Program Notes for Pinkham's Wedding Cantata: Draft the First

This is the first draft. I expect to need to prune it down. Comments welcome.

Daniel Pinkham's Wedding Cantata, published in 1956 and scored for mixed chorus and piano, celebrates the joy and profundity of love as expressed through biblical texts drawn from the Song of Solomon. By turns exuberant and poignant, the long, leaping lines and sparkling harmonies magnify the spirit of the texts, while clever formal construction and common musical material meld the four movements into a unified whole. Pinkham accomplishes this with his characteristic brevity.

The cantata opens with Solomon verses 2:10-12 ("Rise up, my love, my fair one..."), set to a joyous, dancing 6/4 rhythm. The piano accompaniment features bright, closely voiced harmonies, generally arranged with added seventh or ninth tones; the harmonies sound familiar, but shine with a sparkling, mystical character that pervades much of the piece. The chorus' opening unison melody, in rising by a fourth, then fifth (appropriately given the text), states a powerful melodic theme that appears in various forms throughout the first and third movements. The second section of the opening movement builds upon the earlier melodic material, this time employing mixed meter, to Solomon verses 6:1-3 ("whither is my beloved gone..."). The text continues the common themes of joy in the beloved, with pastoral imagery.

The musical and textual themes of the first movement return in the third movement, to verse 4:16 (“Awake, O north wind...”); while the third movement features canon and generally simpler accompaniment, it shares an unmistakable similarity in melodic shape and rhythmic character, and opens its themes with the same ascending intervals of fourth and fifth. The conclusion of the third movement brings a dramatic resolution to this set of themes, which the first movement denies us.

In contrast, movements two and four draw from verses 8:7 and 8:6, respectively, and meditate on the profundity of love. Both feature thicker choral textures, with a heightened use of counterpoint, and intense legato over steady duple rhythms. Both employ dissonance in a somewhat more traditional way, though Pinkham refrains from the full resolutions we might expect (of particular interest is the ringing dissonance used in movement two between tenor and bass, shortly before the soprano entrance). The homorhythmic chorale setting of number four (“Set me as a seal...”), and the plaintive insistence of number two’s canon theme (“Many waters...”), paint their shared subject with passionate intensity.

While the pairings of odd and even movements stand out, other aspects unify the piece as a whole. The inner movements both employ canonic singing, providing a sense of overall cohesion. In contrast, the outer movements both contain extended sections of homorhythmic chorale singing, and share some striking harmonic passages; the harmonic progression that closes the whole piece first appears in the conclusion of the first section of the first movement. Most strikingly, and appropriately, the celebration of love unifies the whole.

Large Scale Symmetry in Pinkham's Wedding Cantata

The movements can be paired in various ways, giving a general symmetry overall and a sense of formal and stylistic cohesiveness.

The outer movements can be paired for a couple reasons:

• Extended sections of either unison or chorale textures (in the chorus)
• Common harmonic material (as noted earlier, mm. 28-31 of movement one has same harmonic motion as mm. 15-22 of movement four, which concludes the piece); it's a fairly striking harmonic passage.

The inner movements can be paired in that they're both feature canonic singing.

The odd movements are a more obvious pairing in that they have similar themes/imagery in text, some common melodic material, dancing compound meter, syncopation.

The even movements are additionally an obvious pairing in their focus on love's profundity, in their thicker choral textures, in their meditative or even plaintive qualities rather than jubilation. Use of dissonance between voices is somewhat more traditional in these movements, though there are of course occasions in which traditional resolution does not take place.

Much of the piece uses a common harmonic language, with traditional tertian harmonies expanded with added sevenths, sixths, ninths, etc. Such extended chords are often spelled in a way that adds a crystalline or spiky quality to the sound (as one often observes in Ravel, Satie, or even Stravinsky). In contrast, some harmonic passages utilize standard triads, but moving in unconventional ways; motion by thirds between major triads (requiring chromatic movement in one voice) is especially prominent.

ETHAN: The use of canon in mvt. 2 helps to paint the text. "Many waters cannot quench love." The text conveys an idea of a feverish, burning love that cannot be tamed, a fervent passion that cannot be calmed. The music reflects that idea by cycling through the main melody in canon, each voice pursuing the others, not stopping for rest, endlessly alight with motion. The final, forte unison D at the end represents the coming together of hearts and souls into unity.

Text sources for Pinkham's Wedding Cantata.

I. Rise up, my love

King James Bible, Cambridge Ed.; Song of Solomon 2:10-2:12

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the eart; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

Song of Solomon 6:1-6:3

Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? That we may seek him with thee.

My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lillies.

I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine; he feedeth among the lillies.

II. Many waters

Song of Solomon 8:7

Many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.

III. Awake, O north wind

Song of Solomon 4:16

Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden; that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruit.

IV. Epilogue: Set me as a seal

Song of Solomon 8:6

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

Observations

Solomon 2:10-13, and 8:6-7, appear to be pretty popular biblical readings for weddings. Solomon 4:16 may be less common, but has obvious symmetry with the themes of 2:10-2:13.

The music appropriately focuses on the differing characters of these sections; the wind/spice-related settings of movements one and three share a dancing, jubilant rhythmic character, and seem to revel in the joy of love and the wedding occasion. In contrast, the text of 8:6-7 focuses on the profundity of love, and as such the settings of movements two and four reflect that profundity, using thicker choral textures, with lines suggesting reverence, in contrast to the dancing joy of the others.

Prep notes on Pinkham's Wedding Cantata

First obvious formal thing: the clear relationship between first and third movements. Both have a primary theme in a fast 6/8, with similar piano accompaniment at opening (repeated chord patterns with prominent parallel fourths). Both themes open with the same melodic figure (both in terms of intervals and rhythm). The melodies differ in their particulars but have a similar overall shape. And the text are clearly related, with the first having the male wondering what his beloved's up to in the garden, and the third having the female asking the wind to blow the spice fragrance to the man that he'll be inclined to come to the garden and eat his pleasant fruit.

What husband doesn't enjoy him some pleasant fruit?

The harmonic sequence at the end of the first section of the first movement is the same as the final of the piece.

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