mainstage series
A Joyous Trilogy

Saturday, October 4, 2025 • 7:30 p.m.
Shorecrest Performing Arts Center (15343 25th Ave NE, Shoreline)

Harmonia Orchestra & Chorus
William White, conductor
Serena Eduljee, soprano
Charles Robert Stephens, baritone

Program

Quinn Mason (*1996)
A Joyous Trilogy

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)
Te Deum, Op. 103

— intermission —

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68

About the Concert

Johannes Brahms struggled for 20 years to compose his first symphony, eventually creating a masterpiece that journeys from tragedy to triumph. Antonín Dvořák (a close friend of Brahms) wrote his Te Deum for his first concert in the New World, a trip that inspired generations of American composers. In early 2020, American composer Quinn Mason conducted the premiere of his A Joyous Trilogy with Harmonia — and from that launching pad has gained an international reputation.

Maestro’s Prelude

— William White

About the Soloists

Soprano Serena Eduljee is known for her radiant coloratura, dynamic acting and “magnetic” stage presence (Entertainment News Northwest). Hailed for her vocal agility and expressive nuance, she is increasingly in demand throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond, where companies and audiences alike turn to her for roles that require both vocal brilliance and dramatic depth. Recent engagements include featured roles such as Musetta (La Bohème), Glauce (Medea), Marie (La Fille du Régiment), Lisa (La Sonnambula) and Nanetta (Falstaff), Rosina (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), and Olympia — the iconic doll — in Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Frequently engaged by Seattle Opera, Ms. Eduljee has appeared in both mainstage and touring productions, including The Three Feathers, Die Zauberflöte, La Traviata, Cinderella in Spain and the role of Amore in O+E. She made her Seattle Symphony debut as Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte and returned for the sold-out “Joe Hisaishi Returns” concert featuring the Princess Mononoke Suite. A graduate of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, Ms. Eduljee studied under legendary soprano Carol Vaness and trained with the OperaWorks Advanced Artist Program in Los Angeles.

learn more: serenaeduljee.com

Baritone Charles Robert Stephens has enjoyed a career spanning a wide variety of roles and styles in opera and concert music. In his 20 years in New York City, he sang leading roles with the New York City Opera and was declared
by The New York Times to be “a baritone of smooth distinction.” He also appeared frequently in Carnegie Hall
with the Opera Orchestra of New York in a variety of roles, and was active in regional opera throughout the U.S. On the international stage, he sang opera roles in Montevideo, Taiwan, Santo Domingo and Mexico City. Now based in Seattle, Mr. Stephens has sung with the Seattle Symphony, Northwest Sinfonietta, Spokane Opera, Portland Chamber Orchestra and many other ensembles and opera companies throughout the Pacific Northwest. Recent performances include Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony and Handel’s Messiah (Spokane Symphony), Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd (Helena Symphony), Bach’s Mass in B minor (St. Paul Music Guild), Mozart’s Requiem (Bellingham Symphony), Mozart’s Mass in C minor Mass (Seattle Pro Musica), Haydn’s The Seasons (Harmonia), Verdi’s Requiem (Symphony Tacoma), and a Paris debut in Bach’s St. John Passion (Les Fetes Galantes).

learn more: charlesrobertstephens.com

Program Notes

Quinn Mason
A Joyous Trilogy

Mason was born in March 1996 and currently resides in Dallas, Texas. He composed this work as the result of a commission from Harmonia for its 50th anniversary season and conducted the world premiere at the Shorecrest Performing Arts Center on February 15, 2020. The score calls for pairs of woodwinds, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

Formerly a student at Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts, where he studied composition with Lane Harder, Quinn Mason also studied at Richland College with Jordan Kuspa, Texas Christian University with Blaise Ferrandino and with Winston Stone of the University of Texas at Dallas, and has worked with distinguished composers David Maslanka, Libby Larsen, David Dzubay and Robert X. Rodriguez. Mason considers it his personal mission to create music “based in traditional classical music, but reflecting the times in which we live.”

Mason’s works have been performed by the Dallas Symphony, South Bend Symphony, New Texas Symphony, Mission Chamber Orchestra, loadbang, Voices of Change, American Composer’s Forum, Atlantic Brass Quintet and UT Arlington Saxophone Quartet, as well as the Cézanne, Julius and Baumer quartets and wind ensembles at SMU, TCU, University of North Texas, Purdue University and Seattle Pacific University.

Mason calls A Joyous Trilogy “a set of three short symphonic sketches for large orchestra,” played without pause. The inspiration “comes from a piece I wrote in 2017, titled Passages of Joy,” premiered on January 21, 2019, by the South Bend Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Alastair Willis.

For A JoyousTrilogy , the composer writes that he “wanted to create a composition that was the very embodiment of happiness and cheerfulness, an accessible work that would put any listener in a good mood. The first movement, ‘Running’ (a revised version of Passages of Joy), is so called because of its always-moving and seemingly never-waning energy. The second, ‘Reflection,’ is a gentle meditation featuring a solo trombone. The third, ’Renewal,’ picks the energy back up and keeps it going to the very end.”

Quinn Mason has dedicated this work to “Will White, a friend and mentor for many years now, and one of the most joyous people I know!”

Antonín Dvořák
Te Deum, Op. 103

Dvořák was born September 8, 1841, in the Bohemian town of Nelahozeves (near Prague, now in the Czech Republic), and died on May 1, 1904, in Prague. He composed this work between June 25 and July 28, 1892, conducting the premiere at Carnegie Hall on October 21 of that year. In addition to vocal soloists and SATB chorus, the work calls for pairs of woodwinds (with one oboe doubling English horn), 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum and strings.

This work (along with Dvořák’s most famous composition, the “New World” Symphony) may never have come to be were it not for New York philanthropist Jeannette Meyer Thurber (1850–1946). In 1885 she founded the National Conservatory of Music in America, modeled after the Paris Conservatoire (where she had studied as a teen). Jacques Bouhy, a renowned Belgian baritone who had created the role of Escamillo in Carmen, served as the school’s first director. The Conservatory had a remarkably progressive admissions policy, encouraging women, minorities and the physically disabled to enroll, and arranged for students to attend regardless of their ability to pay tuition. Deciding to hire a top-rank composer to succeed Bouhy, Thurber set her sights on Antonín Dvořák.

Trained as an organist, Dvořák played viola in Prague’s Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra during the 1860s, supplementing his income by giving piano lessons. Although his Op. 1 dates from 1861, his music apparently received no public performances until a decade later, when he quit the orchestra to devote more time to composing. While his compositions began to achieve some measure of success in Prague, he remained in need of two things: money and wider recognition of his talents.

In 1874, Dvořák applied for the Austrian State Stipendium, a composition prize awarded by a jury consisting of composer Johannes Brahms, music critic Eduard Hanslick and Johann Herbeck, director of the Imperial Opera. Brahms in particular was overwhelmingly impressed by the 15 works Dvořáksubmitted, which included a song cycle, various overtures and two symphonies. Dvořák received the 1874 stipend, and further awards in 1876 and 1877, when Hanslick wrote to him that “it would be advantageous for your things to become known beyond your narrow Czech fatherland, which in any case does not do much for you.”

Seeking to help in this regard, Brahms passed along a selection of Dvořák’s music to his own publisher, Fritz Simrock, who issued Dvořák’s Op. 20 Moravian Duets, then commissioned some four-hand–piano pieces modeled after Brahms’ successful Hungarian Dances. These Op. 46 Slavonic Dances proved so popular that they launched Dvořák’s worldwide fame.

In the spring of 1891, shortly after Dvořák became a professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory, Thurber offered the composer a job as director of her school in New York — at 25 times his current salary. Negotiations ensued over the next few months until Dvořák, initially reluctant, accepted. His contract required him to give six concerts annually, and one of these was planned for shortly after his arrival, to be held on October 12, 1892, at the Metropolitan Opera House in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in the Western Hemisphere.

Thurber asked Dvořák to compose a choral work for the event, setting an 1819 poem by Rodman Drake that extolled the virtues of the U.S. flag. The text did not arrive in a timely manner, however, so the composer went with Thurber’s suggested backup plan “that Dr. Dvořák choose some Latin Hymn such as Te Deum laudamus or Jubilate Deo or any other which would be suitable for the occasion.” Dvořák opted for a Te Deum. Meanwhile, a fire at the Metropolitan Opera forced the cancellation of their 1892–1893 season and necessitated moving the Dvořák welcoming concert to October 21 at the newly opened Carnegie Hall:

A devout Catholic, Dvořák had previously composed two lengthy settings of religious texts — a Stabat Mater (written in 1876 and 1877 as a reaction to the death, in quick succession, of three of his children) and a Requiem (on a commission from a music festival in Birmingham, England, where he conducted the premiere in 1891) — along with a brilliant setting of Psalm 149 and a Mass in D major (composed in 1887 but orchestrated in 1892 immediately before he began writing the Te Deum).

The Te Deum is a Christian hymn of praise probably dating from the fourth century. Lully, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi and Bruckner all created settings of the Te Deum, typically for ceremonial occasions of public rejoicing. Dvořák broke the text into four sections, creating a miniature symphony that shares an opening key (G major) and a general pastoral mood with his Symphony No. 8, composed three years prior.

Pounding timpani open the work, with the chorus exulting in praise of the Lord. The music softens for the central “Sanctus” section, led by solo soprano. A brief reprise of the boisterous opening material leads without pause to the slow movement, which alternates dramatic brass fanfares with the baritone soloist singing “Tu Rex gloriae, Christe.” The mood eventually relaxes, with the chorus (first the women, then the men) answering the soloist (“Te ergo quaesumus”).

The third movement takes the form of a symphonic scherzo, leading directly to the finale, initially dominated by the solo soprano. The baritone soloist joins her for the “Benedicamus” and material from the first movement returns for a brilliant “Alleluja!”

Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68

Brahms was born in Hamburg on May 7, 1833, and died in Vienna on April 3, 1897. He began sketching materials for his first symphony as early as 1862, but did not start assembling these ideas in earnest until about 1874. He completed the work during the summer of 1876, while staying at the resort of Sassnitz in the North German Baltic islands; it debuted on November 4, 1876, at Karlsruhe, under the direction of Otto Dessoff. Brahms continued to revise the symphony, particularly the two central movements, over the course of the next year. The score calls for pairs of woodwinds plus contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani and strings.

Unlike so many other composers, Brahms took his time writing his first symphony: he was 43 years old when it premiered. Certainly Brahms had the ability to create a successful orchestral work early on, as evidenced by the two delightful serenades that he composed between 1857 and 1859, but these exercises that looked back to Haydn and Mozart were not what Brahms had in mind for a symphony: Beethoven’s shadow hung over his head. Brahms felt compelled to create something that could stand alongside the great masterpieces of his predecessor, and this took time.

At age 21, Brahms heard a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 that spurred him to begin sketching an ambitious symphony in D minor. These attempts proved unsatisfactory and the first two movements eventually became part of Brahms’ first piano concerto, while another found its way into his German Requiem. Beethoven’s Ninth would eventually inform Brahms’ conception of his own first symphony, but so would Beethoven’s Fifth — especially in the choice of key, C minor.

Brahms originally began the opening movement of his symphony at the point where the orchestra now launches into the Allegro tempo — in fact, the composer sent a piano score of the movement to Clara Schumann in this form — but he later added a slow introduction that establishes several of the movement’s important themes; this opening material returns — not quite as slowly — in the first movement’s coda. For the most part, Brahms follows traditional sonata-allegro form, but offers up some surprises as well: ordinarily a C-minor first theme would give way to an E♭-major second theme — it does, but then a violent E -minor episode follows, creating a shocking shift of harmonic gears at the repeat of the exposition.

Following a technique he learned from Beethoven, Brahms casts the slow(ish) second movement in E major, harmonically far removed from the C minor of the opening. These keys, at an interval of a major third, establish a pattern that persists throughout the rest of the work, moving up another major third to A  major for the third movement and then to C minor/major for the finale.

In his symphonies, Brahms diverged from Beethoven’s model in one important way: in place of a quicksilver scherzo, Brahms opts for a more relaxed third movement, often in 2/4 time (as it is here) instead of the traditional (and much faster) 3/4.

The introduction to the final movement opens slowly and in C minor: following a descending figure from low strings and contrabassoon, the first violins hint at a melody that will soon take on great importance; a pizzicato episode follows and the tempo accelerates, then suddenly relapses as these two ideas repeat. A syncopated rhythm, swirling from the depths of the orchestra, creates great urgency — then the clouds part and a magnificent horn solo signals the arrival of C major. (Brahms had sketched this horn melody on a birthday card to Clara Schumann several years before, attaching the message, “High on the mountain, deep on the valley, I send you many thousands of greetings.”) Next comes a chorale stated by trombones and bassoons, after which the horn call returns, but now developed much more elaborately, subsiding to a simple dominant chord — how will it resolve?

Brahms here introduces his “big tune,” the melody suggested by violins at the opening of the movement, now stated in full. (When someone pointed out to the composer the resemblance of this tune to the “Ode to Joy” melody of Beethoven’s Ninth, the composer reportedly responded, “Any ass can hear that.”) Brahms develops the violin theme, alternating it with other material from the slow introduction, building in fervor. Eventually, the bottom seems to drop out and the tempo slackens for a passionate reprisal of the Alpine horn call. A recapitulation section follows, yet the “big tune” is absent. This leads to a faster coda, which seems intent on driving the movement to its conclusion, but Brahms interrupts with a fortissimo restatement of the trombone chorale from the introduction. A new syncopated triplet rhythm returns the coda to its faster pace and leads to the symphony’s triumphant finish.

— Jeff Eldridge