Program Notes

Oregon Repertory Singers is thrilled to begin our 53rd season by presenting the West Coast premiere of Creo. It is only the second performance of this magnificent work in the United States.

The biblical story of the Creation was set to music by Joseph Haydn in the late 1790s, and he did it so well that nearly every composer since has let his version stand as the definitive one. Haydn's Creation follows the plan of a Classical-era opera: vocal soloists — the archangels Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael — do most of the storytelling, narrating in recitative and embellishing in aria, while the chorus steps in at the close of each day to praise God. It is primarily melodic, gentle, beautiful, and, for all its cosmic subject matter, fundamentally happy music.

Creo, by South Korean composer Hyo-Won Woo (b. 1974), could not be more different.

Composed in 2012 on a commission from conductor Dr. Hakwon Yoon and the Incheon City Chorale — where Woo has served as resident composer since 1999 — Creo makes only sparing use of soloists, leaving nearly all the heavy lifting to the chorus itself. (The piece gained wider international attention in 2014, when it was featured at the 10th World Symposium on Choral Music in Seoul.) Its 11 movements, sung in Latin and drawn directly from the opening chapters of Genesis, unfold in three arcs: pre-Creation (In Principio, Chaos, Dixit Deus), the six days of Creation itself (from Lux et Tenebrae through Animal Terra et Homo), and a post-Creation close (Requietio/Benedictus, Perfectus). Woo even divides Creation itself by voice: darkness, earth, animals, and man belong to the tenor and bass voices; sky, light, birds, and woman belong to the sopranos and altos — text-painting so simple and so exact that it feels inevitable once you hear it.

The orchestra also tells a different kind of Creation story. Alongside strings, French horn, timpani and piano sits a battery of instruments Haydn never dreamed of: Korean daegeum (bamboo flute), jing and jwa-jong (gongs and brass bowls), jang-gu and modeum-buk (hourglass and barrel drums), a nagak (a great conch-shell horn) — even a musical saw and a shofar.

And at the center of it all is a soloist singing in the style of jeong-ga, a centuries-old, highly refined Korean vocal art built on deep abdominal breath support and the intricate pitch-shading ornamentation called sigimsae — the same shadings of tone and color that shape the daegeum and string writing throughout the piece. Creo actually marks the first time a jeong-ga singer had ever performed contemporary choral music in Latin. We are very proud of the members of the ORS Youth Choir who have studied the jeong-ga style of singing with Hyo-Won Woo and will be the soloists in this weekend’s performances.

Woo has said that Haydn's Creation was the piece on her mind as she began. Her goal was not to replace it but to write something "Korean and modern, something that could be prayed in our age" — music built from both traditions at once. Where Haydn is primarily melodic and gentle, Creo is loud, physical, and aggressive. I hear in it echoes of the Big Bang, of the cosmic violence that likely accompanied the actual birth of the universe. In an age when we are surrounded — bombarded, really — by loud amplified music, it is thrilling to be reminded how different it feels to be surrounded by loud acoustic sound instead. It hits the body in a completely different way. It is a truly visceral experience that is hard to replicate.

We are honored that Hyo-Won Woo will be with us this week in Portland helping shape our performance, and offering a rare chance to hear this remarkable piece with its composer in the room.