Metsaluule

Conductor Notes:

In seeking to provide opportunities and promote the work of women composers in our Celebrating Women Composers project, I took the opportunity to introduce the singers and our audience to the writing of another of our own singers, Katrin Lohuaru. Katrin is a beautiful singer and highly creative person who started multitracking her own voice several years ago, building layered songs for women’s voices inspired by her Estonian heritage and the music of Veljo Tormis. I encouraged her to share several of her creations with me, and together we chose “Metsaluule (Forest Songs)” to be transcribed and rehearsed for the May concert. The repetitive and subtly-changing nature of the three melodies is meant to put singer and listener into a trance. Divisi ranges from SA to SSSSAA.

Composer / Arranger Notes:

This work was inspired by singing regilaul, an ancient style of folksong shared by Baltic-Finnic people. Stylistically, regilaul melodies are repetitive as the idea is to create a continuous, unbroken flow to invoke a trance or fulfil a ritual purpose. In Estonia this tradition has all but disappeared from daily life, however efforts were made starting in the 19th century to collect lyrics so they wouldn’t be forgotten. I’ve taken three archival texts and set them to new melodies. My aim is for singers to start simply and then progress into a dreamlike state without any clear moment of transition. This piece is dedicated to the Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (1930-2017).

As a member of Elektra, I’ve had the joy of singing so much remarkable and memorable choral music over the years. Yet nothing has left me quite as spellbound as Estonian regilaul and in particular the works of composer Veljo Tormis. The uniquely mesmerizing and at times uncomfortable feelings stirred up by something both ancient and intuitively familiar has been the catalyst for me to find new music of my own. Or rather, it has started finding me!