World War I and describes the restless soul of Abraham Lincoln unable to sleep because of the tragic war in Europe. This is Florence Price’s longest and most important work and has only recently been brought to light. We conclude the concert with Chariot Jubilee by R. Nathaniel Dett, another great work by an African-American composer of the early 20th century.  This is one of the first symphonic-choral works to include spirituals and ends the concert with a message of hope and triumph.