The Downtown Singers will explore themes of life, death, and transcendence in their spring concert “The Soul’s Voyage,” presented Saturday, June 6. Music director Robert Manners says the program brings together works by Johannes Brahms, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Howard Hanson in what he describes as “the celebration of life and the dichotomy between life and death, and how we respond to that.”
The concert opens with two Brahms works, Nänie and Schicksalslied. Manners explained that Nänie — a title difficult to translate directly — is best understood as “a funeral song or lamentation.” He noted that the text draws heavily on Greek mythology and humanity’s relationship with mortality. “It speaks about our transient journey to death,” he said. “It’s some of the most beautiful text that Brahms has ever set.”
The companion piece, Schicksalslied (“Song of Fate”), examines destiny and humanity’s place in the universe. Manners said pairing it with Vaughan Williams’ Toward the Unknown Region creates “two different sides of the same coin.”
“We don’t know what comes next,” he said of the Vaughan Williams work. “But the Schicksalslied, your ‘Song of Fate,’ is all about where you are going next and the things you do to get there.”
The program concludes with Howard Hanson’s Song of Democracy, which sets two poems by Walt Whitman. Manners noted that Whitman also provides the text for Vaughan Williams’ work, helping unify the concert thematically.
“The uplifting part of Song of Democracy is that we get to sail on through life,” he said. “We get to sail on into the next part of our journey. We get to sail on through death. That’s kind of where I got the theme from — the soul’s voyage.”
Manners acknowledged that Hanson’s work presents considerable musical challenges, even for experienced singers. “It’s certainly an exhausting thing,” he said. “It’s a lot of really evocative, fatiguing pieces. I’m so proud of my singers for tackling these challenging works this year.”
“The Soul’s Voyage” will be presented Saturday, June 6, at 7 p.m. at United Presbyterian Church. More information is available at downtownsingers.org.