On today’s show we start on a cheery note with an old Albanian folk song that tells the legend of the walled in woman: three brothers are building a castle, and one night the fortress is mysteriously ruined. The mother of the boys had a dream that one of their wives must be sacrificed, built into the foundation of the castle. They agreed that whichever wife was to show up first to the building site would be sacrificed, but only the youngest brother did not tell his wife the plan and as such she was built into the wall of the fortress. It’s possible this folk song comes from the time of the building of Rozafa near the city of Shkodër, in northwestern Albania. We hear a version off a record from the 80s, sung by Albanian men.

The folk song also inspired Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds’ choral work The Legend of the Walled-In Woman, which works as an objet trouvé opening the piece, directly quoting the original folk song and later morphing into other musical tapestries. Composer Gabriel Jackson writes how “the texture is characteristically sonorous, with multiple divisi; the harmony is tonal, invigorated by passing dissonances, the tessitura wide, as intertwined upper voices soar above more slow-moving deeply rooted lower parts. In an extended coda polyphony dissolves into homophony: tolling, incantatory chords create a static pulsation that underscores plaintive wisps of melody from one, then two solo sopranos, who intone (in English) an epitaph for the walled-in woman. Gradually tendrils of folksong are re-woven into the texture, their tonality finally reconciled with that of the choir, as the music recedes into silence.”

From many voices to the one-person-band of Berlin-based American composer Lyra Pramuk, who’s made a whole album with just her voice, that’s been shaped and twisted and processed by electronics – what she describes as “futurist folk music”.

Then, in a giant decommissioned water tank in Colorado, hear vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth test out the acoustics with composer Jessica Meyer’s Ring Out, Wild Bells and join the Choir of Clare College Cambridge as they take a journey from regret and guilt to hope and redemption with Scottish composer’s James MacMillan’s take on Miserere. -Rosa Gollan

Program #4338, Music for Voices (First aired 3/9/2020)

ARTIST: Albanian Men's Group From Vlorë
WORK: Légende de la femme emmurée [5:54]
RECORDING: Albanie: Polyphonies Vocales Et Instrumentales
SOURCE: Le Chant Du Monde ‎– LDX 274897
INFO: discog

ARTIST: Portland State University Chamber Choir
WORK: Eriks Esenvalds: The Legend of the Walled-In Woman [11:51]
RECORDING: Translations
SOURCE: Naxos
INFO: eriksesenvalds.com/recordings/translations

ARTIST: Lyra Pramuk
WORK: Cradle [9:03]
RECORDING: Fountain
SOURCE: Bedroom Community Records
INFO: lyrapramuk.bandcamp.com/

ARTIST: Roomful of Teeth
WORK: Jessica Meyer: Ring Out, Wild Bells [7:05]
RECORDING: Ring Out
SOURCE: Bright Shiny Things
INFO: jessicameyermusic.com/ring-wild-bells/

ARTIST: The Choir of Clare College Cambridge and Graham Ross
WORK: James MacMillan: Miserere [12:21]
RECORDING: Arvo Pärt: Stabat Mater
SOURCE: Harmonia Mundi FR
INFO: prestomusic.com