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Jonah and the Whale The Oratorio Chorale, under the direction of Peter Frewen, will present the Maine premiere of Jonah and the Whale, an oratorio by Pulitzer Prize winning composer Dominick Argento, on May 22 at 7:30 p.m. and May 23 at 3 p.m. Both performances will take place at the Falmouth Congregational Church, 168 Main Street, Falmouth.
Featured soloists are tenor Timothy Neill Johnson, as Jonah; bass Daniel Cole, as the voice of God; and Suzanne Nance as narrator. Members of the Maine Chamber Ensemble, with guest artists Ray Cornils, Portland Municipal Organist, and Jara Goodrich, principal harpist with the Portland Symphony Orchestra, will provide the orchestral accompaniment.
Inspired by Albertus Pictor’s painting for a church in Härkeberga, Sweden, Argento chose a 14th century homiletic poem, Patience, or Jonah and the Whale, as the basic device to re-tell the biblical story. He then added texts from the Vulgate Psalms; a 17th century Protestant Hymnal; 19th century sea shanties and work songs; the King James Bible; kyrie eleison from the Latin Mass, and other sources. Intentionally anachronistic, the amalgam of disparate texts, musical idioms and techniques, including an unusual ensemble of three trombones, organ, piano, harp and percussion instruments, creates a powerful epic that is at once familiar and freshly inventive.
Argento wrote that the whale “gets the best tune in the work” because for him, the great fish, not Jonah, is the hero of the story. But that does not detract from the chorus, which for Argento represents the human soul. The “essence of humanity” is to be found in “groups of combined voices expressing whatever the text asks them to express.”
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